Does Monetary Support Increase the Number of Scientific Papers? An Interrupted Time Series Analysis

Purpose: One of the main indicators of scientific production is the number of papers published in scholarly journals. Turkey ranks 18th place in the world based on the number of scholarly publications. The objective of this paper is to find out if the monetary support program initiated in 1993 by the Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council (TUBITAK) to incentivize researchers and increase the number, impact, and quality of international publications has been effective in doing so. Design/methodology/approach: We analyzed some 390,000 publications with Turkish affiliations listed in the Web of Science (WoS) database between 1976 and 2015 along with about 157,000 supported ones between 1997 and 2015. We used the interrupted time series (ITS) analysis technique (also known as “quasi-experimental time series analysis” or “intervention analysis”) to test if TUBITAK’s support program helped increase the number of publications. We defined ARIMA (1,1,0) model for ITS data and observed the impact of TUBITAK’s support program in 1994, 1997, and 2003 (after one, four and 10 years of its start, respectively). The majority of publications (93%) were full papers (articles), which were used as the experimental group while other types of contributions functioned as the control group. We also carried out a multiple regression analysis. Findings: TUBITAK’s support program has had negligible effect on the increase of the number of papers with Turkish affiliations. Yet, the number of other types of contributions continued to increase even though they were not well supported, suggesting that TUBITAK’s support program is probably not the main factor causing the increase in the number of papers with Turkish affiliations. Research limitations: Interrupted time series analysis shows if the “intervention” has had any significant effect on the dependent variable but it does not explain what caused the increase in the number of papers if it was not the intervention. Moreover, except the “intervention”, other “event(s)” that might affect the time series data (e.g., increase in the number of research personnel over the years) should not occur during the period of analysis, a prerequisite that is beyond the control of the researcher. Practical implications: TUBITAK’s “cash-for-publication” program did not seem to have direct impact on the increase of the number of papers published by Turkish authors, suggesting that small amounts of payments are not much of an incentive for authors to publish more. It might perhaps be a better strategy to concentrate limited resources on a few high impact projects rather than to disperse them to thousands of authors as “micropayments.” Originality/value: Based on 25 years’ worth of payments data, this is perhaps one of the first large-scale studies showing that “cash-for-publication” policies or “piece rates” paid to researchers tend to have little or no effect on the increase of researchers’ productivity. The main finding of this paper has some implications for countries wherein publication subsidies are used as an incentive to increase the number and quality of papers published in international journals. They should be prepared to consider reviewing their existing support programs (based usually on bibliometric measures such as journal impact factors) and revising their reward policies.