Allocation Of Research Grants Research Articles

Funding lotteries for research grant allocation: An extended taxonomy and evaluation of their fairness

Abstract Some research funding organizations (funders) are experimenting with random allocation of funding (funding lotteries), whereby funding is awarded to a random subset of eligible applicants evaluated positively by review panels. There is no consensus on which allocation rule is fairer—traditional peer review or funding lotteries—partly because there exist different ways of implementing funding lotteries, and partly because different selection procedures satisfy different ideas of fairness (desiderata). Here we focus on two desiderata: that funding be allocated by ‘merit’ (epistemic correctness) versus following ethical considerations, for example without perpetuating biases (unbiased fairness) and without concentrating resources in the hands of a few (distributive fairness). We contribute to the debate first by differentiating among different existing lottery types in an extended taxonomy of selection procedures; and second, by evaluating (via Monte Carlo simulations) how these different selection procedures meet the different desiderata under different conditions. The extended taxonomy distinguishes “Types” of selection procedures by the role of randomness in guiding funding decisions, from null (traditional peer review), to minimal and extensive (various types of funding lotteries). Simulations show that low-randomness Types (e.g. ‘tie-breaking’ lotteries) do not differ meaningfully from traditional peer review in the way they prioritize epistemic correctness at the cost of lower unbiased and distributive fairness. Probably unbeknownst to funders, another common lottery Type (lotteries where some favorably-evaluated proposals bypass the lottery) displays marked variation in epistemic correctness and fairness depending on the specific bypass implementation. We discuss implications for funders who run funding lotteries or are considering doing so.

An ethical scheme for internal research grant allocation in a democratic university

An ethical scheme for internal research grant allocation in a democratic university

Public R&D funding and new regional specialisations: The contingent role of technological relatedness​

ABSTRACT It is widely acknowledged that new technological specialisations of regions are to a large extent driven by the recombination of existing knowledge and capabilities. Yet, little is known about the role of policy in this process. To address this, we analyse the relationship between the regional allocation of research grants and new technological specialisations of European regions between 1999 and 2010. Research grants are measured as the number of R&D projects supported by the EU Framework Programmes (FP) and technological specialisations based on regional patenting activities. Using a fixed effects linear probability model, our results indicate that FP participations have a positive but relatively small effect on the development of new specialisations of regions. Results further suggest that the effect is highest if the level of relatedness with the new technology is neither too low nor too high, indicating that participations can compensate for a lack of local related capabilities.

A comprehensive author ranking evaluation of network and bibliographic indices

With the immense growth of scientific literature over the Web, the authors of research papers are being ranked for various purposes such as for being shortlisted for different scientific awards, for prestigious position, for tenured appointments, for keynote speaker invitation or for allocation of research grants. The traditional paradigm to attain these aspects is based on bibliometric indices, such as publication count, citation count and h-index. The quintessential indicator among all these indices are based on a number of citations received by the publication of an author. Generally, when a research paper is published, it receives citations after some time and may take more than a couple of years to attain a reasonable number of received citations which could make a difference in researcher ranking based on bibliometric parameters. Therefore, dependability over these bibliometric indices for authors ranking is not beneficial for researchers at the start of their academic career. Such authors are less likely to have a fair chance to compete with their senior counterparts. This study aims at overcoming the above-mentioned deficiency with the assistance of network centrality measures using the co-author network. The experiments are conducted to rank authors in order to identify the awardees of various scientific societies. The obtained ranking is further evaluated by comparing the results of bibliographic indices and network-based indices. The results revealed that network indices have equal potential to identify influential authors as compared with bibliometric indices such as h-index, particularly in the case of networks having a high value of cluster coefficient. Based on the obtained results, it is observed, awardees that are exclusively identified by network centrality measures are more than 5 years younger as compared to their counterparts who are exclusively identified by bibliometric indices

Are peer reviews of grant proposals reliable? An analysis of Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funding applications

ABSTRACT Peer review is widely used throughout academia, most notably in the publication of journal articles and the allocation of research grants. Yet peer review has been subject to much criticism, including being slow, unreliable, subjective and potentially prone to bias. This paper contributes to this literature by investigating the consistency of peer reviews and the impact they have upon a high-stakes outcome (whether a research grant is funded). Analysing data from 4,000 social science grant proposals and 15,000 reviews, this paper illustrates how the peer review scores assigned by different reviewers have only low levels of consistency (a correlation between reviewer scores of only 0.2). Reviews provided by “nominated reviewers” (i.e. reviewers selected by the grant applicant) appear to be overly generous and do not correlate with the evaluations provided by independent reviewers. Yet a positive review from a nominated reviewer is strongly linked to whether a grant is awarded. Finally, a single negative peer review is shown to reduce the chances of a proposal being funding from around 55% to around 25% (even when it has otherwise been rated highly).

