Assessing Funders’ Databases Against Bibliographic Sources: A Study of Interoperability, Metadata Quality, and Coverage Using South Korea’s National R&D Database

Comprehensive and reliable funding information is essential for evaluating public research investment, yet funding metadata remain fragmented across heterogeneous data sources maintained by funders and bibliographic platforms. This study examines the interoperability between a national funder database, the National Science and Technology Information Service (NTIS) of South Korea, and two bibliographic sources, Web of Science (WoS) and OpenAlex, in order to assess the quality and coverage of funded publication data. Using a multi-step metadata matching procedure, more than 99% of NTIS records were successfully linked to corresponding documents in WoS and OpenAlex, demonstrating that bibliographic metadata in NTIS records are generally complete and accurate despite incomplete coverage of persistent identifiers such as DOIs. However, limitations are identified in funding-specific metadata, particularly in the centrally assigned contribution rate, which does not account for non-Korean or non-governmental funding and may bias national statistics. Comparison across data sources reveals substantial overlap but also notable differences in coverage and granularity. These differences reflect the distinct collection mechanisms of funders’ databases and bibliographic sources and give rise to complementarities that can be exploited to obtain a more comprehensive picture of funded research outputs and their associated funding sources. The findings carry broader implications for funding agencies seeking to improve interoperability, metadata standardisation, and the analytical utility of research information systems.