Abstract This study explores the funding, authorship patterns, and citation impact of articles funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (MESU), the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU), and the National Research Foundation of Ukraine (NRFU). The analysis focuses on articles published in Scopus-indexed journals in 2020–2023. The study findings revealed that the share of articles funded by these agencies increased from 8.6% in 2020–2021 to 11.9% in 2022–2023. Foreign cofunding, international coauthorship, and foreign coaffiliations were consistently associated with higher citation impact. In 2022–2023, foreign coaffiliations had a positive effect on the citation impact of MESU-funded articles, with FNCI exceeding that of articles cofunded by MESU and foreign agencies. In 2020–2021, NASU-funded articles had only a modest advantage in citation impact over unfunded articles. In 2022–2023, this pattern changed, with unfunded articles slightly exceeding NASU-funded articles in overall citation impact. Among articles with foreign coaffiliations and international coauthorship, unfunded articles exhibited a citation advantage over NASU-funded articles, while the citation impact of articles with Ukrainian affiliations was broadly similar. These findings raise questions about the effectiveness of current research evaluation criteria and funding allocation mechanisms and underscore the need for evidence-based reform of Ukraine’s research funding system.
Abstract Preprints—scientific manuscripts publicly shared prior to peer review—are now part of scholarly communication as emerging information resources. While neuroscience researchers have increasingly published preprints, the impact of preprints in this field remains unclear. Through a bibliometric approach, this case study explored preprint citation patterns. The results yielded over 33,000 citations to preprints within Scopus-indexed neuroscience documents (1993–2022). Trends of citations and citation motivations were investigated. Findings indicated that 1.62% of neuroscience publications cited at least one preprint, with citations peaking at 6% in 2021. Review and journal articles cited preprints more frequently, compared to books, notes, and conference papers (χ2 = 1909.015, p < 0.001). The most commonly cited servers were bioRxiv, arXiv, medRxiv, and PsyArXiv. Regarding journals, a moderate positive correlation (rs = 0.353, p < 0.01) was found between publications citing preprints and journals’ CiteScores. Using Scite.ai, 93% of citations were classified as “mentioning,” with considerably fewer being supporting or contrasting. Most preprint citations appeared in Introduction and Discussion sections, highlighting their role in framing research questions and contextualizing results. The global overview of these results may help contextualize citation behavior in relation to structural and cultural factors, such as disciplinary norms, policy frameworks, researchers’ attitudes, and health emergencies.
Diamond Open Access (DOA) is a noncommercial model of scholarly publishing that removes financial barriers for authors and readers. While international studies have outlined the global uptake of DOA, this paper investigates the presence and characteristics of the DOA landscape in Italy. We conducted a quantitative analysis on the 168 Italian journals classified as Diamond by EZB, and we studied their publishing volume, disciplinary distribution and citation impact by integrating information from the following open resources: DOAJ, OpenAIRE, ROAD, SCImago Journal Rank, and the ANVUR classification used in the Italian Research Assessment Framework (VQR). Key findings include the significant growth of DOA journals, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, as well as the high level of international citations, indicating strong global relevance. The study also highlights challenges such as the need for better indexing and comprehensive data to fully capture the DOA landscape.
Science is a collaborative endeavor in which "who collaborates with whom" profoundly shapes academic success. However, the way in which scientists facilitate new collaborations among their peers-a well-studied process called brokerage-has received little attention in the context of academic careers. Here, we quantify brokerage in physics and examine its relationship with academic success in over 130,000 careers spanning a century. Early engagement in brokerage predicts more brokerage events in subsequent career stages, revealing its cumulative nature. More successful scientists engage in brokerage more frequently and at increasing rates across comparable career stages. These results hold when controlling for career entry decade and brokerage roles. While brokerage-success correlations apply to women and men, the cumulative advantage intensifies at senior levels where women remain underrepresented owing to later entry into physics and higher dropout rates. Thus, the cumulative nature of brokerage intertwines with gender disparities and the unequal distribution of success in physics.
In response to concerns that their research funding systems impose unwarranted epistemic restrictions on scientific research and discourage unconventional and risky projects, funders are exploring alternative funding instruments. This paper presents analyses of Spark, a pilot funding instrument of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for unconventional and high-risk research that introduced a double-blind evaluation process without review panel discussions. We explore how these program terms may promote unconventional research by affecting who are applying, their motivations, and the assessments of proposed projects. Comparing Spark with a standard SNSF funding scheme we find that the two programs attracted very different groups of applicants. Anonymized proposals more often inspired nonestablished and younger researchers to apply, and those inspired to do unconventional and high-risk research were more often funded. Moreover, Spark was effective in avoiding bias against those not holding a professorship or affiliated with a university of applied sciences. Notably, double-blinding was not the sole difference between the two funding schemes, and part of the effects may result from other characteristics of Spark. We discuss implications for how to encourage unconventional research, and the dilemmas of incorporating risk into funding decisions.
