{"doi":"10.1093/reseval/rvw007","title":"Concentration of research funding leads to decreasing marginal returns","abstract":"In most countries, basic research is supported by research councils that\\nselect, after peer review, the individuals or teams that are to receive\\nfunding. Unfortunately, the number of grants these research councils can\\nallocate is not infinite and, in most cases, a minority of the researchers\\nreceive the majority of the funds. However, evidence as to whether this is an\\noptimal way of distributing available funds is mixed. The purpose of this study\\nis to measure the relation between the amount of funding provided to 12,720\\nresearchers in Quebec over a fifteen year period (1998-2012) and their\\nscientific output and impact from 2000 to 2013. Our results show that both in\\nterms of the quantity of papers produced and of their scientific impact, the\\nconcentration of research funding in the hands of a so-called \"elite\" of\\nresearchers generally produces diminishing marginal returns. Also, we find that\\nthe most funded researchers do not stand out in terms of output and scientific\\nimpact.\\n","journal":"Research Evaluation","year":2016,"id":7895,"datarank":0.5416376868966337,"base_score":3.6109179126442243,"endowment":3.6109179126442243,"self_citation_contribution":0.5416376868966337,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.5416376868966337,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":36,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.0437,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2016-03-25","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":71102,"name":"Christine Brodeur","orcid":"0000-0002-8579-3358","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":2146,"name":"Catherine Beaudry","orcid":"0000-0002-2110-3151","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":228,"name":"Vincent Larivière","orcid":"0000-0002-2733-0689","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":227,"name":"Philippe Mongeon","orcid":"0000-0003-1021-059X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":39,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}