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

Research funding is an important factor for public science. Funding may affect which research topics get addressed, and what research outputs are produced. However, funding has often been studied simplistically, using top-down or system-led perspectives. Such approaches often restrict analysis to co...

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Autores principales: Aagaard, Kaare, Mongeon, Philippe, Ramos-Vielba, Irene, Thomas, Duncan Andrew
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8115833/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33979400
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251488
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author Aagaard, Kaare
Mongeon, Philippe
Ramos-Vielba, Irene
Thomas, Duncan Andrew
author_facet Aagaard, Kaare
Mongeon, Philippe
Ramos-Vielba, Irene
Thomas, Duncan Andrew
author_sort Aagaard, Kaare
collection PubMed
description Research funding is an important factor for public science. Funding may affect which research topics get addressed, and what research outputs are produced. However, funding has often been studied simplistically, using top-down or system-led perspectives. Such approaches often restrict analysis to confined national funding landscapes or single funding organizations and instruments in isolation. This overlooks interlinkages, broader funding researchers might access, and trends of growing funding complexity. This paper instead frames a ‘bottom-up’ approach that analytically distinguishes between increasing levels of aggregation of funding instrument co-use. Funding of research outputs is selected as one way to test this approach, with levels traced via funding acknowledgements (FAs) in papers published 2009–18 by researchers affiliated to Denmark, the Netherlands or Norway, in two test research fields (Food Science, Renewable Energy Research). Three funding aggregation levels are delineated: at the bottom, ‘funding configurations’ of funding instruments co-used by individual researchers (from single-authored papers with two or more FAs); a middle, ‘funding amalgamations’ level, of instruments co-used by collaborating researchers (from multi-authored papers with two or more FAs); and a ‘co-funding network’ of instruments co-used across all researchers active in a research field (all papers with two or more FAs). All three levels are found to include heterogenous funding co-use from inside and outside the test countries. There is also co-funding variety in terms of instrument ‘type’ (public, private, university or non-profit) and ‘origin’ (domestic, foreign or supranational). Limitations of the approach are noted, as well as its applicability for future analyses not using paper FAs to address finer details of research funding dynamics.
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spelling pubmed-81158332021-05-24 Getting to the bottom of research funding: Acknowledging the complexity of funding dynamics Aagaard, Kaare Mongeon, Philippe Ramos-Vielba, Irene Thomas, Duncan Andrew PLoS One Research Article Research funding is an important factor for public science. Funding may affect which research topics get addressed, and what research outputs are produced. However, funding has often been studied simplistically, using top-down or system-led perspectives. Such approaches often restrict analysis to confined national funding landscapes or single funding organizations and instruments in isolation. This overlooks interlinkages, broader funding researchers might access, and trends of growing funding complexity. This paper instead frames a ‘bottom-up’ approach that analytically distinguishes between increasing levels of aggregation of funding instrument co-use. Funding of research outputs is selected as one way to test this approach, with levels traced via funding acknowledgements (FAs) in papers published 2009–18 by researchers affiliated to Denmark, the Netherlands or Norway, in two test research fields (Food Science, Renewable Energy Research). Three funding aggregation levels are delineated: at the bottom, ‘funding configurations’ of funding instruments co-used by individual researchers (from single-authored papers with two or more FAs); a middle, ‘funding amalgamations’ level, of instruments co-used by collaborating researchers (from multi-authored papers with two or more FAs); and a ‘co-funding network’ of instruments co-used across all researchers active in a research field (all papers with two or more FAs). All three levels are found to include heterogenous funding co-use from inside and outside the test countries. There is also co-funding variety in terms of instrument ‘type’ (public, private, university or non-profit) and ‘origin’ (domestic, foreign or supranational). Limitations of the approach are noted, as well as its applicability for future analyses not using paper FAs to address finer details of research funding dynamics. Public Library of Science 2021-05-12 /pmc/articles/PMC8115833/ /pubmed/33979400 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251488 Text en © 2021 Aagaard et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Aagaard, Kaare
Mongeon, Philippe
Ramos-Vielba, Irene
Thomas, Duncan Andrew
Getting to the bottom of research funding: Acknowledging the complexity of funding dynamics
title Getting to the bottom of research funding: Acknowledging the complexity of funding dynamics
title_full Getting to the bottom of research funding: Acknowledging the complexity of funding dynamics
title_fullStr Getting to the bottom of research funding: Acknowledging the complexity of funding dynamics
title_full_unstemmed Getting to the bottom of research funding: Acknowledging the complexity of funding dynamics
title_short Getting to the bottom of research funding: Acknowledging the complexity of funding dynamics
title_sort getting to the bottom of research funding: acknowledging the complexity of funding dynamics
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8115833/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33979400
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251488
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