External Grants and Publication: Sources, Outlets, and Implications

Abstract

External funding is a common indicator of research productivity in political science. Comparing departments, university administrators often use external funding as an indication of the quality of research. While this can simply reflect administrators' desire for departments to obtain grants that provide overhead for the institution, this metric also rests on an assumption that external funding is a measure of quality research.For example, Indiana University's web site posted a discussion with President Myles Brand on October 23, 2000, in which he stresses “the ability to win competitive grants” as a measure of department and university quality. Also, e.g., while she focuses on an earlier period, see Lewin's (1997) discussion of Stanford, especially its Political Science Department at pp. 213-23. Departments themselves often use external funding as a proxy for research productivity in evaluating faculty performance. Again, the justification is generally that quality research depends on funding and that those who secure competitive funding will publish quality research.