Academic Funding Research Articles

What is research funding, how does it influence research, and how is it recorded? Key dimensions of variation

AbstractEvaluating the effects of some or all academic research funding is difficult because of the many different and overlapping sources, types, and scopes. It is therefore important to identify the key aspects of research funding so that funders and others assessing its value do not overlook them. This article outlines 18 dimensions through which funding varies substantially, as well as three funding records facets. For each dimension, a list of common or possible variations is suggested. The main dimensions include the type of funder of time and equipment, any funding sharing, the proportion of costs funded, the nature of the funding, any collaborative contributions, and the amount and duration of the grant. In addition, funding can influence what is researched, how and by whom. The funding can also be recorded in different places and has different levels of connection to outputs. The many variations and the lack of a clear divide between “unfunded” and funded research, because internal funding can be implicit or unrecorded, greatly complicate assessing the value of funding quantitatively at scale. The dimensions listed here should nevertheless help funding evaluators to consider as many differences as possible and list the remainder as limitations. They also serve as suggested information to collect for those compiling funding datasets.

Academic productivity and NIH funding for anesthesiology departmental chairs: A 15-year comparison

Study objectiveThis study evaluated whether there were improvements in the number of departmental National Institutes of Health (NIH) training grants and the academic productivity of departmental chairs in terms of NIH research funding and PubMed-cited publications when compared to chairs of the same departments in 2006. DesignEach chair was identified from the Society of Academic Associations of Academic Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine's Association of Academic Anesthesiology Chairs and entered into the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORTER), PubMed, SCOPUS, and the National Provider Identifier Registry. MeasurementsThe number and funding amounts of training grants awarded to the department in 2010, 2015, and 2020 were obtained as well as the department's national ranking and total dollar amount for NIH funding in 2020. For the current chair cohort, total publications and m-quotient (h-index corrected for active research years) were recorded along with each chair's history of NIH grant funding. These data were compared to a previous study of anesthesiology chairs that reviewed funding and publications through 2006. Main resultsWe analyzed data from 100 academic departments of anesthesiology and compared their scholarly activity relative to data gathered in 2006. In 2020, 52 of 100 departments of anesthesiology had evidence of NIH funding. There were not statistically significant (P > 0.05) differences in grants funding obtained by chairs between 2006 and 2020 with the exception that more chairs in 2006 had program or center grants. Median publications for chairs significantly increased from 35 in 2006 to 55 in 2021 (IRR = 1.5, 95% CI = 1.2–2.0, P = 0.003). Nineteen percent of chairs were female, which did not significantly differ from the proportion of women in the 2006 paper (15%, χ2 = 0.57, df = 1, P = 0.452). Of the male chairs, 90% were professors whereas 63% of female chairs were professors (χ2 = 8.8, df = 1, P = 0.003). Female chairs had fewer publications than male chairs (IRR = 1.8, 95% CI = 1.2–1.8, P = 0.002); however, m-quotients were not significantly different between men and women (P = 0.602). ConclusionsWhen compared to 2006, department of anesthesiology chairs had more publications in 2021; however, NIH funding rates remained unchanged. The specialty had 19% female chairs, and those chairs had fewer publications than their male counterparts, though sex differences were attenuated using metrics that account for disparities in career length.

Science for sale? Why academic marketization is a problem and what sustainability research can do about it

Scholars have long called out the flaws in academic publishing. However, a nuanced and constructive discussion of this issue is still lacking. We advocate that these flaws are symptoms of broader and intensifying marketization of academic research. To address this, we first discuss the two dimensions of marketization: the commodification of academic output and the ‘managerialization’ of academic governance. We then argue that sustainability research is especially vulnerable to marketization trends because of its broader set of values that cannot merely be reflected in academic output. We illustrate these values by discussing the nature of the challenges faced by sustainability researchers, their relationships with non-academic stakeholders, and the intrinsic normativity of their research. We explore potential ways forward to reform existing academic organizational structures and research funding system, embrace more inclusive and democratic research approaches, and support the development of nonprofit open-access journals.

Comprehensive Review of the Initial 11 WHO Emergency Use Listed COVID-19 Vaccine Candidates: Mechanisms, Efficacy, and Comparative Attributes for Safety and Well-Being

Since December 2019, the world has witnessed a massive outbreak of a novel coronavirus Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which prompted cross-national collaboration to establish essential diagnostics, effective treatment protocols, and most importantly the design and development of suitable COVID-19 vaccine candidates. This effort has been fueled by collaborations among academic researchers, funding agencies, companies, and regulatory authorities. As a result, more than 242 vaccine candidates are currently under clinical trial, and nearly 50 vaccines have been approved in different countries. In this study, we conduct a comprehensive review of 11 vaccine candidates that have been granted Emergency Use Listing (EUL) by the World Health Organization (WHO). Our review summarizes the mode of synthesis, mechanism of action, approval authority, target age group, efficacy, merits, and gaps of these vaccine candidates. Additionally, we provide comparative attributes of these vaccine candidates to enhance understanding of safety and well-being.

