Factors affecting government-funded research quality

As the number of research grants distributed to academic researchin science has been continuously increasing, it is necessary toexamine various factors that affect research quality. While therehave been a large number of studies on factors that affectresearch productivity or performance, their empirical results havebeen quite inconclusive and conflicting. We argue that one of thereasons for mixed results involves the measurement of researchperformance. To tackle the problem, we measure the quality ofgovernment-funded research through journal impact factors aswell as journal rankings, considering the specific features ofacademic disciplines. We find that the magnitude and degree offactors vary depending on how research quality is measured. More interestingly, several variables including researchers’ ages,the number of authors, and international collaboration showcompletely different results according to the level of journalranking. Based on the empirical results, we suggest policyinterventions that can improve the quality of governmentsupportedresearch.