Grant Decisions Research Articles

Arbitrariness of bibliometric parameters: a case study on leading scientists in the German Society for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology (DGPT)

Bibliometric rankings of researchers are increasingly important for academic hiring and for making grant application decisions in the biomedical sciences. As a case study, we performed a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of German pharmacology and toxicology. The 42 members of the German Society for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology (DGPT) represented in the German ‘best scientist’ ranking in biology and biochemistry on www.research.com for the year 2022 were analyzed according to various aspects. The scientist ranking on Research.com is based on the Hirsch Index (h-Index). In the comparatively small field of pharmacology, which accounts for only 4.2% of the scientists in the ranking on Research.com, there are only two women. This shows that female pharmacologists are highly underrepresented in elite pharmacology. To achieve a high h-Index, a pharmacologist must publish more papers than a biochemist or biologist. Furthermore, German elite pharmacology was compared in the three sub-societies of the DGPT. There are no significant differences between elite pharmacologists and toxicologists in terms of productivity. Two large German pharmacology schools (Günter Schultz and Franz Hofmann) are similar in all bibliometric parameters except for number of total publications. Age-specific factors were also defined for the analysis: ‘academic age’ and the quotient of the h-Index by ‘academic age’. Any given bibliometric parameter (or combination of parameters) yielded different ranking results. This became even more evident when additionally considering the highly popular and widely used Laborjournal ranking of top pharmacology and toxicology researchers with only very few DGPT members listed. We unmasked 7 types of publication patterns of pharmacologists, an age-dependent publication peak at around 55 years and different trajectories for high- and low-volume publishing pharmacologists. In the future, less emphasis should be paid to bibliometric parameters in academic hiring and grant decisions than to the authentic societal and scientific impact of the research. Bibliometric parameters are very arbitrary within a very large segment of pharmacologists. Studies according to the paradigm of this account should be made for other countries, other learned societies, and other scientific fields. The different cultures among related scientific fields must be considered in bibliometric analyses as exemplified here for pharmacology versus biochemistry. Conversely, the bibliometric similarities between pharmacology and toxicology show that both fields belong together and have a very similar culture.

Investigating the targeted use of (dis)agreement in leave to appeal decisions of the HKSAR appellate courts: a corpus-assisted discourse analysis

Abstract This study explores the use of targeted (dis)agreement by judges in leave to appeal decisions of the HKSAR appellate courts. This is achieved by applying proclaim (i.e., pronounce, concur, and endorse) and disclaim (i.e., deny and counter) of Appraisal theory and a typology of discourse targets (i.e., General, Responsive, and Specific). The study identifies significant frequency differences in the use of targeted (dis)agreement between a corpus of grant and a corpus of dismissal decisions. Amongst other things, the findings show that, in grant decisions, judges used a greater amount of General proclaim (i.e., pronounce) to convey how applications satisfied the relevant legal requirements. Contrastively, in dismissal decisions, judges used a greater amount of General/Responsive proclaim (i.e., endorse and concur) to express agreement with the lower courts, case law, and general principles of law (which essentially functioned as rebuttals to the arguments submitted by applicants). General concur was also used to highlight general legal principles so as to classify current cases negatively. The present study also examines the impact of targeted (dis)agreement on outcomes (i.e., grant or dismiss). The findings demonstrate that General/Responsive proclaim and General/Responsive disclaim acted as independent predictors with either a positive or negative influence on the outcomes. The implications of these findings are discussed in the final section of the study.

Retractions and Rewards in Science: An Open Question for Reviewers and Funders.

In recent years, the changing landscape for the conduct and assessment of research and of researchers has increased scrutiny of the reward systems of science. In this context, correcting the research record, including retractions, has gained attention and space in the publication system. One question is the possible influence of retractions on the careers of scientists. It might be assessed, for example, through citation patterns or productivity rates for authors who have had one or more retractions. This is an emerging issue today, with growing discussions in the research community about impact. We have explored the influence of retractions on grant review criteria. Here, we present results of a qualitative study exploring the views of a group of six representatives of funding agencies from different countries and of a follow-up survey of 224 reviewers in the US. These reviewers have served on panels for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and/or a few other agencies. We collected their perceptions about the influence of self-correction of the literature and of retractions on grant decisions. Our results suggest that correcting the research record, for honest error or misconduct, is perceived as an important mechanism to strengthen the reliability of science, among most respondents. However, retractions and self-correcting the literature at large are not factors influencing grant review, and dealing with retractions in reviewing grants is an open question for funders.

