major research project management fund

Major Research Management Project Fund

Updated: October 2023

** Temporary Ramp-down of UofT’s Major Research Project Management Fund **

For several years the University’s MRPM program has provided support for large, complex research initiatives that meet certain criteria.  Support included proposal development funding (“Stream 1” – up $10K per project, matched by the academic division) and project management funding (“Stream 2” – up to $50K per project year, matched by the academic division).  

Given the growing popularity of the program, current financial commitments are approaching the limits of the MRPM budget.  For that reason, it has been decided that a moratorium will be placed on MRPM Stream 1 awards until further notice .  With respect to Stream 2 awards, capacity exists to fund a very small number, at a reduced level of up to $25,000 per project year – matched by the academic division. Once those funds have been committed, a moratorium will also be placed on Stream 2 until such time as the MRPM fund is sufficiently replenished.

The tri-campus Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation, administers a fund designed to support major collaborative research projects where the budget request is typically in excess of $1M total, with an annual budget of several hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. To learn about this opportunity, please review the MRMP program guidelines . The opportunity has two streams: Stream 1 (up to 10K to support proposal development) and Stream 2 (up to 50K to support project management for successful proposals; when matched, these amounts are 20K and 100K). The funding opportunity requires a divisional cash match, which UTM OVPR can contribute to. It is recommended to seek match contribution from other units involved in project as well.

To apply:  Before   applying to the MRMP program, please contact our office to seek matching support. You can contact Payam Zahedi  [email protected]  to start the process. If matching funds area available then a letter of support will be crafted for your MRMP request.

Universal Navigation

Universal navigation2.

• Opportunities Outside the Classroom
• Networking & Careers
• Support Services
• Student Profiles
• Funding by Graduate Unit
• Graduate Funding Terms & Conditions
• How Graduate Funding Works
• Proposal Development
• Research Resources
• Grant Review Deadlines

Search form

• Faculty & Staff
• Research Supports & Services

Find Funding

Get the latest information about external and internal funding opportunities to support your research program, including funds that support the recruitment of research trainees.

Internal Funding Opportunities

Funds for Recruiting Research Trainees

Pivot Funding Opportunities Database

External Funding Opportunities

Arts & Science Internal Research Funding Opportunities

Arts & Science is strongly committed to diversity in research and we strongly encourage applications from Indigenous Peoples, Black and racialized persons, women, persons with disabilities, people of diverse sexual and gender identities, and others who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas.

Arts & Science Collaborative Research Funding Program

The Arts & Science (A&S) Collaborative Research Funding Program aims to leverage our research excellence in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences and offers seed funding to support new cross-disciplinary research collaborations between tenure stream faculty members (with a primary budgetary appointment within A&S, St. George campus) from different A&S academic units and disciplines.

The purpose of the program is to support novel collaborative research projects that seek to:

• answer research questions that are best addressed through interdisciplinary approaches;
• advance new ways of thinking about research questions, ideas, approaches, and methods; and
• provide leading-edge training for highly qualified personnel (HQP) in interdisciplinary research environments.

Application Deadline

March 1 (17:00 EST)

Note: When a deadline falls on a weekend, the deadline will shift to the next immediate business day.

Value and Duration

Applicants can choose from one of two streams, depending on the amount of funding that is required to complete the project:

Stream A: $20,000 per year for two-year projects (for a total of $40,000) Stream B: $35,000 per year for two-year projects (for a total of $70,000)

Project Team & Eligibility

• Each project requires a minimum of two co-principal investigators (Co-PIs).
• Each Co-PI must be tenure stream with a primary budgetary appointment within the Faculty of Arts & Science, St. George campus.
• Applicants must have an active academic appointment at the time of award start date (May 1 in each competition year).
• Co-PIs cannot share the same primary academic unit or have previously collaborated on a funded research project within the last five years. The proposed project must explore new research questions and/or approaches that are distinct from previous collaborations between the Co-PIs.
• Faculty members who hold a primary appointment in another division or from outside the University of Toronto can be listed as collaborators. These team members will not be eligible to receive funding from this grant.

