Does Monetary Support Increase Citation Impact of Scholarly Papers?

TL;DR

This study examines whether monetary support influences the citation impact of Turkish scholarly papers, finding that subsidies do not significantly enhance citation counts or publication in higher-impact journals.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on the limited effect of performance-based research funding systems on citation impact in Turkey.

Findings

Supported and unsupported papers received similar citations.

Supported papers were published in journals with similar impact factors.

Subsidies do not significantly improve citation impact.

Abstract

One of the main indicators of scientific development of a given country is the number of papers published in high impact scholarly journals. Many countries introduced performance-based research funding systems (PRFSs) to create a more competitive environment where prolific researchers get rewarded with subsidies to increase both the quantity and quality of papers. Yet, subsidies do not always function as a leverage to improve the citation impact of scholarly papers. This paper investigates the effect of the publication support system of Turkey (TR) on the citation impact of papers authored by Turkish researchers. Based on a stratified probabilistic sample of 4,521 TR-addressed papers, it compares the number of citations to determine if supported papers were cited more often than those of not supported ones, and if they were published in journals with relatively higher citation impact in terms of journal impact factors, article influence scores and quartiles. Both supported and not supported papers received comparable number of citations per paper, and were published in journals with similar citation impact values. Findings suggest that subsidies do not seem to be an effective incentive to improve the quality of scholarly papers. Such support programs should therefore be reconsidered.