Capital Costs: Lottery Funding in Britain and the Consequences for Museums

Funding for London museums has increased enormously in recent years. The lottery has contributed hundreds of millions of pounds for capital developments; central government revenue in the tens of millions goes to funding free admission to the national museums and galleries. The research described in this paper focuses on museums that opened lottery‐funded capital projects in 2000, and on the relationship between this additional funding and museum attendance. The authors found that the extra money led to extra visits—and for the first time attempted to calculate what those visits cost. This research also looks at whether people chose improved museums over other museums, and briefly investigates the impact on attendance of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease and the downturn in tourism following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.     

Does the concentration of scientific research funding in institutions promote knowledge output?

Basic research is the main powerhouse of a country’s potential for continuous economic growth, and national-level scientific research funding is an important source of capital that supports this basic research. Given these observations, this paper takes micro-level data from projects funded by the Department of Management Sciences in the National Natural Science Foundation of China between 2006 and 2010 to examine the relationship between the efficient use of research funding and the level of concentrated funding in certain research institutions. In contrast to the positive externalities produced by the concentration of R&D activities, our study finds that the accumulation of scientific research funding at the institution level is negative correlated with the knowledge output of the principal investigators of projects within the research institution. We explore the sources of the negative correlation and discuss some policy implications.     

Neighborhood disparities in access to information resources: Measuring and mapping U.S. public libraries’ funding and service landscapes

Information inequity is a central concern of the digital age. Many recognize the role of public libraries in bridging such inequities. Unfortunately, however, public libraries are often limited by the funding available to them. This study used a geographic information system (GIS), inequality measures, and multiple regressions to analyze statistics from the Public Libraries Survey (PLS) collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and from census tract data. It evaluated the levels of public library funding and services and tested how these resources vary with neighborhood income and urbanization levels. This is one of the few nationwide multivariate studies of neighborhood-level variations. The study revealed significant funding and service variations across the nation's 9000 library systems. Distributions of digital materials, full-time staff with a master's degree in library and information science, and library programs were especially disparate. Library systems in lower-income or rural neighborhoods were relatively less funded and offered fewer information resources. Interestingly, the only variable that was not significantly associated with neighborhood income was the number of public Internet terminals. This suggests that recent funding and research efforts may have made a difference. Similar funding efforts are encouraged for other types of library resources such as staff education and training. In light of the prevalent disparities in resource levels across neighborhoods, the study calls for a fundamental evaluation of the funding mechanisms for libraries. Also, information behavior research should investigate how this structural information inequity affects individuals’ information use decisions.     

Funded research in communication: A chairperson's perspective

There are several benefits to developing a successful funded research portfolio, as well as several challenges inherent in funded research. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the benefits and challenges of funded research from a department chairperson's perspective. Several issues are addressed: the benefits of extramural funding; strategies for developing and sustaining a department's funded research portfolio; the impact of funding on a department's identity; the impact of a funded research program on the scholarship of a department and its graduate program; the implications of funded research for interdisciplinary cooperation; and various administrative concerns that accompany an active and extensive portfolio of funded research. The goal of this essay is to provide the reader with a more complete understanding of the positive and negative implications of funded research for a communication department.     

Funded research in communication: A chairperson's perspective

There are several benefits to developing a successful funded research portfolio, as well as several challenges inherent in funded research. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the benefits and challenges of funded research from a department chairperson's perspective. Several issues are addressed: the benefits of extramural funding; strategies for developing and sustaining a department's funded research portfolio; the impact of funding on a department's identity; the impact of a funded research program on the scholarship of a department and its graduate program; the implications of funded research for interdisciplinary cooperation; and various administrative concerns that accompany an active and extensive portfolio of funded research. The goal of this essay is to provide the reader with a more complete understanding of the positive and negative implications of funded research for a communication department.     

Final thoughts on funded communication research

In this special forum, communication researchers relate their experiences and perspectives on funded research. Their thoughts highlight that (a) communication studies are coming of age in funded research; (b) funded research requires institutional investment and professional recognition; (c) the processes and skill needed to successfully seek and manage funded research can be learned; (d) it is important to recognize the similarities and differences among funding organizations; and (e) funded research can produce intellectual and organizational creativity within the field. The special forum is intended to stimulate thinking about the contribution of funded research to the knowledge base, research careers, academic reputation, and social responsibility of the communication field.     

Final thoughts on funded communication research

In this special forum, communication researchers relate their experiences and perspectives on funded research. Their thoughts highlight that (a) communication studies are coming of age in funded research; (b) funded research requires institutional investment and professional recognition; (c) the processes and skill needed to successfully seek and manage funded research can be learned; (d) it is important to recognize the similarities and differences among funding organizations; and (e) funded research can produce intellectual and organizational creativity within the field. The special forum is intended to stimulate thinking about the contribution of funded research to the knowledge base, research careers, academic reputation, and social responsibility of the communication field.     