Evaluation Criteria

All proposals will be assessed on the following evaluation criteria:

• Quality of the research — provide a clear and original overarching goal and set of research questions/objectives.
• Plan for collaboration — outline how the Co-PI’s expertise will be united to solve an important, unsolved, interdisciplinary research problem. Describe the role of additional collaborators, if applicable.
• Excellence of the research team — provide evidence of established or emerging leadership of each Co-PI in their respective research area(s).
• Describe the plans for the training and development of HQP
• Incorporate equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) considerations in the training plan
• Annual milestones — define the milestones and timelines that will form the foundation of the collaboration during the funding period, and how the project could provide the basis of future collaborative grant applications beyond the funding period.
• Feasibility — describe the appropriateness of the research team, the research plan, and the research environment, and provide a justification for the proposed budget.

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI)

Applicants are expected to describe EDI challenges and considerations that have been addressed in the development of the project team, and how EDI has been integrated into the research design, as applicable to the project. Actions taken to form the research team are expected to remove identified barriers and provide opportunities for the integration of individuals from all groups, including but not limited to women, Indigenous Peoples, members of racialized minorities, persons with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ2S+ community.

Sex and Gender-Based Analysis Plus (SGBA+)

Applicants are expected to effectively integrate evidence-based sex-and gender-based analysis plus in their proposed research methodology, where appropriate.

Indigenous Research

The Faculty of Arts & Science is committed to the appropriate peer review of research with and about Indigenous peoples and communities. All applicants are asked to indicate whether the proposed project involves or impacts Indigenous individuals, communities, peoples, topics, lands, or areas of interest. In cases where an applicant indicates “Yes,” they are asked to elaborate in their research proposal.

Budget & Use of Funds

Applicants may request $20,000 per year (for a total of $40,000) under stream A, or $35,000 per year (for a total of $70,000) under stream B.

• Employment and compensation expenses: Research personnel costs, including student salaries or stipends;
• Services: costs for professional and technical services;
• Honoraria for research participants and to support community involvement in the research;
• Travel: costs associated with research-related travel to conduct the proposed research and for research participants, where applicable;
• Knowledge dissemination: costs associated with knowledge dissemination including publication costs and conference attendance travel costs;
• Consumables: materials and supplies required to conduct the research;
• Non-consumables: non-consumable expenses to conduct the research (e.g. data sets; software)
• Proposed project expenses must adhere to the University of Toronto Guide to Financial Management .

Competition Results

We anticipate funding up to three (3) new projects under stream A and up to two (2) new projects under stream B annually. Results will be communicated in May of each year.

Contact & Resources

For program inquiries, please contact Stephanie Fisher: [email protected] .

Submission Process

Completed submissions must include (as one single PDF attachment):

• Application form
• Research proposal (4 pages maximum)
• Short CVs for each Co-PI (3 pages max. per CV)

Applications are to be combined into a single PDF and emailed to [email protected] . Please include "A&S Collaborative Research Funding Program" in the subject line. An MRA is not required for this program.

All applicants are also required to complete and submit the applicant demographic survey as part of their application. All survey answers will remain confidential and will not be used as part of the evaluation of your application or any other future application.

Style Guide

• Body text minimum 12 pt. Times New Roman font
• Single-spaced, with no more than 6 lines of type per inch
• All margins set at a minimum of 3/4" (1.87 cm)

Application Preparation Guidelines

All three sections outlined below must be addressed.

Proposed Research Activities (2 pages maximum)

Project description and research design (approx. 3/4 page).

Describe the research goals and objectives, theoretical context, methodological approach, and research challenges and opportunities to be tackled through the collaboration.

If applicable, describe how sex- and gender-based analysis plus (SGBA+), EDI considerations, and/or Indigenous research concepts, principles, and protocols for conducting respectful research with Indigenous Peoples and communities into each stage of the research process. Applicants engaging in community-based research are also encouraged to describe whether an agreement, partnership, or understanding is already in place with the relevant communit(ies).

Complementarity of Research Expertise (approx. 1/4 page)

Describe how the Co-PI’s expertise will be united to solve an important, unsolved, interdisciplinary research problem, and the added value of taking a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach to the proposed project. Describe additional collaborators and the contribution to the research project of these individuals, if applicable.