Developing new picture proofs that the sums of the first n odd integers are squares

What is it that makes us judge two proofs of the same theorem to be the same or different? This is not an idle question: one central aspect of judging mathematics is the novelty of the mathematics presented. This is important everywhere, from the peer-review system, to assigning international prestige, to funding agencies’ grant decisions. It even matters to some extent in examinations, to avoid accusations of collusion. Surprisingly, philosophers of mathematics have not paid the question of novelty much attention. In this Article, we will consider the appealing conjecture that the main ideas that make up the proof, the essence of a proof, can indeed be identified and that very different styles of proofs can share common main ideas. Further, that a particular theorem can be proved using quite different, independent main ideas. As a means of exploring whether this is plausible, we will present a number of novel proofs of the following theorem.

Discrimination against academics and career implications of student evaluations: university policy versus legal compliance

Across the international higher education sector, existing studies highlight that student evaluations of courses and teaching are biased and prejudiced towards academics and can cause mental distress. Yet student evaluation data is often used as part of faculty hiring, firing, promotion, award and grant decisions. That a data source known to be prejudiced and biased is used for employment and career decisions raises questions around whether these university policies are discriminatory towards university staff. This paper investigates these questions via an analysis of: a) what are the common university policies relating to evaluation data collection and its use, b) are these policies leaving academics exposed to discrimination, and c) what types of policies may be leaving universities liable to legal ramifications due to non-compliance with anti-discrimination and workplace health and safety laws? The work demonstrates why most institutions are operating outside the bounds of the law, highlights to academics what types of policies may fail to meet discrimination and workplace laws, and informs university leaders of the actions that may be exposing their universities to legal implications for failing to protect their staff.

Government Grants, Donors, and Nonprofit Performance

Abstract Nonprofits engaged in public service provision can receive funding from both donors and governments. Much of the nonprofit performance theory suggests that donors are unlikely to base donation decisions on nonprofit production. However, governments may prioritize performance in nonprofit funding decisions. We combine study internal production reports for the years 2010–2016 from 535 Habitat for Humanity Affiliates with financial data from IRS Form 990 reports and housing price data from the FHA. We then use a dynamic panel design to compare the effects of performance on donor and government funding. Production does not increase donations, but a 1% increase in production increases government grant revenue by 0.28%. Our findings indicate that nonprofit performance theory should move beyond the donor-nonprofit dyad and explicitly explore the role of government principals. Our findings also suggest that while requirements that accompany government funding might be cumbersome for nonprofits, government entities might use the data in future grant decisions.

Legal remedies against grant decisions

Financial Law Review » Issue 17 (1)/ 2020 » Legal remedies against grant decisions A A A

How Private Foundation Sophistication Affects Capital Campaign Grant Decisions

ABSTRACT We examine how charity financial information related to efficiency and financial vulnerability is used by private foundations in determining how much they grant to charities during capital campaigns. In general, private foundations are likely to be better able to evaluate charity financial information because they are sophisticated donors. They have the incentive to incur search costs, the ability to judge financial information, and are focused on grant-making. We find no evidence that efficiency measures are used by private foundations in determining capital campaign grant amounts, regardless of foundation sophistication. We interpret this result as being consistent with private foundations focusing on factors related to program accomplishments rather than on reported efficiency. We find evidence that private foundations pay larger grant amounts to less financially vulnerable charities. This effect is concentrated when grants are paid by more sophisticated private foundations (i.e., those that employ a professional staff). Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

Expedited pharma patenting in Brazil.

This article has the purpose of bringing an updated landscape on expedited protection of pharmaceutical patent applications in Brazil. The serious backlog of examination of patent applications in Brazil is a fact well known worldwide for a long time. In 2017, said backlog related to pharmaceutical patent applications achieved a mean time of about 11-13years. On the other hand, there are alternatives to attempt to surpass such huge delay, based on official regulations for expediting examination, which have shown to be quite effective. Actual examples of pharmaceutical patents beneficiated from such fast track rules have received grant decisions within about 0.5-3.5years counted from request for accelerated examination.

