Faculty members’ productivity and research funding: Intrinsic and/or extrinsic motivations

Abstract

This paper investigates the publication activity and the value of research funding in Saudi institutions of higher education. Our main question was what is the relationship between the efficiency of chair research funding and the productivity of faculty members? This interdisciplinary paper consists of applying econometric modeling to determine the profile of a faculty member involved in research and the Return on investment (ROI) methodology to assess the value of the funding in the case of SABIC chair. A survey using a questionnaire on perceptions of academic research productivity and documentary analysis of the profile of funding recipients showed that research funding has a positive impact on faculty productivity (2.66 published papers more) when the count considered is the number of published papers. However, there is no significant relationship between grants and publications in peer-reviewed journals with an impact factor. Furthermore, the results revealed that the estimated ROI was 37.2% more.