Expected Impact (approx. 1/4 page)

Describe the expected significance and impact of the research as a result of the proposed collaboration.

HQP Training Plans (approx. 1/4 page)

Describe the plans for the training and development of HQP, including a description of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the recruitment and training plan.

Plans for future collaboration (approx. 1/8 page)

Detail the potential and plans for future research collaborations as a result of this project (e.g., joint publications, joint research grant funding opportunities, collaborative community outreach, or other research collaborative opportunities).

Project Milestones and Timeline (approx. 1/8 page)

Describe the project timeline, milestones, and planned outputs.

Budget Table & Justification (1 page maximum)

Using the budget categories listed below, explain how you will use the funds over the two years to achieve the project objectives. Please indicate the amount that will be allocated to each Co-PI.

Fully justify all budget costs in terms of the needs of the research, keeping in mind that the appropriateness of the requested budget and justification of the proposed costs are part of the feasibility evaluation criterion. Proposed project expenses must adhere to the University of Toronto Guide to Financial Management .

Note: equipment costs are not eligible.

Budget Categories

• Employment and compensation
• Services (professional and technical)
• Knowledge dissemination
• Consumables (materials and supplies)
• Non-consumables
• Other (please describe)

References (1 page maximum)

List all references cited or works referred to in your proposal.

Short curriculum vitaes (3 pages maximum per CV)

Adjudication process.

• The Faculty of Arts & Science, vice dean, Research & Infrastructure or delegate shall chair the selection committee. The composition of the selection committee shall reflect the broad diversity of individuals and disciplines within A&S, St. George campus. The values of equity, diversity and inclusiveness are an institutional priority for the University of Toronto, and A&S wants to ensure that its internal review processes and committee reflect this commitment.
• Selection committee members shall review the applications, individually and in an adjudication committee meeting, using the program evaluation criteria to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of each respective application.
• Members of the selection committee are expected to reinforce standards of rigor, fairness, respect and equity, diversity and inclusion throughout the adjudication process.
• The VPRI Best Practices in Peer Review Guide shall serve as a resource for members of the selection committee.

Arts & Science International Research Events Fund

The Arts & Science International Research Events Fund is a matching funds program, designed to facilitate hosting research-related events that contribute to increasing the international research profile of A&S research. Faculty members who have full-time faculty appointments in A&S units (i.e., St. George campus faculty) are welcome to apply to the fund in support of events they are organizing/co-organizing on campus. Faculty members and researchers who hold graduate-only appointments, other types of cross-appointments or are emeritus faculty are not eligible.

Eligible Sources of Matching Funding from Academic Units

• Operating reserves within an academic unit.
• Available funding within an individual principal investigator’s (the applicant's) PI Fund Centre.

Submit applications to [email protected] .

Arts & Science International Research Events Fund Application Form

Arts & Science Tri-Council Bridge Funding Program

The Arts & Science Tri-Council Bridge Funding Program is designed to help bridge research funding gaps for full-time A&S faculty members (i.e., St. George campus) whose Tri-Council grant applications have been unsuccessful. The program is designed to allow researchers to continue their work and become more competitive on their next application. Faculty members and researchers who hold graduate-only appointments, other types of cross-appointments, or are emeritus faculty, are not eligible. While we accept requests for bridge funding for all of the below listed programs, first priority will be given to applicants in the SSHRC Insight, SSHRC Insight Development and NSERC Discovery Grant competitions. The CIHR and NSERC RTI programs will require some vetting depending on the quantity and magnitude of the requests.

The Tri-Council Bridge Fund is a 1:1 matching funds program. Principal investigators must first apply for funding through their department chair or director. Matching fund requests are to be submitted by the unit chair or director to the A&S Research Services Office for review and approval by the Vice-Dean, Research & Infrastructure.

Opportunities & Deadlines

Sshrc insight, sshrc insight development, and nserc discovery grant bridge funding.

A&S will match unit contributions, up to $15,000, for one year.

• Deadline: Any time before August 1 (immediately following an unsuccessful application).

CIHR Project Grant Bridge Funding

A&S will match unit contributions, up to $20,000, to PIs on CIHR Project grants that were unfunded in the Spring or Fall competition.