The Examination of Continuation Applications and the Problem of Invalid Patents in the U.S.

It has long been recognised that the U.S. patent office routinely grants a large number of invalid patents. Recently, scholars have studied the root causes of this issue and have emphasised the key role played by the patent examination process itself. In this paper, I study how features of the examination process affect examiner behaviour and the problem of invalid patents in the context of continuation applications. These applications emanate from earlier patent applications filed at the patent office and allow applicants to submit new claims for a given invention. In the U.S., continuations are generally examined by the same examiner who was assigned to the earlier application. Using application-level data, I explore how this feature, which I call relatedness, affects examiners' grant decisions and other examination practices. I find that relatedness increases the grant rate, decreases examiners' efforts to narrow the scope of protection claimed by patent applicants and decreases the examiners' search efforts for prior art. I also show that the effects of relatedness do not seem to be driven by a wearing down effect on examiners and differ only slightly across different technology areas. Finally, I find evidence that relatedness leads to the granting of patents of more dubious validity. A key implication of these results is that the way the U.S. continuation application system is designed causes examiners to adopt softer examination practices, which in turn contributes to the problem of invalid patents.

The Decision Was Always My Own: Ulysses S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaign by Timothy B. Smith

Reviewed by: The Decision Was Always My Own: Ulysses S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaignby Timothy B. Smith Robert W. Sidwell The Decision Was Always My Own: Ulysses S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaign. By Timothy B. Smith. The World of Ulysses S. Grant. ( Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2018. Pp. xviii, 249. $34.50, ISBN 978-0-8093-3666-1.) In this volume, Timothy B. Smith examines the multiple social, familial, political, and military factors that shaped Ulysses S. Grant's decisions during [End Page 705]the Vicksburg campaign of 1862–1863. While traditional accounts of the Civil War in Mississippi have focused purely on military and political considerations, Smith's work examines the more intimate aspects of Grant's life in order to better understand why and when he made the choices that he did. Smith argues that the Vicksburg campaign determined the outcome of the Civil War and that Grant's decisions determined the course of that campaign. To demonstrate its thesis, the book is divided into eight chapters, each of which centers on one of the eight major choices that Smith argues Grant made during the campaign. The book makes extensive use of Grant's memoirs, the recollections of the general's colleagues, and the Official Recordsto reconstruct Grant's thought processes during the Vicksburg operations. The book also relies heavily on Grant's personal papers and the memoirs of his eldest son, Frederick, to reveal the general's less-studied familial life and concerns for his family. The Decision Was Always My Own: Ulysses S. Grant and the Vicksburg Campaignconvincingly portrays the complexity of Grant's life as he attempted to command a major military operation while simultaneously coping with political considerations and the cares and duties of a husband and father. Smith shows how the general deftly handled difficult subordinates, family members, and logistical problems. By viewing operations entirely from Grant's perspective, Smith maintains the fog of war, providing readers with only the information Grant himself possessed, and thus avoids charging the general with oversights and errors for which he could not have accounted. Smith's analysis of the negotiations for the surrender and subsequent parole of the Army of Vicksburg exhibits Grant's delicate position. The book summarizes Grant's anxiety over a possible Confederate effort to relieve the beleaguered garrison, the Confederate commander at Vicksburg's attempts to stall the surrender proceedings, and the political backlash that followed Grant's decision to parole the Confederates he captured rather than shipping them elsewhere to be formally exchanged. Such details are often considered anticlimactic in the aftermath of the battles and sieges of the Civil War, but Smith shows how complicated they actually were. Despite the above strengths, The Decision Was Always My Ownsuffers from several shortcomings. By focusing so heavily on Grant's eight major decisions as the decisive factors in the campaign, the work leaves little agency to the Confederate commanders in Mississippi and Louisiana. Generals Joseph E. Johnston, John C. Pemberton, Theophilus H. Holmes, and Richard Taylor either are never mentioned in the text or appear as merely passive subjects waiting for Grant's next brilliant decision to leave them stunned and their forces defeated. Acknowledging the military ineptitude of Grant's opponents would allow the general's decisions to be placed in better context. The book does not maintain its emphasis on Grant's decision making. Most glaringly, at several points Smith departs from General Grant entirely to recall the misadventures of his son Frederick, whose antics put him in personal danger but occurred largely without his father's knowledge. The book reads in many places like a biography of Ulysses Grant, overlooking the general's failings while relating every aspect of his life, no matter how relevant to the campaign. Finally, while this work claims that Grant's decisions were crucial to capturing Vicksburg, it seldom enumerates the alternative choices the general faced at any [End Page 706]point during his army's operations, leaving the reader with the impression that Grant's choices were not only correct but also obvious. Overall, while this book reveals the complexity of Civil War command, it does...

