Funding patterns of bibliometrics research

Abstract

To identify research funding patterns behind bibliometrics as a rapidly expanding science was the aim of the study presented in this paper. We analysed funding information of 8,622 bibliometric papers harvested from Web of Science, among which 1,786 (20.7%) were Papers with Reported Funding (PRFs). The trend in number of PRFs funding in last five years was positive. The most productive countries in PRFs` production were China, the USA and the UK. The same countries were also the most prolific regarding how many times they were mentioned in funding acknowledgements. The number of PRFs published per country was related with OECD reported Gross Domestic Spending on R&D for 2015. There was a significant correlation between number of PRFs per country and the number of all bibliometric papers per country. Far the most prolific funding agency was National Natural Science Foundation of China, followed by the European Commission and the USAs National Science Foundation. The Research trend and direction prediction is the most prolific research theme regarding the percent of PRF and thus most likely to get funded