Delegating performance evaluation

We study optimal incentive contracts with multiple agents when performance is evaluated by a reviewer. The reviewer may be biased in favor of the agents, but the degree of bias is unknown to the principal. We show that a contest, which is a contract in which the principal fixes a set of prizes to be allocated to the agents, is optimal. By using a contest, the principal can commit to sustaining incentives despite the reviewer's potential leniency bias. The optimal effort profile can be uniquely implemented by an all‐pay auction with a cap. Our analysis has implications for various applications, such as the design of worker compensation or the allocation of research grants.

Reimaging Academic Publishing from Perspectives of Academia in Australia

Academic publishing discussed in scholarships from the industry perspectives is reimagined to explore the academic publishing field from the perspectives of academics. Academic publishing is a ‘communication circuit’ in which the roles of varied the stakeholders, government, universities, publishers and libraries, are not only significant but also need to be adhered to by the academics. The significance of research publications due to the various factors, such as performance-based approach in allocation of research grants, university publishing policies contributing towards the tenure of academics require diligent analysis for understanding of the academic publishing field. A holistic approach from using the social theories is quintessential for examining the academic publishing environment inculcating the role of higher education institutes and its governing policies. This article through reimaging the academic publishing field establishes that though academic publishers are global, the publishing practices of academics are distinct to each country because academics are interdependent on the stakeholders, namely universities and government.

Is there a fair allocation of healthcare research funds by the European Union?

BackgroundThis study aimed to investigate the distribution of European Union (EU) healthcare research grants across EU countries, and to study the effect of the potential influencing factors on grant allocation.MethodsWe analysed publicly available data on healthcare research grants from the 7th Framework Programme and the Horizon 2020 Programme allocated to beneficiaries between 2007 and 2016. Grant allocation was analysed at the beneficiary-, country-, and country group-level (EU-15 versus newer Member States, defined as EU-13). The investigated country-level explanatory variables included GDP per capita, population size, overall disease burden, and healthcare research excellence. Grant amounts per 100,000 inhabitants were used as an outcome variable in the regression analyses.ResultsResearch funds were disproportionally allocated to EU-15 versus the EU-13, as 96.9% of total healthcare grants were assigned to EU-15 countries. At the beneficiary level, EU funding was positively influenced by participating in previous grants. The average grant amount per beneficiary was higher for EU-15 organizations. In the multiple regression analysis GDP per capita (p = 0.002) and research excellence (p<0.001) had a significant positive association with EU funding. Population size had an inverted U-shaped relationship with EU funding for healthcare research, having the largest per capita funding in second and the third quartiles (p = 0.03 and p = 0.02).ConclusionThe uneven allocation of healthcare research funds across EU countries was influenced by GDP per capita, medical research excellence and population size. Wealthier countries with an average population size and strong research excellence in healthcare had more EU funding for healthcare research. Higher disease burden apparently was not associated with more EU research funding. While our findings are in line with analyses on previous periods, they suggest that the EU did not implement any effective policy measures to improve the unfair allocation of research grants.

Why can't we make research grant allocation systems more consistent? A personal opinion.

Uncertainty is expected to enter into our grant allocation processes at many points, not limited to those directly involving assessment by peers. The selection of grants for funding is thus prodigiously low in statistical power and will remain so. The replacement of current systems with some form of lottery, as has been proposed, seriously risks weakening the quality of applications. Opportunities exist for agencies to encourage and reward greater clarity and innovation in research outcomes.

Peer Review or Lottery? A Critical Analysis of Two Different Forms of Decision-making Mechanisms for Allocation of Research Grants

At present, peer review is the most common method used by funding agencies to make decisions about resource allocation. But how reliable, efficient, and fair is it in practice? The ex ante evaluation of scientific novelty is a fundamentally uncertain endeavor; bias and chance are embedded in the final outcome. In the current study, I will examine some of the most central problems of peer review and highlight the possible benefits of using a lottery as an alternative decision-making mechanism. Lotteries are driven by chance, not reason. The argument made in the study is that the epistemic landscape could benefit in several respects by using a lottery, thus avoiding all types of bias, disagreement, and other limitations associated with the peer review process. Funding agencies could form a pool of funding applicants who have minimal qualification levels and then select randomly within that pool. The benefits of a lottery would not only be that it saves time and resources, but also that it contributes to a more dynamic selection process and increases the epistemic diversity, fairness, and impartiality within academia.

