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

科学政策需要坚定地理解资助对大学科学家研究产出的数量和质量的影响。这个项目将研究最近国家对公立大学的支持减少对科研产出的影响。自经济大衰退以来，几个州削减了对高等教育的拨款，19个州的资金还没有恢复到2008年的水平。然而，很少有研究调查过联邦和非联邦研究经费之间的关系，也没有研究过国家对高等教育的资助与研究成果之间的关系。此外，研究人员还在争论科学基金的回报是否在减少。当每增加一美元的资助导致更少的出版物和引用时，就会出现收益递减。这项研究的结果将使决策者能够做出明智的决定，将稀缺的资金资源分配给州和联邦一级的高等教育。拟议的研究将检查高等教育资助支持变化的影响，以检查科学和社会科学学科的出版物和引用方面的科学资助回报。首先，该项目将使用将出版物、引用和资助与研究型大学的个别教员联系起来的新数据，对多个学科的科学资助的规模回报进行建模。这些领域的差异将揭示科学资助的规模回报。其次，该项目将检查国家对高等教育的资助在以出版物和引用量衡量的研究产出方面是对联邦研究资助的替代还是补充。如果州政府资助是对联邦研究资助的补充，那么在预算削减的州，联邦研究资金将会下降。第三，该项目将使用科学家个人层面的数据和国家预算对高等教育经费的冲击，以检查教师流动对发送和接收机构的研究生产力的影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.