Using the project ECHO™ model to teach mental health topics in rural Guatemala: An implementation science-guided evaluation.

Mental health (MH) disorders are major causes of disability in Guatemala. Unfortunately, limited academic training and funding resources make MH care inaccessible to most people in rural Guatemala. These disparities leave many indigenous populations without care. Project ECHO™ is an educational model used globally to deliver virtual training for providers in rural/ underserved communities. The aim of this project was to implement and evaluate a Project ECHO™ program bridging MH training gaps for providers who serve rural communities in Guatemala. The Project ECHO™ curriculum was implemented through a partnership between educational and nonprofit institutions in Guatemala City and the United States. Participants were primary care physicians and nurses working in rural Guatemala as well as medical/nursing/psychology students. Evaluation of its implementation was guided by a RE-AIM framework. Reach, effectiveness, adoption, fidelity, sustainability, acceptability, feasibility, and appropriateness were evaluated using a mixed-methods approach, using a pre-post survey and semi-structured focus groups. Forty unique participants attended the five sessions. Attitudes about mental health did not change quantitatively but self-efficacy improved in four of five modules. High quality fidelity scores were noted in two of five sessions. Sustainability scores across multiple domains were highly rated. Scores on instruments measuring acceptability, feasibility, and appropriateness were high. Focus groups showed two main themes: the curriculum filled a gap in education and further adaptation of the model might help improve the experience. Implementation of the Project ECHO™ educational model appeared to have good reach/adoption, showed improvements in self-efficacy, illuminated facilitators and barriers to sustainability, and was felt to be acceptable, feasible, and appropriate. Qualitative analysis supported these conclusions. Future directions would include ongoing evaluation and monitoring of further Project ECHO™ curricular experiences through this partnership and adaptation of this project to other learners and settings in Latin America.

Influencing Factors of School Organization and Management on University Ranking

The ranking is a quantitative presentation of the indicators of each university. The ranking can be regarded as a quantitative presentation of the comprehensive strength of the university. The comprehensive strength of each university is reflected in many aspects such as teaching quality, scientific research level, teaching staff, and subject coverage. The ranking quantifies and compares these strengths through a series of indicators, such as academic reputation, paper citations, and research funding. As the core of university operation, school organization is the direct factor that directly affects undergraduate universities. At present, it is found that school organizations are facing factors such as insufficient administrative management, insufficient teaching quality, and lack of international cooperation resources. How to rectify it, this article will give rationalization suggestions.

Are International PhD Courses an Important Part of PhD Education in Sport and Exercise Psychology?

Abstract: PhD courses aim to improve PhD candidates’ research skills and, by that, to support their development process during their PhD studies. To investigate this objective, former PhD candidates ( N = 88, 51 % female, response rate 49 %), who participated in international PhD-courses in Sport and Exercise Psychology, were asked to complete an online survey to evaluate course elements of international PhD-courses hosted at Copenhagen and Leipzig University between 2009 and 2018. Networking opportunities, intercultural skill development, communicating in English, and acquisition of knowledge about Sport and Exercise Psychology-specific topics are reported as the most valuable aspects of international PhD-courses. Additionally, participants evaluated PhD-project presentations, workshops focusing on academic skills (e. g., publishing) and opportunities for social interaction as most profitable. Independent of participants’ PhD-phase, the majority of students reported sustainable benefits from their participation (e. g., co-publications). Academic funding (e. g., scholarships) seems to be an important factor for course participation. Recommendations for the implementation of international PhD-courses in Sport and Exercise Psychology include creating networking opportunities, offering workshops on academic skills, allowing time for informal interactions, and focusing on inclusion of PhD candidates from across the globe.

Cross-national variations in postdoc precarity: An inquiry into the role of career structures and research funding models

Insecurity and intense competition for permanent academic positions appear to be common experiences for early career researchers across the globe. With academic precarity now firmly on the international research and policy agenda, this article looks comparatively at postdoc precarity in three European countries: Ireland, Norway and Switzerland. It suggests that the career prospects and status of these early career stage researchers depend to a large extent on societal variations in academic career structures and research funding models. The article underlines the implications of an increasingly competitive academic labour market on postdoc precarity and identifies both common and specific (national and/or disciplinary) challenges facing postdocs in these different contexts.

