Financed research from Government Delegation grants for the National Plan on Drugs: Research assessment and scientific impact

Addictive disorders are a serious health problem to which large amounts of research resources are devoted. This study aims to analyze the evolution and scientific impact of the publications derived from the funding of research projects by the Spanish National Plan on Drugs (PNSD). The list of grants awarded was provided by the PNSD. Derived publications were obtained by asking the principal investigators of the grants and searching in the Web of Science and Scopus. Bibliometric indicators and evolutive trends of scientific production per project were calculated. On average, the PNSD conferred 15 annual grants to research projects, with an annual amount close to one million euros (euro944,200.64) and an average amount per grant of just over euro60,000, being higher in basic research and in alcohol. 71,9% of the grants had derived publications and almost half of them produced between one and three publications, with basic research being the most prolific. The international journal in which most articles were published was Psychopharmacology (50) and among Spanish journals, Adicciones stood out (28). A high level of co-authorship and international collaboration was identified. Most of the PNSD-funded projects produced research articles, many of them in journals belonging to the first and second quartiles of the Journal Citation Reports. The results of this study have revealed the scientific impact of the PNSD research projects funding and may contribute to determining future funding priorities.