In this week’s Nature magazine David King discusses the relationship between research funding (inputs) and publications and citations (outputs). The study contains a wealth of data comparing publication and citation rates across a range of countries.

David Dickson has written a very thoughtful analysis of King’s paper and its significance. Here are a few excerpts:

“In recent years, however, it has become increasingly clear that measuring scientific strength in terms of spending alone is not only relatively crude, but also misleading. For merely adding up the amount of money allocated to research provides no indication of the effectiveness with which it is being spent. The focus has therefore shifted to looking at the results — or outputs — of scientific research.”

“Pumping money into science is not enough, as many of such countries have discovered to their cost. Indeed, a single-minded pursuit of increased expenditure on research and development as a proportion of GNP is not the Holy Grail that many pretend (if it was, France and Germany would be way ahead of Britain in the research race).

What counts is the level of transparency and accountability with which the money is spent, and measures that are introduced to ensure that money is used to promote and reward scientific creativity (even if on relatively small projects), rather then institution building and career politics. The more this lesson can be built into the science policies of the developing world, the more rapidly they are likely to bridge the ‘output gap’ that, at present, continues to fuel the knowledge divide between rich and poor nations.”

Read both King’s paper and Dickson’s critique.