Getting to the bottom of research funding: Acknowledging the complexity of funding dynamics

Abstract

Research funding is an important factor for public science. Funding may affect which research topics get addressed, and what research outputs are produced. However, funding has often been studied simplistically, using top-down or system-led perspectives. Such approaches often restrict analysis to confined national funding landscapes or single funding organizations and instruments in isolation. This overlooks interlinkages, broader funding researchers might access, and trends of growing funding complexity. This paper instead frames a ‘bottom-up’ approach that analytically distinguishes between increasing levels of aggregation of funding instrument co-use. Funding of research outputs is selected as one way to test this approach, with levels traced via funding acknowledgements (FAs) in papers published 2009–18 by researchers affiliated to Denmark, the Netherlands or Norway, in two test research fields (Food Science, Renewable Energy Research). Three funding aggregation levels are delineated: at the bottom, ‘funding configurations’ of funding instruments co-used by individual researchers (from single-authored papers with two or more FAs); a middle, ‘funding amalgamations’ level, of instruments co-used by collaborating researchers (from multi-authored papers with two or more FAs); and a ‘co-funding network’ of instruments co-used across all researchers active in a research field (all papers with two or more FAs). All three levels are found to include heterogenous funding co-use from inside and outside the test countries. There is also co-funding variety in terms of instrument ‘type’ (public, private, university or non-profit) and ‘origin’ (domestic, foreign or supranational). Limitations of the approach are noted, as well as its applicability for future analyses not using paper FAs to address finer details of research funding dynamics.

Scientific collaboration, research funding, and novelty in scientific knowledge

“…Numerous policies and initiatives of funding programs have been established by national governments, organizations, and private agencies in order to enhance competitiveness and facilitate interdisciplinary coordination of research activities [ 19 , 41 , 42 ]. As an example, a pan-European funding program, the Framework Programs, by the European Commission is designed to pool researchers and resources so that all countries and regions in the EU can participate in international collaborations and move forward to frontier knowledge [ 18 ].…”

“…While Li , Azoulay , and Sampat [ 5 ] represents positive correlations between grants award from National Institutes of Health (NIH) and possibility of being cited by commercial patents, Yan , Tian , and Zhang [ 26 ] depicts insignificant effect of funding on an article’s citation impact. Yet little is known about whether and in what direction the acquisition of funding has impact on scientific output [ 42 ].…”

Starting grant with double-blinded review: An escape from the production line of big science?

“…A traditional mechanism enabling risky projects is the provision of block-funded research time, where failures have limited consequences. However, this option has been diminishing for a growing fraction of scientists for whom new ventures increasingly depend on highly competitive grants, seed funding, or spillovers from other projects (Franssen et al 2018;Heinze 2008;Laudel and Gläser 2014;Wang, Lee, and Walsh 2018;Aagaard et al 2021).…”

The hidden influence of communities in collaborative funding of clinical science

“…While the two agencies acknowledged may not be aware of the collaboration link, they can still be regarded as connected since they are interested in funding similar topics and similar people. Such mechanisms of evaluating funding links from the perspective of author publications can enhance our understanding of the complexity of research funding realities [18]. This type of collaboration may be hidden to funders but it explains how authors collaborate, share ideas and receive support from similar funders.…”