H-Index and Other Sugeno Integrals: Some Defects and Their Compensation

The famous Hirsch index has been introduced just ca. ten years ago. Despite that, it is already widely used in many decision-making tasks, like in evaluation of individual scientists, research grant allocation, or even production planning. It is known that the $h$ -index is related to the discrete Sugeno integral and the Ky Fan metric introduced in the 1940s. The aim of this paper is to propose a few modifications of this index as well as other fuzzy integrals—also on bounded chains—that lead to better discrimination of some types of data that are to be aggregated. All of the suggested compensation methods try to retain the simplicity of the original measure.

Review of research grant allocation to psychosocial studies in diabetes research.

To estimate and discuss the allocation of diabetes research funds to studies with a psychosocial focus. Annual reports and funded-research databases from approximately the last 5 years (if available) were reviewed from the following representative funding organizations, the American Diabetes Association, the Canadian Diabetes Association, Diabetes Australia, Diabetes UK, the Dutch Diabetes Research Foundation and the European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes, in order to estimate the overall proportion of studies allocated research funding that had a psychosocial focus. An estimated mean of 8% of funded studies from our sample were found to have a psychosocial focus. The proportion of funded studies with a psychosocial focus was small, with an estimated mean ratio of 17:1 observed between funded biomedical and psychosocial studies in diabetes research. While several factors may account for this finding, the observation that 90% of funded studies are biomedical may be partly attributable to the methodological orthodoxy of applying biomedical reductionism to understand and treat disease. A more comprehensive and systemic whole-person approach in diabetes research that resembles more closely the complexity of human beings is needed and may lead to improved care for individuals living with diabetes or at risk of diabetes.

The consequences of competition: simulating the effects of research grant allocation strategies

Researchers have to operate in an increasingly competitive environment in which funding is becoming a scarce resource. Funding agencies are unable to experiment with their allocation policies since even small changes can have dramatic effects on academia. We present a Proposal-Evaluation-Grant System (PEGS) which allows us to simulate different research funding allocation policies. We implemented four Resource Allocation Strategies (RAS) entitled Communism, Lottery, Realistic, and Ideal. The results show that there is a strong effect of the RAS on the careers of the researchers. In addition the PEGS investigated the influence of the paper writing skill and the grant review errors.

Money, Money, Money? Politico-Moral Discourses of Stem Cell Research in a Grant Allocation Process

Concerns have been raised about the marketization of science through the prevailing funding regime. However, the present article will discuss how it comes that the potentially marketable stem cell science is not more commercialized than what is currently the case. We approach this question by analysing discursive pluralism in defining the value of stem cells within a grant allocation process. More specifically, we focus on how the commercial imperative is challenged by other cherished values surrounding stem cell research. The case study used to discuss this is the Swedish Government’s funding of stem cell research within so-called strategic research programmes. The analysis focuses on the co-existence of what we refer to as entrepreneurial, translational and basic research politico-moral discourses. How the co-existence of politico-moral discourses is possible, despite potential tensions, is investigated by drawing on the theoretical framework of bio-objectification. Specifically, we highlight how the relationship between various bio-identities and values was reorganized along the research grant allocation trajectory. We argue that there are obvious signs of temporally specific discursive shifts away from the commercial imperative in the grant allocation process. This suggests the need to study located processes, in order to understand the work of politico-moral discourses in the grant allocation process. This work contributes to an understanding of the uneven and varied impact of neoliberal policies on biomedicine.

