technical paper
Funding Reporting Compliance in Metadata of Published Articles Supported by European and US Research Grants
keywords:
funding/sponsorship
funding/grant peer review
metadata
Objective Inadequate compliance with reporting of findings
in research articles may reduce the transparency of the
published research and may negatively affect the ability of
research funders to properly identify the body of knowledge
associated with their grants. This investigation explored
whether research funding was properly reported in
publications by grant beneficiaries funded by the European
Horizon (H2020) program (2014-2020) in comparison with
those funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) or
the US National Science Foundation (NSF) during the same
time period.
Design In this observational study, DOIs for publications
from H2020 grants were identified using the official portal for
European data. Data were collected from 2 funding programs,
the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) and the
European Research Council (ERC). The NIH grants were
identified in PubMed, and NSF grants were found using the
NSF Public Access Repository. Metadata were retrieved from
Scopus using an application programming interface. The
main outcome measure was the percentage of articles with
correct textual funding declarations listed in the JavaScript
Object Notation fundText metadata tags. Funding
declarations were considered correct (accurate) if they
contained the information on the funding agency and the
correct grant number. For example, for ERC-funded articles,
the funding declaration was deemed accurate if it contained
(1) European Research Council or ERC, (2) Horizon 2020 or
H2020, and (3) the correct grant number.
Results Of the 209,635 retrieved articles, 57.3% had
accurately reported their funding (Table 16). The accuracy
for NSF-funded articles was the highest, and that for MSCA
and NIH-funded articles was higher than for ERC-funded
articles (χ2 = 19,455.80; P < .001). The reporting accuracy of
funding improved during the study years (χ2 = 10,553.71;
P < .001). In logistic analysis, reporting accuracy was better
for articles with a greater number of funding agencies (odds
ratio OR, 1.16; 95% CI, 1.16-1.17), smaller number of authors
(OR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.93-0.94), and later publication years
(OR, 1.57; 95% CI, 1.55-1.58).
Conclusions Approximately half of the research articles
supported by major funding agencies had adequate reporting
of research funding. Research groups with fewer authors and
those with more funding were better at adequate reporting.
The accuracy of funding reporting improved over the years
but was still suboptimal. Additional instructions and tools
may be necessary to ensure that funding recipients properly
acknowledge funding sources in their publications.
Conflict of Interest Disclosures Ana Marušić occasionally
serves as an expert for the European Research Executive Agency.
Ana Marušić is a member of the Peer Review Congress Advisory
Board but was not involved in the review or decision for this
abstract.
Funding/Support This study was funded by the Croatian Science
Foundation program, Professionalism in Health—Decision-making
in Practice and Research (No. IP-2019-04-4882).
Role of the Funder/Sponsor The funders had no role in the
study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or
preparation of the manuscript.
Additional Information All views expressed in this abstract
are strictly those of the authors and may in no circumstances be
regarded as an official position of the European Research Executive
Agency or the European Commission.