The Drawbacks of Project Funding for Epistemic Innovation: Comparing Institutional Affordances and Constraints of Different Types of Research Funding

Abstract

Over the past decades, science funding shows a shift from recurrent block funding towards project funding mechanisms. However, our knowledge of how project funding arrangements influence the organizational and epistemic properties of research is limited. To study this relation, a bridge between science policy studies and science studies is necessary. Recent studies have analyzed the relation between the affordances and constraints of project grants and the epistemic properties of research. However, the potentially very different affordances and constraints of funding arrangements such as awards, prizes and fellowships, have not yet been taken into account. Drawing on eight case studies of funding arrangements in high performing Dutch research groups, this study compares the institutional affordances and constraints of prizes with those of project grants and their effects on organizational and epistemic properties of research. We argue that the prize case studies diverge from project-funded research in three ways: 1) a more flexible use, and adaptation of use, of funds during the research process compared to project grants; 2) investments in the larger organization which have effects beyond the research project itself; and 3), closely related, greater deviation from epistemic and organizational standards. The increasing dominance of project funding arrangements in Western science systems is therefore argued to be problematic in light of epistemic and organizational innovation. Funding arrangements that offer funding without scholars having to submit a project-proposal remain crucial to support researchers and research groups to deviate from epistemic and organizational standards.

The Open Innovation in Science research field: a collaborative conceptualisation approach

“…Against the backdrop of these developments, policymakers have emphasised the need for closer ties between science and society (Conceição et al 2020), at once legitimising the application of open and collaborative methods and embracing a logic of accountability that has exposed researchers to disabling cultures of audit (Shore 2008). For example, funding schemes have seen a shift from more flexible recurrent block funding towards project funding mechanisms that are associated with greater precarity for early-career researchers and, arguably, less innovative research (Franssen et al 2018). This reflects a broader change in relations of authority over the governance of research priorities, as the increasing exogeneity, formalisation, and substantive nature of governance mechanisms -as well as the strength and extent of their enforcement -have reshuffled the relative authority of different social groups over the evaluation of research (Whitley 2011).…”

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

“…2,20] or how funding properties, and properties of the research funded, become interdependent for some funding instrument classes [e.g. 7,21,22].…”

Science policies: How should science funding be allocated? An evolutionary biologists’ perspective

“…It is obvious that finite funding supply can prevent the execution of at least some excellent research. There are additional negative consequences of the imbalance between the intellectual capacity of the scientific community and available resources (see also, e.g., Stephan, ; Alberts, Kirschner, Tilghman, & Varmus, ; Franssen, Scholten, Hessels, & de Rijcke, ; Whitley, Gläser, & Laudel, ). For example, the high workload connected to the need to submit many grant proposals to achieve funding success can in turn generate high stress levels, increasing despondency, frustration and lack of motivation.…”