These data represent an initial analysis and comparison of academic outcomes from three research programmes funded by the UK Government to address different aspects of global challenges and sustainable development. Each programme was set up with distinctive objectives, types of partnership, funding modalities and results frameworks. For this reason, the programmes should not be considered to be directly comparable.
A set of KPIs that were originally developed for the ESPA programme were updated to enable application to the UK’s more recent Newton Fund and Global Challenges Research Fund. The resulting methodology led to the building the DevPubMetric system described elsewhere on this site.
The graphs presented below show analysis based on data collected by DevPubMetric on a monthly basis. Further analysis is ongoing, including prototyping a process to map publications on to contributions to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Initial commentary on the results is provided in the table below
| ESPA Programme: (2009-2018) | Newton Fund: (2014-, ongoing) | GCRF: (2016-, ongoing), |
| Indicator 1: Cumulative total number of publications Indicator 2: Total academic citations The publication count is a measure of overall academic output. Citation counts reflect the way research is being used for academic purposes (academic impact). | ||
| ESPA Programme | Newton Fund | GCRF |
| There is typically a significant lag between publication and citations. The differences between the programmes largely reflect the relative size of investment and timing of the commissioning of projects. Additional analysis needs to be undertaken to explore potential differences in time to impact and level of impact between programmes, research areas and types of partnerships (funding and research) | ||
| Indicator 3: Annual count of publications Indicator 4: Proportion of publications in full open access format | ||
| ESPA Programme | Newton Fund | GCRF |
| The data on annual publications highlight the time lag between a programme commencing and the flow of research publications. ESPA’s data also highlight the very significant number of publications that are produced after a programme closes The shift to require open access publications has been a major policy initiative within the United Kingdom since 2010 and the results of this is highlighted in each programme. The rates of open access publications appear to peak in 2017-18 and may now be reducing. The reason for this is not yet clear. The slightly lower levels of open access publication observed for the Newton Fund may reflect the Fund’s design of being co-funded with international partners, that may not currently have similar policies or requirements open access. Open access publication is seen as being important in driving impact in developing countries, where other academics and potential end users have lower levels of paid access to academic publications. | ||
| Indicator 5: Developing Country First Author Indicator 6: At least one developing county author (Any) These two indicators were first applied in the ESPA programme to measure the level of effective engagement with developing country researchers and institutions. The indicator of developing country first authorship is a measure of the relative level of academic leadership by authors from institutions based in low or middle-income countries. Indicator 6 records the proportion of papers with at least one author from an institution located in a low or middle-income country. | ||
| ESPA Programme | Newton Fund | GCRF |
| All three programmes had objectives to enhance the level of participation by developing country researchers. The following trends are noted: 1.ESPA does not show any significant trend over the full period 2. The Newton Fund has the highest level of developing country authorship and this trend continues to increase. This may reflect the joint funding arrangements of the Newton Fund 2. GCRF and the Newton Fund initially had high levels of developing country authorship followed by significant reductions over the early phases of the programmes. It should be noted that the numbers of publications were lower than in recent years. 3. Both GCRF and the Newton Fund are showing a upward trend of developing country authorship since minima in 2015 (Newton) and 2018 (GCRF). 4. One area of concern with these data is likely to be the level of publication that have no developing country authors in programmes designed to be compliant with requirements for Official Development Assistance (ODA). For that last full year of data (2019) these were respectively ESPA (44%), Newton Fund (25%), and GCRF (42%). ADDITIONAL NOTES: 1. Both measures will include international researchers working at subsidiary offices located in a developing country. 2. The count of “Any Author” also includes papers with a developing country first author | ||
| Indicator 7: Proportion of all authors distributed by income groupb This is a new indicator which has been enabled through the development of the DevPubMetric system and enhanced levels of bibliometric data available from Scopus. The system records the location of every author via their institutional affiliation (where available) and then assigns this to the UN’s current assessment of income groups. This indicator provides insight into levels of engagement in different development contexts (stages of economic development) and should show any impacts of efforts to enhance research capacity in developing countries | ||
| ESPA Programme | Newton Fund | GCRF |
| The trends displayed here in part reflect differences in the design and structure of the three programmes. The analysis detailed below refers to data collected for publications in 2020. ESPA: The ESPA programme had a specific focus on priorities in low and lower-middle income countries, which is where the majority of ESPA’s research was implemented. ESPA has shown a steady increase in developing country authorship, with greatest impact in low and lower-middle income countries (Together totalling nearly 30% of authors). Authors from high-income countries, do however represent the largest group at 68% of authors The Newton Fund: The Newton Fund operates almost entirely with partners in middle-income countries and this is reflected in the patterns of publication. The Newton Fund currently has the smallest proportion of authors based in high-income institutions (58%) with the majority of developing country country authors located in higher middle-income countries (35%). The proportion of authors located in lower middle-income or low-income countries are both much lower at 6% and 0.5% respectively. GCRF: GCRF has a global perspective and in recent years has become increasingly focused on research priorities in lower-income status contexts. This can be seen to some extent in the data analysis with 15% of authors located in either low-income or lower-middle income countries and a similar number (16%) located in upper middle-income countries. Of the three programmes, GCRF has the highest proportion of authors located in high-income institutions (69% in 2020) which echos the analysis above highlighting that in 2020 over 42% of GCRF publications have no authors from developing countries. Further analysis is ongoing to explore these data at both country and institutional levels. Initial results are showing quite significant variation which will be reported separately | ||
Data were captured and processed by the DevPubMetric system. The list of publications was generated from data reported by projects directly to UKRI through ResearchFish
Publication data were captured from the UKRI Gateway to Research system.
Open Government Licence
Additional records were generated using the Scopus database through structured searches for new documents by programme name and project reference.All records were then processed to collate full bibliographic data downloaded from Scopus.
This list of publications only contains documents that can be matched against source publications that are included in the Scopus database and the identification process requires researchers to have either reported the outcome to ResearchFish or to have included the programme name or project reference number in a publication's acknowledgement.
It is recognised that a small number of publications reported by researchers in this way and then captured by the DevPubMetric process may have limited levels of direct attribution to the programme.
This list of publications is generated through an automated process. It is possible that a few publications may be included which should not be attributed to this list and that some others may have been missed. Please send requests for corrections to admin@pvgglobal.uk