Ethics of Using Language Editing Services in An Era of Digital Communication and Heavily Multi-Authored Papers

Scientists of many countries in which English is not the primary language routinely use a variety of manuscript preparation, correction or editing services, a practice that is openly endorsed by many journals and scientific institutions. These services vary tremendously in their scope; at one end there is simple proof-reading, and at the other extreme there is in-depth and extensive peer-reviewing, proposal preparation, statistical analyses, re-writing and co-writing. In this paper, the various types of service are reviewed, along with authorship guidelines, and the question is raised of whether the high-end services surpass most guidelines' criteria for authorship. Three other factors are considered. First, the ease of collaboration possible in the internet era allows multiple iterations between the author(s) and the "editing service", so essentially, papers can be co-written. Second, "editing services" often offer subject-specific experts who comment not only on the language, but interpret and improve scientific content. Third, the trend towards heavily multi-authored papers implies that the threshold necessary to earn authorship is declining. The inevitable conclusion is that at some point the contributions by "editing services" should be deemed sufficient to warrant authorship. Trying to enforce any guidelines would likely be futile, but nevertheless, it might be time to revisit the ethics of using some of the high-end "editing services". In an increasingly international job market, awareness of this problem might prove increasingly important in authorship disputes, the allocation of research grants, and hiring decisions.

Comment to the Article by van Arensbergen and van den Besselaar ‘The Selection of Scientific Talent in the Allocation of Research Grants’

The article entitled ‘The selection of scientific talent in the allocation of research grants’ by van Arensbergen and van den Besselaar published in Higher Education Policy 25/3 (2012) is based on research that both researchers carried out on behalf of The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. In this comment, we want to address several conclusions and statements in the article: On which information are evaluations based? Are there no clear boundaries of excellence? What skills are needed in the interview? Is the referee comment important for the decision on an application? And is the assumption that a strong correlation between reviewer scores and committee scores is a measure for the evidence of talent correct?

The Selection of Scientific Talent in the Allocation of Research Grants

Career grants are an important instrument for selecting and stimulating the next generation of leading researchers. Earlier research has mainly focused on the relation between past performance and success. In this study we investigate how the selection process takes place. More specifically, we investigate which quality dimensions (of the proposal, of the researcher and societal relevance) dominate. We also study which phases in the process (peer review, committee review, interview) are dominant in the evaluation process. Finally, we investigate whether differences between disciplines are visible. The analysis of our data set, consisting of the reviews of 898 grant applications, shows that talent has different dimensions and therefore is not obvious. The evaluation of talent was found to be contextual, although there were only small differences between disciplines. Unlike the interviews with the applicants, the external peer reviews hardly influence the decision-making on grant allocation. The notion of talent was found to be the least evident in the social sciences and humanities.

Institutional Struggles for Recognition in the Academic Field: The Case of University Departments in German Chemistry

This paper demonstrates how the application of New Public Management (NPM) and the accompanying rise of academic capitalism in allocating research funds in the German academic field have interacted with a change from federal pluralism to a more stratified system of universities and departments. From this change, a tendency to build cartel-like structures of allocating symbolic capital resulting in oligopolistic structures of appropriating research funds has emerged. This macro level structure is complemented by the strengthening of the traditional oligarchic structures of research, carried out by an increasing number of assistants under the direction of a professor on the meso level. The outcome of this institutional setting is a significant gap between the appropriation of research funds according to the allocation of symbolic capital and the production of knowledge in publications. The application of NPM therefore needs to be explained more as a result of the normative pressure of a globally established model of “rational” administration, and less as a result of its functional effectiveness. This is demonstrated by an empirical analysis with simple and multiple regressions using data on the allocation of research grants and publication records of German chemistry departments.

THE ROLE OF COLLABORATION, MARKET AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AWARENESS IN UNIVERSITY TECHNOLOGY COMMERCIALIZATION

University technology commercialization has become an important topic of discussion in an era where the results of university research may create opportunities for new processes and products. Despite the government's allocation of research grants to universities in developing countries such as Malaysia, the level of technology commercialization is still low. While numerous factors contribute to the poor commercialization rate, the internal dynamics are one of the major driving factors. It is in this context that we analyze the influence of awareness of market requirements and intellectual property issues and collaboration on technology commercialization. Taking the researchers as the unit of analysis, while controlling for experience and other individual characteristics, we found that researchers' awareness of market requirements, intellectual property rights and university-industry collaborations play an important role in determining the success of university technology commercialization.

Segmenting academics: resource targeting of research grants

The allocation of research grants is a typical rationing problem in that demand exceeds supply, compounded by notions of fairness and legitimacy. Segmentation of fund seekers may offer the potential to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of delivery by targeting scarce resources more closely to need, thus sustaining legitimacy in the face of threats posed by scarcity and the political environment. This paper presents evidence for heterogeneity in an academic population consistent with segmentation and discusses how grant allocation managers might use this to target services and resources more effectively. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.