Short abstract

We present a method and preliminary results for measuring scientific impact of funded vs. unfunded applicants from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigator initiative.

Long abstract

Measuring scientific impact is at the heart of the question, ‘Do people who receive grant funding have more scientific impact than their equal-potential counterparts who do not get funded?’ In partnership with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigator (EPI) Initiative, we present a method and preliminary results for measuring scientific impact of funded vs. unfunded applicants. The method draws on the network normalized citation index, Ĉ, (Ke, Gates, Barabasi, 2023). This citation index addresses concerns common to other citation indices, particularly that different fields have different publication practices and that citation counts simply increase as a natural course of time. The citation index, Ĉ, compares papers to others in the same subdiscipline not by determining a priori the subdiscipline, but instead by creating a citation network and then using the average yearly citations of nearest neighbors to normalize. Because Ĉ uses average yearly citations, it also accounts for the tendency of citations to increase over time. We present a preliminary analysis of the 2022 cohort of the EPI Initiative, as we intend to follow a similar analysis pattern for other cohorts in a pre-registered study of scientific impact. The 2022 cohort included 16 funded EPI investigators and 8 members of a comparison group (i.e., equal-potential, unfunded applicants). This analysis is based on the set of papers from the 2022 cohort of EPI investigators (N = 734) and comparison group members (N = 434).