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研究成果的数量和质量的影响有一个坚定的认识。 该项目将研究最近国家对公立大学的支持减少对科学研究产出的影响。 大萧条以来，一些州削减了高等教育拨款，19个州尚未将资金恢复到2008年的水平。 然而，很少有研究探讨了联邦和非联邦研究资金之间的关系，也没有调查国家对高等教育的资助和研究产出之间的关系。 此外，研究人员还就科学资助是否存在回报递减的问题展开了辩论。 当每增加一美元的资金导致更少的出版物和引用时，回报就会减少。 这项研究的结果将使决策者能够在州和联邦两级就稀缺的资金资源向高等教育的分配做出明智的决定。 拟议的研究将研究高等教育资金支持变化的影响，以研究科学和社会科学学科的出版物和引用方面的科学资金回报。首先，该项目将使用新的数据，将出版物，引用和赠款与研究型大学的个别教师联系起来，以模拟跨学科科学资助的规模回报。这些领域的差异将揭示科学资助的规模回报。 第二，该项目将研究国家对高等教育的资助是对联邦研究资助的替代还是补充，以出版物和引用来衡量研究产出。 如果州政府的资助是对联邦研究资金的补充，那么人们可以预期，在经历了预算削减的州，联邦研究资金会减少。 第三，该项目将使用科学家个人水平的数据和国家预算冲击高等教育资金，以检查教师流动性对派遣和接收机构的研究生产力的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.