论刘光第京师为官期间的治生

研究刘光第的学者较少关注其经济生活,而刘光第京师期间的治生实践却折射出他的为官目的和人生诉求。通过系统性梳理可以发现,刘光第京师为官期间的收入主要包括俸禄、印结、润笔费、私人资助、地方津贴和官场陋规等,每年大约有五百两,仅能维持其最低生活水准。他的治生原则和实践折射出不求个人富贵、一心报国的人生诉求,凸显了在清贫中为报国而牺牲的高尚情操。     

Application of machine learning techniques to assess the trends and alignment of the funded research output

Research and development activities are regarded as one of the most influencing factors of the future of a country. Large investments in research can yield a tremendous outcome in terms of a country’s overall wealth and strength. However, public financial resources of countries are often limited which calls for a wise and targeted investment. Scientific publications are considered as one of the main outputs of research investment. Although the general trend of scientific publications is increasing, a detailed analysis is required to monitor the research trends and assess whether they are in line with the top research priorities of the country. Such focused monitoring can shed light on scientific activities evolution as well as the formation of new research areas, thus helping governments to adjust priorities, if required. But monitoring the output of the funded research manually is not only very expensive and difficult, it is also subjective. Using structural topic models, in this paper we evaluated the trends in academic research performed by federally funded Canadian researchers during the time-frame of 2000–2018, covering more than 140,000 research publications. The proposed approach makes it possible to objectively and systematically monitor research projects, or any other set of documents related to research activities such as funding proposals, at large-scale. Our results confirm the accordance between the performed federally funded research projects and the top research priorities of Canada.     

Financial support at the time of paper acceptance: a survey of three medical journals

The author‐pays model (open access publishing funded through author charges) is dependent on authors having access to financial support at the time their research papers are accepted. We conducted an author survey to determine the availability of external funding for publication charges at different points in the research process. Of the 377/524 (72%) who responded, 62% (233/377) received external funding to support their study, but with notable differences between journals. Only 25% (95/377) could withdraw funds from a grant at the time of paper acceptance. The grant was closed at this time for almost half (105/233, 45%) of those who were externally funded. Non‐externally funded research was largely supported through departmental resources (56%, 80/144) or carrying out research in own time (63%, 91/144). To conclude, a large proportion of published research is not externally funded, and many funded researchers do not have access to financial support at the time their paper is accepted for publication.     

Romanian psychiatric literature: analysis of accessibility and nature of Romanian psychiatric articles

Background: Romania is a low‐income country of 22 million people and, currently, information regarding mental health research is limited. Romania is one of the last countries in eastern Europe not to have its own bibliographic biomedical database. Aim: To assess the content and quality of Romanian psychiatric research activity over time. Method: embase (1980 to April 2008), medline (1950 to April 2008) and Psyc INFO (1806 to April 2008) were systematically searched for psychiatric articles originating from Romania. The sample from Psyc INFO was described. Results: Psyc INFO was by far the best source of Romanian mental health literature with a considerable increase in the publication activity since 2000 (Psyc INFO identified 3236 hits, medline 549, embase 139). Most papers are in English, but a sizeable minority are in Romanian (30%), French (4%) or Hungarian (4%). The main topics of interest are cognitive processes, creativity, schizophrenia and cognitive development and stress and are, according to Psyc INFO’s indexing, ‘empirical studies’. Seventeen randomised trials were identified with all studies after 2000 being sponsored by industry. Conclusions: Surprisingly, and not in keeping with other studies of the literature of neighbouring countries, Psyc INFO is the major source of psychiatric bibliographic records of this region. There are signs of a resurgence of research activity in Romania and as the number of local mental health workers increases we can expect more output. Industry is now funding evaluative studies in Romania. As everywhere, but perhaps more acutely in situations of severely limited research support, there is a difficult balance to be struck between benefiting support and losing independence.     

Funding international communication research

The purpose of this paper is to derive certain lessons learned about funded international communication research. Like other types of funded research, funding for international communication research is increasing as funding agencies perceive the value of communication research. Much international communication research is interdisciplinary in nature, and benefits the American university in broadening intellectual concerns to a more worldwide perspective. The Internet is changing the nature of certain types of international communication research by providing rapid, low-cost access to overseas respondents in data-gathering, and by raising new issues to be investigated. Also, the rise of this new communication technology calls the potential of communication research to the attention of funding agencies.     

