Citation impact of public and private funding on nanotechnology-related publications

This paper analyses the effects of public and private funding on the subsequent scientific output of academic research in nanotechnology. We investigate whether public grants increase the citation of publications, as well as whether private funding is complementary in enhancing citation impact. Using panel data, we compare autoregression models, binary case and continuous treatment analysis to find evidence that funding can positively affect the citation rate of scientific publications. The results show that the influence of public grants on the number of citations follows almost an inverted U shape curve, which has a positive impact proportional to the amount of public funding received. In contrast, industry funding does not exhibit robust effectiveness on citations. The estimates suggest that private research funding from industry can be detrimental to publication impact.

Mots clés

• research funding
• private funding
• scientific papers
• citations
• nanotechnology