Is funding related to higher research impact? Exploring its relationship and the mediating role of collaboration in several disciplines

The funding process is increasingly under scrutiny in order to ensure the effectiveness of research investments. This paper contributes to improve our understanding of the effects of funding on research performance through the analysis of the scientific publications of Spain-based researchers in seven disciplines during a five-year period. Funding data are extracted from the “Funding acknowledgment” field of the WoS database. Firstly, funded research is compared to the non-funded one regarding impact and collaboration through bivariate analyses. Funded research is published in more prestigious journals, attains higher citation rates and is developed in teams of greater size in all disciplines, but only in a few of them is associated to greater extra-mural collaboration. Secondly, a logistic regression model is used to explore whether funding contributes to explain the likelihood of papers to attain citation rates above world average controlling for other variables such as prestige of publication journal and collaboration. Thirdly, funding shows direct and indirect effects on the citation rate of papers. Indirect effects are mediated through the publication of more complete papers, in more prestigious journals and with more extensive collaboration, although the presence and magnitude of these effects vary by discipline. The results are discussed in the context of their interest for research policy.