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Good news for the people who love bad news: an analysis of the funding of the top 1% most highly cited ecologists
Author(s) -
Lortie Christopher J.,
Aarssen Lonnie,
Parker John N.,
Allesina Stefano
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
oikos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.672
H-Index - 179
eISSN - 1600-0706
pISSN - 0030-1299
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0706.2012.20109.x
Subject(s) - elite , incentive , citation , political science , impact factor , visibility , subject (documents) , public relations , economics , geography , library science , computer science , law , politics , meteorology , microeconomics
The most highly cited ecologists and environmental scientists provide both a benchmark and unique opportunity to consider the importance of research funding. Here, we use citation data and self‐reported funding levels to assess the relative importance of various factors in shaping productivity and potential impact. The elite were senior Americans, well funded, with large labs. In contrast to Canadian NSERC grant holders (not in the top 1%), citations per paper did not increase with higher levels of funding within the ecological elite. We propose that this is good news for several reasons. It suggests that the publications generated by the top ecologists and environmental scientists are subject to limitations, that higher volume of publications is always important, and that increased funding to ecologists in general can shift our discipline to wider research networks. As expected, collaboration was identified as an important factor for the elite, and hopefully, this serves as a positive incentive to funding agencies since it increases the visibility of their research.