Trajectory of brain-drain and quality of work-life amongst Nigeria’s university lecturers: academic staff union of universities (ASUU) incessant strike in retrospect

PurposeBrain-drain insurgency has become pervasive amongst professionals and the last option for everyone in the country to realise a sustainable quality of work-life (QWL). All youths now in the country have perceived migrating to the international workspace as a noble idea. This study investigates the incidence of brain-drain and QWL amongst academics in Nigerian universities.Design/methodology/approachTo sparkle a clearer understanding concerning factors preventing the QWL amongst Nigeria's lecturers, this study utilised a cross-sectional research design to survey the participants across all departments in federal institutions through an explanatory research approach. This study applied an array of adapted scales to evaluate members of academic staff track of what provoked the incidence of brain-drain amongst Nigerian lecturers and possible influence on their QWL. The study surveyed 431 members of academic staff in Nigerian universities to collect useful data and employed a structural equation model (SEM) to analyse the obtained data.FindingsThe outcome of this study highlights that there is a horrible condition of service amongst Nigerian lecturers, a poor compensation system, poor academic research funding and lack of autonomy are bane to the QWL experienced in Nigerian tertiary institutions today. This study indicates that poor staff development and inadequate university funding are part of the justification that provoked brain-drain insurgence, and allowed the government to lose their skilled and competent egg-heads in the university to other foreign nations of the world.Originality/valueThis study demonstrated that brain-drain has become part of Nigeria's national life given that all professionals are seeking better life where their skills, competence and energy would be valued. Brain-drain was not common until these days amongst academics and fewer studies were noted but this study showed a novel paradigm regarding the QWL and brain-drain trajectory.

Leveraging social media for mentorship in surgery

Mentorship is a key component of success in surgery that benefits both mentors and mentees. It is associated with increased academic productivity, funding, leadership roles, job retention, and career advancement. Until recently, mentor-mentee dyads have connected through traditional communication channels; however, in an increasingly virtual world, academic communities are adopting new communication methods, including over social media platforms. In recent years, we have witnessed how social media helps effect positive change by facilitating patient and public health initiatives, social movements and campaigns, and professional pursuits. Given its ability to transcend constraints of geography, hierarchy, and time, social media can benefit mentorship, too. Social media helps strengthen preexisting mentorships, identify new mentorship opportunities locally and remotely, and facilitates modern mentorship models, such as team mentorship.Furthermore, it increases the durability of mentor-mentee relationships and helps expand and diversify mentorship networks, which may especially benefit females and those underrepresented in medicine. Despite the many advantages of social media, it is not a replacement for traditional local mentorship. Herein, we discuss the benefits and risks of using social media for mentorship and propose approaches to optimize the virtual mentorship experience. With best practice guidelines that aim to balance virtual and in-person interactions and provide tailored education to all mentorship levels, we believe mentors and mentees will become more adept in using social media professionally, and these platforms will help foster meaningful connections that ensure mutual fulfillment.

Generation precarious.

The prospects of PhD students and postdocs have become ever more precarious. Without reforms of academic research and funding, science may experience a major brain drain.

Taming the Long Tail: The Gambler’s Fallacy in Intermittent Demand Management

Problem definition: “Long tail” products with intermittent demand often tie up valuable warehouse space and capital investment for many companies. Furthermore, the paucity of demand data poses additional challenges for model estimation and performance evaluation. Traditional inventory solutions are not designed for products with intermittent demand. In this paper, we propose a new framework to optimize the choice of “replenishment timing” and “replenishment quantity” for managing the inventory metrics of long tail products, when evaluated over a finite horizon. Methodology/results: Our analysis is motivated by a recent interesting observation that the gambler’s fallacy phenomenon actually holds in a finite number of coin tosses. We use this phenomenon to analyze the inventory problem for intermittent demand to demonstrate that classical inventory models using KPIs such as fill rate, average cost per cycle, or average cost per unit, etc., must necessarily “bias” the underlying demand distribution to account for the finite horizon effect. We provide the exact closed-form expressions of the biased distribution to account for this effect in performance evaluation. The results show that the choice of replenishment timing and replenishment quantity is essential to superior performance on several key inventory metrics. Managerial implications: For long tail products, the belief that it is less likely for another demand to arrive shortly after a preceding one (the gambler’s fallacy), turns out to be true when performance is tabulated over a finite horizon, even if demands across time are independent. So it pays to delay the replenishment of depleted stocks to save on holding cost and warehouse space. Managers can optimize the replenishment timing, besides choosing the replenishment quantity, to optimize the performance metrics of several classes of inventory problems. This is especially useful for companies managing a large number of long tail products. Funding: This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72192832] and the 2019 Academic Research Fund Tier 3 of the Ministry of Education-Singapore [Grant MOE-2019-T3-1-010]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2023.1217 .

