“It’s hard to get your first big grant or award, but if you get one, then they keep giving you them” — A professor’s advice to me on how to get awards
The Science Award Paradox (by E. Acland)In science, you often need awards to get awards. It’s also known as the Matthew Effect: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. You might be tempted to think that those who have a seemingly never-ending list of awards are more worthy than those who don’t, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Past awards provide a major advantage for winning future awards, even amongst applicants of similar “quality”.
“…winners just above the funding threshold accumulate more than twice as much funding during the subsequent eight years as nonwinners with near-identical review scores that fall just below the threshold.” — Bol et al. (2018)
Award agencies also consider the quantity and impact of past published work. In other words: awards are given to those “already successful, not necessarily those who represent real innovation.”
Early career researchers are especially impacted by this system. They have to choose between sinking copious amounts of their (and their supervisors’) time applying for grants or spending that time doing actual research, but risking their long-term career stability and productivity. Researchers are strapped for time no matter the circumstances, so those that don’t win in one award cycle are less likely to apply for awards in the future (even if they are ranked similarly to the award winners), further perpetuating the discrepancy between the haves and have nots.
One researcher, Dr. David Eccles, estimated that the collective amount of time institutions pay researchers to sink into grants can be more costly than the award money itself — if they even get the award, which most do not. Grants are supposed to help move research forward, but are they actually just holding science back? How much greater could our collective knowledge be if scientists never had to apply for grants? Or at very least, if they required less time?
Solutions
Application reform
Current grant criteria overlook promising researchers that haven’t had the same opportunities and luck as those with many publications and awards. For example, being a part of large labs and collaborative networks provides more co-authorship opportunities, which doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about the promise of the individual. Early career researchers that lack supportive or available supervisors are especially disadvantaged in grant applications. Reducing the number of people required to submit an application (e.g., sponsors, supervisors, institutions) and focusing on individual’s research potential, critical thinking, and good scientific practices may lead to more equitable distribution of grants and less cumulative time sunk.
Award lottery
Research suggests that grant agency rankings may not be reliable or good at predicting who will publish high-impact research, leading to calls to make the crapshoot official. It would free up time and resources for everyone involved and give researchers who typically wouldn’t be funded a chance to shine.
The lottery idea generally involves still having the review process, but everyone is either given a “yes” or “no” on whether the application is fundable, then a lottery ensues within the “yes” group. This would reduce time researchers put into writing exceptional applications, reduce time reviewers spend ranking every application relative to one another, and mitigate reviewer biases. Some agencies have already adopted this approach. For example, the Swiss National Science Foundation uses a “funding line” where any proposals rated above a certain margin are entered into a lottery to decide who is awarded.
Universal funding
The current funding system favours the few elite researchers who enjoy an array of advantages, allowing them to effectively hoard research funds. These researchers can employ huge teams to mass produce research that further inflates their CVs, helping them secure more awards. A recent study suggested that the high productivity of researchers at big institutions can be largely explained by their labour advantage, rather than exceptionalism. Although, there have been some criticisms of the methodology of the study.
One solution to this problem is to equal the playing field so that all researchers receive the same funding. This would likely encourage more collaborations and would fund a greater diversity of thought. Perhaps this could help shift the structure of academia from rewarding mass publishing salami sliced ideas to tackling big innovative ideas with large collaborative networks. One calculation says it would cost the government nothing to implement (at least in the UK), they would just need to rearrange how they spend their research budget.
Infographic detailing ways in which award selection criteria could be improved (E. Acland)
Science funding is broken. We’re long overdue for a change so researchers can get back to what they were trained for…research. Investing in public research has a 20% positive social return on investment (e.g., improving population health, wellbeing, inequality). More time and resources for researchers means improvement to the lives of all citizens.