Collaborative Research: The Effect of State Disinvestment in Higher Education on Research Quality and Returns to Scale in Science Funding

科学政策要求对资助对大学科学家产生的研究成果的数量和质量的影响有一个明确的理解。这个项目将考察最近国家对公立大学的支持减少对科研产出的影响。自大衰退以来，几个州削减了对高等教育的拨款，19个州没有将资金恢复到2008年的水平。然而，很少有研究研究联邦和非联邦研究经费之间的关系，也没有研究州政府对高等教育的资助和研究产出之间的关系。此外，研究人员还讨论了科学资助是否存在回报递减的问题。当每增加一美元的资金导致更少的出版物和引用时，回报就会递减。这项研究的结果将使政策制定者能够就如何将稀缺的资金资源分配给州和联邦一级的高等教育做出明智的决定。拟议的研究将审查高等教育资助变化的影响，以审查科学资助在跨科学和社会科学学科的出版物和引文方面的回报。首先，该项目将使用新的数据，将出版物、引文和拨款与研究型大学的个别教职员工联系起来，以模拟几个学科的科学资金规模回报。这些领域的差异将揭示科学资金的规模回报。其次，该项目将研究在以出版物和引文衡量的研究产出方面，州政府对高等教育的资助是否可以替代或补充联邦研究经费。如果州政府的资助是对联邦研究资金的补充，那么在经历了预算削减的州，人们会认为联邦研究资金将会减少。第三，该项目将使用科学家的个人水平数据和国家预算对高等教育资金的冲击，以检查教师流动对发送和接收机构的研究生产率的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Science policy requires a firm understanding of the impact of funding on the quantity and quality of research outputs produced by university scientists. This project will examine the impact of recent declines in state support for public universities on scientific research output. Since the Great Recession, several states cut appropriations to higher education, and nineteen states have not restored funding to 2008 levels. Yet few studies have examined the relationship between federal and non-federal research funding, and none have investigated the relationship between state funding for higher education and research output. In addition, researchers have debated whether there are diminishing returns to science funding. Diminishing returns occur when each additional dollar of funding results in fewer publications and citations. The results of this research will allow policymakers to make informed decisions about the allocation of scarce funding resources to higher education at the state and federal levels. The proposed research will examine the effect of changes in support for higher education funding to examine the returns to science funding in terms of publications and citations across science and social science disciplines. First, the project will use new data that links publications, citations and grants to individual faculty members at research universities to model the returns to scale of science funding across several disciplines. Variation across these fields will shed light on the returns to scale in science funding. Second, the project will examine whether state funding of higher education is a substitute or complement for federal research funding in the production of research output measured by publications and citations. If state funding is a complement for federal research funding, one would expect that federal research dollars would fall in states that experienced budget cuts. Third, the project will use individual level data on scientists and state budget shocks to higher education funding to examine the impact of faculty mobility on the research productivity of sending and receiving institutions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.