Bibliometric analysis of the Impact of NSERC Funding on Scientific Development of the Funded Researchers

Funding has been acknowledged in many articles to be the main determinant of scientific development and it is viewed as an important factor that has a significant effect on the scientific output since it provides a better access to the research resources. Effective funding allocation to highly innovative and original research enables a country to remain at the frontier in the scientific fields, which in the 21st century seems to be crucial for improving a nation’s position world-wide. Every year, a considerable amount of money is being invested on research, mainly in the form of funding allocated to universities and research institutes, in order to improve the scientific potential of the country. Hence, to better distribute the available funds and to set the most proper R&D investment strategies for the future, evaluation of the productivity of the researchers in respect to the amount of funding that they have received and the impact of such funding is crucial. In this paper, using the data on 15 years of journal publications of the NSERC funded researchers and by means of bibliometric analysis , the scientific development of the funded researchers and their scientific collaboration patterns will be investigated in the period of 1996-2010. According to the results it seems that there is a positive relation between the average level of funding and quantity and quality of the scientific output. In addition, whenever funding allocated to the researchers has increased, the number of co-authors per paper has also augmented. Hence, the increase in the level of funding may enable researchers to get involved in larger projects and/or scientific teams and increase their scientific output respectively