Factors Influencing Funded Researcher Productivity of Education Faculties : An Empirical Investigation of the Publication Performances Within Canadian Universities, 2001–2008

Our study seeks to identify the factors that explain the research productivity of education faculties, within seven different universities in Quebec-Canada. The main hypothesis of this study is that productivity in scientific research is significantly influenced by the volume and origin of the funding sources mobilized to support scientific research performance. Based on a sample of 194 researchers and time series data (2001-2008), our research use individual publications in referred journals (number of publications, fractioned publications, citations, impacts) as surrogates for research productivity. Not surprisingly, the findings show that funding is a key input in the scientific production process, and, in turn, in education researcher performance, taken individually. Examining the specific effects of funding sources on productivity, we found that, among the sources for which data were available, only funding from the federal government and the private sector are not statistically significant in its relation to the productivity indicators used. Also not surprisingly, findings show that academic funding from grants and university research funding councils provide the greatest elasticity regarding outputs dealing with the number of publications. Finally, we find that age, gender, size and language (Francophone versus Anglophone) of university instruction, funding councils, grants and provincial government funding significantly affect researcher productivity. Our results raise questions about whether financial incentives boost publication productivity, and whether policymakers should place greater emphasis on other relevant factors of high productivity among researchers, faculties and departments operating in the education field