Demystifying Publishing during the PhD: Navigating Challenges and Opportunities

Publishing during your PhD can be both rewarding and challenging. On the one hand, writing and publishing papers can be a beneficial and particularly important aspect of your time as a PhD student. Not only does it allow you to share your work with a wider audience, but also it can help establish your reputation in your field and may lead to future opportunities such as academic positions or funding. On the other hand, publishing can be an intimidating challenge that adds an additional layer of pressure and workload to an already demanding program and therefore requires a huge amount of dedication and resilience.

Repercussions of high extracellular K +on T-cell antitumor responses

Abstract Tumours create an immunosuppressive microenvironment that limits the antitumor function of infiltrating T-cells. Dying/necrotic tumor cells extrude intracellular potassium (K +) into the local extracellular milieu, raising the extracellular K +([K +] e) by 8–15 fold, which then accumulates in tumor-infiltrating T-cells. Here, we determined the functional impact of high-[K +] e(50 mM) on human T-cells. Using molecular assays, we demonstrated that prolonged exposure to high-[K +] ereduced CD3ɛ and CD25 (intermediate activation marker) surface expression, suggesting weakened T-cell activation. High-[K +] eperturbed T-cell receptor signalling and the downstream glycolysis pathway. Using metabolomics analysis, we identified dysregulation in pathways involving fatty acid oxidation, TCA cycle and choline metabolism under high-[K +] e. Exposure to high-[K +] eimpeded T-cell motility and skewed T-cell polarization towards T-helper 2 (Th2) and regulatory T-cell (T reg) subsets. A similar Th2 subset trend, although not significant, was seen towards the core of patient-derived tumor biopsies (n=7) along with the amassment of T regcells intratumorally. Collectively, our findings substantiate the immunosuppressive effects of high-[K +] eon T-cell functions, which underlines the potential use of K +efflux channel activators in reversing dampened T-cell antitumor responses. Supported by Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) under its MOE Academic Research Fund (AcRF) Tier 1 Grant (2020-T1-001-062) and Tier 2 (MOE2017-T2-2-004) grants. #LINK# #ENDLINK#

Using machine learning to predict student retention from socio-demographic characteristics and app-based engagement metrics

Student attrition poses a major challenge to academic institutions, funding bodies and students. With the rise of Big Data and predictive analytics, a growing body of work in higher education research has demonstrated the feasibility of predicting student dropout from readily available macro-level (e.g., socio-demographics or early performance metrics) and micro-level data (e.g., logins to learning management systems). Yet, the existing work has largely overlooked a critical meso-level element of student success known to drive retention: students’ experience at university and their social embeddedness within their cohort. In partnership with a mobile application that facilitates communication between students and universities, we collected both (1) institutional macro-level data and (2) behavioral micro and meso-level engagement data (e.g., the quantity and quality of interactions with university services and events as well as with other students) to predict dropout after the first semester. Analyzing the records of 50,095 students from four US universities and community colleges, we demonstrate that the combined macro and meso-level data can predict dropout with high levels of predictive performance (average AUC across linear and non-linear models = 78%; max AUC = 88%). Behavioral engagement variables representing students’ experience at university (e.g., network centrality, app engagement, event ratings) were found to add incremental predictive power beyond institutional variables (e.g., GPA or ethnicity). Finally, we highlight the generalizability of our results by showing that models trained on one university can predict retention at another university with reasonably high levels of predictive performance.

Doing Fieldwork while Parenting

Conducting fieldwork as a White woman researcher from the Global North on women’s practices of religious knowing in Benin, my work is based on multiple entwined positionalities that require critical reflection. The political categories of race, gender, age, religion, and family status at times linked, at times distanced me from my interlocutors in Benin as well as my colleagues at University of Bayreuth. This article explores the multiple ways parenting has informed my work in Benin and its institutional integration in a German Anthropology department. Using difference as a lens, I enquire how parenting, intersecting with gender, sexuality, and family normativity, has been used to undo difference during fieldwork, while exacerbating structural inequalities with reference to academic funding structures and research organization.