A Small, Stateless Nation in the World Market for Book Translations: The Politics and Policies of the Flemish Literature Fund

This paper discusses the Flemish Literature Fund (FLF), an autonomous government organisation created in 1999 by the Flemish Community to support Flemish literature at home and abroad. It traces the institutional history of the FLF, situating the organisation in the context of Flanders’ longstanding struggle for cultural autonomy within the Belgian state on the one hand and its strong but unequal ties to the Netherlands on the other. Using a translation sociological analytical framework, it goes on to argue that the FLF’s outgoing translation grant decisions reflect two strategies of international dissemination: a focus on the central languages of English, German and French, and a strategic use of the picture book genre to break into emerging languages on the periphery, especially Chinese. While the case of the FLF clearly illustrates the shifting power relations between state and market agents in the era of globalisation, it also indicates a novel approach to state-supported literary export designed to maximise a small, stateless nation’s international resonance in a world market for translations dominated by larger (nation-) states and languages.

Donor Country’s Fiscal Status and ODA Decisions before and after 2008 Global Financial Crisis

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the impact of donor's fiscal status on aid decisions before and after the 2008 global financial crisis. The effects on aid can change depending on the donor country's fiscal status and the period of financial crisis. Research design, data, and methodology - A fixed effect regression and dynamic panel GMM is conducted using a comprehensive dataset combining 31 donor and 167 recipient countries during 1996-2015. The key explanatory variable is central government debt-to-GDP ratio of donor country. Recipient countries' GNI per capita, population, governance indicators, and bilateral trade-to-GDP ratio between donor and recipient countries are included as control variables. Results - We can confirm the relationship between donor country's fiscal status and aid flow. The cyclical component of government debt is found to have a negative impact on grant decisions particularly after the 2008 global financial crisis. This effect becomes larger in the countries with high government debt-to-GDP ratio. ODA decisions from the countries with low financial constraint do not significantly affected by the recipient countries' factors such as GNI, population, and governance indicator. Conclusions - Based on the empirical results of this study, the source of aid should be diversified by incorporating private sector and innovative financing sources.

Blinding applicants in a first-stage peer-review process of biomedical research grants: An observational study

To blind or not researcher’s identity has often been a topic of debate in the context of peer-review process for scientific publication and research grant application. This article reports on how knowing the name and experience of researchers/institutions influences the qualification of a proposal. We present our experience of managing the peer-review process of different biomedical research grants. The peer-review process included three evaluation stages: first, blinded assessment; second, unblinded assessment by the same reviewer; and final, assessment of the better qualified proposals by an ad hoc committee. The change between the first (applicants blinded) and the second assessments (unblinded) for each evaluation and reviewer was evaluated. Factors associated with change were analysed, taking into account the characteristics of proposals, reviewers, and researchers. A qualitative content analysis of the reviewers’ comments was also carried out to assess the reasons for change. The analysis of 5,002 evaluations indicated that in 18.5% of the evaluations (from 10.5 to 27.7% depending on the year of the edition), the reviewer changed the second assessment: either for better (11.9%) or worse (6.6%). Our findings also suggest that a change in the second assessment was highly correlated with a positive evaluation of the experience of the principal investigator or research team. With a change of 1 in 10 to 1 in 4 depending on the year of the edition, we believe that concealing the identity of researchers/institutions could help to focus exclusively on the proposal and reduce some of the common biases of the peer-review process in grant decisions.

