Project funding has become a dominant mechanism for university research in Europe. Although criticised for burdening researchers and obscuring funding distribution, it also strengthens science–society communication. Thematic calls signal societal priorities to researchers, enabling ongoing dialogue beyond formal priority-setting processes.
Merle Jacob, professor in research policy at the University of Oslo and Lund University
Since the 1990s, project funding has occupied an increasingly larger share of the total amount of funding available for university research in European countries. The ratio of project to institutional funding varies radically across European research systems, with the UK, Netherlands and Sweden representing the countries with the highest ratio of project to institutional funding.
Norway and Germany are among those countries with lower ratios. The ratio of project to institutional funding is a much-used metric; however, this ratio is somewhat unreliable because it hides important details such as the distribution of funding between institutions, between research fields, and the burden of application on the research system in terms of time spent on reviewing, application writing, and project administration.
Despite its shortcomings, the purpose of this thought piece is to highlight three significant contributions of project funding to the research ecosystem and to encourage research funders to embrace a bolder approach to funding.
Project funding as communication
As many university researchers will tell you: in a perfect world, scientific research would be completely investigator driven! Reasoning from this, while project funding is problematic, project funding based on themed calls is possibly the worst of all possible worlds for an ardent supporter of investigator-driven science.
But is it? Surely, investigators can still choose which calls to respond to. More importantly, project funding in general and thematic calls in particular allow funders to communicate specific priorities to the research community.
And the fact that society, including its policymakers, recognizes science as an important tool when meeting societal, economic, political and environmental challenges, does not weaken the role of universities or the scientist. Quite the opposite. This awareness makes it easier for policymakers and stakeholders to defend public spending on R&D in budget processes where research is set up against a lot of important priorities.
Moreover, the fact that science is used to address specific challenges makes it clear that spending money on research does not equal weakening important policy areas like health, education, climate or security. It may strengthen them.
A thematic call states in clear terms what research problems the community wishes to have addressed. In other words, thematic calls are society’s way of communicating directly to science. This communication allows those investigators who are already interested in these types of problems the possibility to tailor their investigation in directions relevant to the call.
Many national research systems have a broad priority-setting system where research and innovation priorities are outlined ever so often. Sweden’s research propositions, published every four years, constitute one such priority-setting process; another is the EU’s framework programmes.
While these types of systematic priority-setting processes are essential for communicating priorities, science and society need to be in constant communication rather than episodic dialogue. Thematic calls are one mechanism through which the dialogue continues in between the more formal processes.
Governance via funding
The last thirty years of research funding history have witnessed a significant shift in governance imperatives. Open Access, Open data, Research Integrity, and reform of research assessments are some of the more critical new governance initiatives that are currently being institutionalized in national research systems.
Nearly all of these initiatives have used project funding as a means of propagating the initial phase of implementation. Previously, policymakers depended on scientific institutions to propagate new regimes of governance; however, project funding has proven to be a more direct and efficient approach to institutionalizing new practices.
Despite its lack of popularity among researchers and university managers, project funding has evolved into a key agent of change in research systems. Many of the critical issues such as limitations in peer review, the length of projects and the burden of the review system have been taken on board by funders.
There are several signs that funders are attempting to enhance project funding. Experiments abound, from staggered calls to lotteries.
One glaring issue remains unaddressed, and this is the tendency of funders to all run in the same direction at the same time. This leads to the effect that most funders (public and private) will focus on excellence, early career researchers, or internationalization at exactly the same time. This coincidence of practices gives an episodic character to certain types of funding interventions, while the character of science is that these interventions need to be sustained at a low level throughout.
Conclusion
Project funding is therefore an important part of the ongoing dialogue between science and society. It is not a perfect tool, and it works best in combination with other more long-term measures such as institutional funding and periodic programme statements which give general direction to science about priorities. Funders would be able to increase the efficiency of this system even more if they were to resist the tendency to follow funding trends. Research systems need concentration but not at the expense of diversity.
Do themed calls have to be the worst of all possible worlds for an ardent supporter of investigator-driven science? Foto: Jacob Wackerhausen