A bibliometric analysis of academic publication and NIH funding

Academic productivity and research funding have been hot topics in biomedical research. While publications and their citations are popular indicators of academic productivity, there has been no rigorous way to quantify co-authors’ relative contributions. This has seriously compromised quantitative studies on the relationship between academic productivity and research funding. Here we apply an axiomatic approach and associated bibliometric measures to revisit a recent study by Ginther et al. (Ginther et al., 2011a and Ginther et al., 2011b) in which the probability of receiving a U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 award was analyzed with respect to the applicant's race/ethnicity. Our results provide new insight and suggest that there is no significant racial bias in the NIH review process, in contrast to the conclusion from the study by D. K. Ginther et al. Our axiomatic approach has a potential to be widely used for scientific assessment and management.

► We present an axiomatic approach for co-authors’ credit-sharing and associated bibliometric measures.
► We revisit a recent study published in Science on the relation between NIH awards and race/ethnicity.
► In contrast to the Science paper, our results suggest that there is no significant racial bias in the NIH review.
► Our axiomatic approach has a potential to be widely used for scientific assessment and management.