Determinants of grant decisions in R&D subsidy programmes: Evidence from firms and S&T organisations in Portugal

While public intervention in Research and Development (R&D) is generally supported by economic theory and R&D subsidies are being implemented in most OECD countries, evidence on their effectiveness fails to reveal conclusive results. Exploring data from approved and rejected applicants to two R&D funding instruments in Portugal, we provide further evidence on R&D subsidy programmes directed to firms and S&T organisations, by identifying the determinants of grant decisions by the public agency. The results show that subsidies to firms are mainly aimed at large R&D projects by manufacturing firms, in both high- and low-technology sectors. Subsidies to S&T organisations show a higher degree of selectivity, targeting mainly universities and premium public research centres, and favouring R&D projects in exact sciences and engineering and cooperation projects. The subsidy allocation process in Portugal presents distinctive features in line with its status of an innovation follower country.

Hierarchical Contracting in Grant Decisions: Ex-Ante and Ex-Post Evaluation in the Context of the Euregional Policy

This paper applies incentive theory to the context of the European Union (EU) Regional Policy. The core instruments of the policy are the Structural Funds, capital grants that flow from the European Commission (EC) to Member States and regional authorities to promote investment and growth at local level. The EU grants need a co-payment by the regional government and do not cover in full the investment cost. We model this situation, similar to several other supra- national or federal contexts, as a simple principal-supervisor-agent model of the investment game between a supranational player (the principal), such as the EC, a non (fully) benevolent regional government (the supervisor), and a private firm (the executing agency). We show how the role of providers of additional information, the region (ex-ante) and an evaluator (ex-post) is crucial to reducing the optimal value of the grant and to improving the inefficiencies caused by asymmetric information at the grant decision stage in a federal hierarchy.

Early career grants, performance, and careers: A study on predictive validity of grant decisions

The main rationale behind career grants is helping top talent to develop into the next generation leading scientists. Does career grant competition result in the selection of the best young talents ...

Does the outsourcing of prior art search increase the efficiency of patent examination? Evidence from Japan

This paper investigates the effects of outsourcing of prior art search on the efficiency of patent examination, using a large scale Japanese patent examination data. Outsourcing may increase examination quality by expanding the scope of prior art search, while it may have a negative effect if the synergy between search and examination is important. Controlling for the endogeneity of outsourcing decision as well as the changes in the time resources available for an examiner, we find that the outsourcing of prior art search significantly decreases the frequency of appeals against both examiners’ rejections and grant decisions and reduces the length of examination duration. At the same time we find that the prior art search of complex inventions is not outsourced. These results suggest that the opportunity for exploiting external knowledge and capability can increase the quality as well as the speed of examination.

Defining the role of cognitive distance in the peer review process with an explorative study of a grant scheme in infection biology

The aim of this article is twofold: (1) to provide a methodology for measurement of cognitive distance between researchers and (2) to explore the role of cognitive distance on the results of peer review processes. Cited references and the content of articles are used to represent their respective scientific knowledge bases. Based on the two different approaches-Author-Bibliographic Coupling analysis and Author-Topic analysis-we apply the methodology on a recent competition for grants from the Swedish Strategic Foundation. Results indicate that cognitive distances between applicants and reviewers might influence peer review results, but that the impact is to some extent at the unexpected end. The main contribution of this article is the elaboration on the relevance of the concept of cognitive distance to the issue of research evaluation in general, and especially in relation to peer review as a model used in grant decisions.

Corporate Philanthropic Giving Practices in U.S. School Education

While corporate philanthropic giving to education is a controversial topic, how much money corporate foundations (CFs) provide to U.S. primary and secondary education, what policy and geographic areas CFs fund, who makes grant decisions within CFs, and corporate philanthropists’ reported giving motivations are unknown. A quantitative survey was used to gather data on 49 Fortune 500 CFs giving to primary and secondary U.S. education. Survey findings indicate that (a) the amount of money that these 49 CFs provide to primary and secondary U.S. education is 0.10 % of the 2010 education budget; (b) CFs report funding across different policy areas, avoiding school choice; (c) CFs favor funding cities or districts, individual schools, and individual students over state and national level funding; (d) the foundation president is more likely to make grantmaking decisions than the company CEO; and (e) corporate philanthropists report giving to primary and secondary U.S. education to build a strong workforce and improve community relations. Findings provide insight into the role of corporate philanthropy in primary and secondary U.S. education and have implications for policy.