Acquisition of European research funds and its effect on international scientific collaboration

The Framework Programmes (FPs) funded by the European Commission support transnational research collaborations in order to make the European Research Area more competitive. Some have raised concerns, however, that the FPs compromise the cohesion policies aimed at reducing income disparities between European regions. Our research objective is first, to investigate whether existing scientific collaborations between EU regions - as captured by co-publications - are conducive for acquiring FP funding, and second, to study the effects of funding on subsequent co-publication activity between regions. Our results indicate that previous co-publications only have a minor effect on being funded. We also find that the effect of funding on co-publication activity is especially significant for regional pairs that did not intensively co-publish before participation. The results suggest that the returns to FP funding are highest when involving scientifically lagging regions. In this respect, the current FP policy is in line with cohesion policy.