Evaluating the research activity and impact of funding agencies

Abstract

While the utility of assessing past research is widely recognised, few studies have focused on the funding body as the unit of evaluation. This study focused on individual funding bodies in one field of research, malaria: the results are presented of a survey of both the international financial inputs and the publications that resulted. Some major funding organisations obtained more apparent productivity from their investment than did others, although the leading funding bodies all supported papers that were more highly cited than the average for the field. The mean number of funding bodies acknowledged on more highly cited papers was greater than that for the complete set of papers, suggesting that the presence of multiple funding is positively correlated with citation performance. Other subjective methods of assessment involving surveys of expert opinion are also discussed.