Ungendered writing: Writing styles are unlikely to account for gender differences in funding rates in the natural and technical sciences

Academia has traditionally faced a substantial gender gap in staff positions and career path progression. Women do not advance up the academic career ladder in the same rate as men, with evidence of gender bias in hiring, earnings, funding, and recognition by means of prestigious awards.In this study we focus on gender differences in funding applications. Multiple factors have been proposed as potentially underlying mechanisms creating differences in funding rates between men and women, including bias in peer review processes and differences in language use. In this study we use a set of 1560 full-text applications in the natural and technical sciences that were subjected to a double-blind review process at a Danish private funder to analyse gendered writing as a potential factor causing differences in funding rates. Reproducing analyses from previous studies that found significant differences in writing styles, we analyse patterns in the use of positive words, levels of readability, concreteness and sentiment. Unlike previous studies, we only find minimal differences in writing style between the sexes. We conclude that writing styles are unlikely to account for skewed funding patterns and suggest ways in which funding programmes can be designed to provide fair opportunities to all applicants.     

Are NIH-funded publications fulfilling the proposed research? An examination of concept-matchedness between NIH research grants and their supported publications

The conceptual connections between scientific grants and publications are important, yet often overlooked in quantitative studies of science. An analysis of such connections could offer important insights into how science is conducted by individual researchers and research teams under the social and economic conditions of science. This study aims to offer the first piece of evidence towards this endeavor by analyzing the ratio of keyword matchedness between accepted NIH research grants from 2008 to 2015 and their funded publications. By applying linear regression method, we identified and examined three identified predictors of the outcome: 1) the funding rate of an NIH research program in a specific year, 2) the year difference between grant and publication, and 3) the funding size of a grant. Our findings suggest that these three factors contribute to the outcome in different capacities. Moreover, all of them may have different performances in individual funding programs, which highlights the importance of understanding the differences among individual funding mechanisms.     

Academic authors,scholarly publishing,and open access in Australia

This paper briefly describes the rapidly changing research evaluation and funding landscape in Australian universities, specifically in relation to open access and institutional repositories. Recent announcements indicate that funding and evaluation bodies are becoming increasingly concerned that publicly funded research be made publicly available. The paper then reports a survey of all levels of academic staff plus research students at one Australian university, conducted in May 2006, prior to the introduction of an institutional repository. The survey, in line with previously reported surveys, found that while there was a high level of engagement with scholarly publishing, there was a low level of awareness of, or concern with, either open access (‘green’ or ‘gold’) or the roles repositories can play in increasing accessibility of research. Practically, this indicates that much work needs to be done within this university to increase knowledge of, and change behaviours with regard to, open access and repositories if the university and its academics are to make the most of new funding requirements and research evaluation processes.     

SELF-RATED POVERTY IN THE PHILIPPINES, 1981-1992

The definition of poverty in terms of adequacy of income orexpenditures is not conducive to analysis of time-trends inpoverty, because it is too expensive to survey income or expendituresfrequently. On the other hand, the poverty-self-rating approachis an economical means of generating a time-series. The bottom-upperspective on poverty is socially meaningful in itself, irrespectiveof its correlation with poverty measured from the top down.Unlike official poverty lines, poverty thresholds obtained bythe self-rating approach are not institutionlly manipulable.Cross-sectionally, the Philippine data on self-rated povertyand self-rated poverty lines have familiar economic-demographiccharacteristics. Use of the self-rating approach in the Philippinessince 1981, enabling poverty to be surveyed very many times,shows that poverty has been quite volatile. In contrast, theofficial series on poverty has only three data points (1985,1988, and 1991) within that period. Regression analysis attributesthe volatility in self-rated poverty during 1981–92 mainlyto changes in the inflation rate, and secondly to changes inthe unemployment rate. Changes in per capita income, however,were not significant in explaining changes in the level of poverty.     

Agenda Building In Media Coverage of Food Research

Concern has been raised about the rising influence of public relations on scientific news coverage and the potential role of institutional sources in shaping news reports. This study uses quantitative content analysis and qualitative interviews to explore the influence of public relations activities on newspaper coverage of “superfoods” and, in particular, to explore the transparency of reporting of the sources of research funding. Superfoods were chosen as a case study because the term is applied to a wide range of foods with potential health benefits (e.g. foods high in antioxidants). Furthermore, foods labelled as “superfoods” have seen sharp increases in sales, suggesting a potential commercial incentive for such labelling. Analysis of a sample of news articles reporting superfoods revealed a considerable influence for media releases in shaping the content of reports, while less than a third of reports discussing research studies funded by organisations with a commercial interest in the findings mentioned the funding sources. Qualitative interviews confirmed the role of press offices in promoting research, particularly from scientific conferences, and suggest that scientific societies are applying less stringent criteria to studies selected for publication than in the past.