Accuracy and completeness of funding data in the Web of Science

This study analyses funding information included in scientific publications and recorded in the Funding Agency (FA) and Grant Number (GN) fields of the Web of Science, both extracted automatically from the Funding Text (FX) field. The exhaustiveness and accuracy of the extraction of data from the FX field is analysed in a sample of 1045 papers selected from the Spanish scientific ouput in 2014. Main mistakes in the extraction process and gaps in the funding data provided by authors and collected in FX are explored. The aim of the paper is to assess the validity of studies based on these WoS subfields; to draw recommendations oriented to improve funding data collection in papers and databases; and, in the long time, contribute to enhance the reliability and usefulness of studies based on funding acknowledgments.