Does money matter? The relation between library budget and research output at Universitat Politecnica de Valencia

The aim of this paper is to determine whether there is a significant correlation between the library budget allocated to information resources and the scientific output at Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV). This situation was studied from 2001 to 2012, taking into account different variables: budget, collection size, number of research staff, research output, and use of the collection. In addition, full-text citations in the scientific output of the UPV from 2008 to 2011 were analysed to attempt to study the correlation with the budget and the use of the collection. A correlation was not observed between the budget allocated to information resources and scientific output, with the correlation being strong between the budget for electronic resources and scientific output. Finally, it was not possible to determine a cause-effect relationship between the budget and scientific output.