Interfield equality: Journals versus researchers

The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Tubitak) gives subsidies to researchers for their publications. Tubitak groups journals into subject categories, and gives equal subsidies to publications from journals with comparable standing. This formulation aims at interfield equality among journals. Unfortunately, interfield equality among journals does not necessarily lead to interfield equality among researchers because there are interfield productivity differences. We show that chemists in prestigious Turkish universities on average receive 4.30 times more subsidies than economists. We also apply the subsidy formula to the publications of the researchers from world's most prestigious universities. In this case, the inequality between chemists and economists is less pronounced.