The impact of China's “double world-class” policy on the scientific research outputs of basic disciplines in universities

The basic disciplines of universities prove the source of technological innovation and the key disciplines of the “double world-class” (DWC) policy in China, which play an important role in boosting basic research of universities and solving the “bottleneck” problem of science and technology in China. Now China's first round of DWC policy has ended, during which the country has provided continuous policy preference and abundant investment for basic disciplines in universities, but it still lacks empirical investigation on the impact of the DWC policy on the scientific research output of basic disciplines. Therefore, based on the panel data of 191 basic disciplines of 89 universities in China from 2013 to 2020, a difference-in-differences (DID) model is developed to explore the impact of the DWC policy on the scientific research output of basic disciplines of relevant universities. The results show that, first, the DWC policy has significantly promoted the scientific research outputs of chemistry and biology disciplines in relevant universities but has no significant impact on those of mathematics and physics disciplines. Furthermore, this promoting impact can only be observed from an absolute growth perspective, but insignificant when evaluated in the relative terms. Second, the DWC policy has promoted the scientific research outputs of chemistry and biology disciplines by encouraging universities to obtain scientific research funding support and improving the international cooperation level. Third, the promoting impact of the DWC policy on the scientific research output of basic disciplines in comprehensive universities is significantly larger than that of other types of universities.