Perceiving Conflict of Interest Experts Recommendation System Based on a Machine Learning Approach

Academic societies and funding bodies that conduct peer reviews need to select the best reviewers in each field to ensure publication quality. Conventional approaches for reviewer selection focus on evaluating expertise based on research relevance by subject or discipline. An improved perceiving conflict of interest (CoI) reviewer recommendation process that combines the five expertise indices and graph analysis techniques is proposed in this paper. This approach collects metadata from the academic database and extracts candidates based on research field similarities utilizing text mining; then, the candidate scores are calculated and ranked through a professionalism index-based analysis. The highly connected subgraphs (HCS) algorithm is used to cluster similar researchers based on their association or intimacy in the researcher network. The proposed method is evaluated using root mean square error (RMSE) indicators for matching the field of publication and research fields of the recommended experts using keywords of papers published in Korean journals over the past five years. The results show that the system configures a group of Top-K reviewers with an RMSE 0.76. The proposed method can be applied to the academic society and national research management system to realize fair and efficient screening and management.

Literature-based occurrences data of marine species in Venezuela.

Venezuela has suffered a severe academic and research management crisis and funding opportunities for marine research and data management have been practically absent. This has worsened over the past five years and, as a result, libraries and other institutional spaces have been repeatedly vandalised, with hundreds of records, specimens and historical data stolen, destroyed or burned. To avoid the loss of irreplaceable data on Venezuelan biodiversity, an initiative was promoted, aimed at digitising information to create a rich dataset of biodiversity records, with emphasis on marine protected areas for the country, as well as to fill gaps in the distribution and status of marine biodiversity in Venezuela. Nighteen (19) institutions in the country focusing on marine science have consistently produced a wealth of information about Venezuela's marine biodiversity in the form of specimen collections, unpublished sampled data and research theses through the work of hundreds of researchers and students. An inventory of available data sources at these national institutions was conducted under the National Biodiversity Data Mobilization Grant and the Biodiversity Information for Development Program, together with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) support. All recovered and processed datasets were published in the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) repositories. This occurrences data collection represents a major contribution to the marine biodiversity inventory in Venezuela. It is based on numerous published papers, reports, books and checklists provided by experts, covering a broad taxonomic collection from which we obtained species occurrences (present and absent), organised into 59 datasets containing 40,881 records. This represents a 28.49% contribution to the records of the Venezuelan marine biodiversity reported to the OBIS (143,513 records in the OBIS until November 2022). The extracted data showed 3,041 marine species, with representatives of each of the six kingdoms: Animalia, Chromista, Bacteria, Plantae, Fungi and Protozoa. The datasets provide information on occurrence since 1822, extending the temporal coverage of the species occurrence inventory for Venezuela, which was established in 1879 before this project. The number of records for Venezuela increased by 41.3% compared with the data available before the project. Most of the occurrences (63.47%) were registered in Marine Protected Areas. Data collection included records of non-native species, descriptions of new species and species listed under different IUCN categories.

New security requirements, oversight coming for scientists

A year ago, the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released guidelines designed to make academic research funding more transparent and less vulnerable to foreign interference. In 2023, many of the requirements, which stem from the National Security Presidential Memorandum-33 (NSPM-33) during the administration of Donald J. Trump, will become reality for scientists and universities seeking federal funding. The first requirement will be new disclosure forms that agencies use to collect information about a principal investigator’s funding sources. The goal is to make those forms—the biographical sketch and a list of current or pending funding—the same across all federal research agencies. The standardization is intended to streamline work for scientists applying for grants and eliminate confusion about what they need disclose to the government. The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), which brings federal agencies together to work on common issues, put out a call for comment on

A Feasible Method for Solving an SDP Relaxation of the Quadratic Knapsack Problem

In this paper, we consider a semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation of the quadratic knapsack problem. After applying low-rank factorization, we get a nonconvex problem, whose feasible region is an algebraic variety with certain good geometric properties, which we analyze. We derive a rank condition under which these two formulations are equivalent. This rank condition is much weaker than the classical rank condition if the coefficient matrix has certain special structures. We also prove that, under an appropriate rank condition, the nonconvex problem has no spurious local minima without assuming linearly independent constraint qualification. We design a feasible method that can escape from nonoptimal nonregular points. Numerical experiments are conducted to verify the high efficiency and robustness of our algorithm as compared with other solvers. In particular, our algorithm is able to solve a one-million-dimensional sparse SDP problem accurately in about 20 minutes on a modest computer. Funding: The research of K.-C. Toh is supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Academic Research Fund Tier 3 grant call [Grant MOE-2019-T3-1-010].