Policy Incentives and Research Productivity in the Romanian Higher Education. An Institutional Approach

Abstract

The question addressed here is whether and how the increase of research funding in higher education leads to a higher scientific productivity and to an increased impact measured by current procedures (i.e. Hirsch and Egghe index score distributions). Recently collected data from the Romanian universities show that increased financial resources is associated with an inflated number of publications which have a rather low impact. We thus follow the idea that higher research productivity and impact is not determined only by growing funding, but also by appropriate policy incentives. Consequently, we analyze the institutional arrangements carried away by the recently implemented reforms in the Romanian higher education and suggest that their institutional incentives could also bring along an increase in the impact of research productivity. In the context of economic crisis and scarcity of public resources, we argue that a higher research productivity and impact may better be delivered through providing institutional incentives that generate responsible and efficient resource allocation and spending in university research centers.