Research Coordination Networks: Evidence of the Relationship between Funded Interdisciplinary Networking and Scholarly Impact

The US National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network (RCN) program broke new ground in funding the development of new research communities of practice. This assessment of RCN supports the conclusion that networking activity was increased for a sample set of projects relative to a comparison group. Journal articles resulting from RCN support are scored as highly interdisciplinary. Moreover, those articles appear as notably influential, being published in high-impact journals and being highly cited. The RCN program does indeed seem to be fostering new biological science research networks.