Reseach in progress: Estimating the effects of career awards on researcher impact

Grants directed at early-stage scientists to foster their career development are considered an important part of the public science funding portfolio. The National Science Foundation has awarded hundreds of Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards over the past decades which are designed to support early-career faculty in developing their leadership in research and education. Here we examine their longitudinal effects on academic productivity for N=154 recipients by performing a quantitative comparison of their individual productivity trajectories, operationalized as the magnitude of yearly citation yields, before and after the receipt of an NSF CAREER award. Our results show no indication of a positive effect of the award on citation yields, rather a possible decline, i.e., a relative slowing down of citation growth after the receipt of a CAREER award. This suggests either unforeseen effects of the CAREER award or that the recipients entered a different stage of their academic careers coinciding with the award. Our analysis does not shed light on the possible causal mechanisms involved, but may support the development of new methods to estimate more accurately the effects of funding on scientific productivity and impact, and to optimize the allocation of funding directed at individual researchers.