  In a recent publication in Nature, Wagner & Jonkers (2017) report that public
R&D funding is only weakly correlated with the citation impact of a nation's
papers as measured by the field-weighted citation index (FWCI; defined by
Scopus). On the basis of the supplementary data, we upscaled the design using
Web-of-Science data for the decade 2003-2013 and OECD funding data for the
corresponding decade assuming a two-year delay (2001-2011). Using negative
binomial regression analysis, we find very small coefficients, but the effects
of international collaboration are positive and statistically significant,
whereas the effects of government funding are negative, an order of magnitude
smaller, and statistically non-significant (in two of three analyses). In other
words, international collaboration improves the impact of average research
papers, whereas more government funding tends to have a small adverse effect
when comparing OECD countries.