• Fall competition: apply for Bridge Funding by April 15 (immediately following an unsuccessful application).
• Spring competition: apply for Bridge Funding by August 1 (immediately following an unsuccessful application).

Note: Principal investigators who are awarded a Bridge Fund after an unsuccessful grant application in either the SSHRC Insight, SSHRC Insight Development, NSERC Discovery, or CIHR Project grant competition must submit a proposal to the same funding program in the next competition cycle (Fall or Spring round for CIHR applicants).

NSERC Research Tools & Instruments (RTI) Bridge Funding

A&S will match unit contributions, up to $50,000.

• Deadline: any time before August 1 (immediately following an unsuccessful application)

Eligible sources of matching funding from Academic Units

• Funding for graduate students from an academic unit’s graduate program account*

* Note: Graduate program account funding cannot be transferred directly to a PI account and must be transferred directly to the student via a ROSI/ACORN award.

Arts & Science Tri-Council Bridge Funding Program Application Form

XSeed: Expanding Research Impact Through Inter-Disciplinary Collaboration

XSeed is an interdivisional research funding program led by the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering (FASE), which is designed to promote multi-disciplinary research and to catalyze new innovative partnerships between a co-PI from FASE and a co-PI from another University of Toronto division. Funding is available for a maximum of seventeen (17) new collaborative projects, four of which will be allocated to the Faculty of Arts & Science. Two Arts & Science projects will be earmarked for co-PIs from either the humanities or social sciences.

For complete program details, visit the FASE Call for Proposals page , where you can also view past recipients , and access a new Joint Seed Collaboration database for those looking to connect with potential collaborators.

The current application deadline is 12 pm on Monday, March 11, 2024.

$60,000/year for a maximum of 2 years. $15,000 each from the collaborating faculties and home unit of each co-PI.

Eligible sources of matching funding from Arts & Science academic units:

• Funding for graduate students from an academic unit’s graduate program account* .

*Note : Graduate program account funding cannot be transferred directly to a PI account and must be transferred directly to the student via a ROSI/Acorn award.

Contact and resources

For Arts & Science applicant inquiries please contact Glaucia Lima: [email protected] .

University of Toronto Internal Research Funding Opportunities

Connaught global challenge award.

$1 million annually will be awarded to support approximately 4 team initiatives of up-to $250,000 each. The program aims to heighten U of T’s contribution to important issues facing society through the advancement of knowledge, and the transfer and application of solutions. Global Challenge teams will represent new collaborations involving leading U of T researchers and students from multiple disciplines, along with innovators and thought leaders from other sectors. The program objective is to enhance U of T’s capacity to achieve meaningful outcomes and impact, including but not limited to: major new external funding to further develop solutions to the global challenge, important new partnerships, and/or new research oriented academic programs.

Value: $250,000 (over two years)

View complete program details

Connaught Innovation Award

The Connaught Innovation Fund was created to accelerate the development of promising technology and promote commercialization and/or knowledge transfer. Connaught applications will be at or above Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 as defined by Science and Economic Development Canada (SEDC) to support evolving the innovation to the next level with potential commercial partners. Information regarding SEDC TRL Scale can be found here. Successful projects will have strong socioeconomic and/or commercial potential, and will strive to have a positive impact on society.

Deadline: Fall

Value: $50,000

Connaught New Researcher Award

The purpose of this program is to help new tenure stream faculty members establish competitive research programs. Up to $1 million awarded: support for approximately 50 awards of up to $20,000 will be provided to the highest ranked proposals (no matching required). These awards are intended to establish a strong research program, thereby increasing the faculty member’s competitiveness for external funding.

Deadline: December

Value: $20,000

University of Toronto Major Research Project Management Fund

The Major Research Project Management (MRPM) Fund is an initiative of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation to enhance the competitiveness of U of T-led research funding applications, and to ensure the effective administrative oversight of the project, enabling faculty members to focus on research.

To be eligible for MRPM, an application will be multi-PI, multi-departmental, and/or multi-institutional, led by full-time faculty members whose research is campus-based and administered through the university. Other sponsors/programs that attract indirect costs will also be considered on a case-by-case basis where all other eligibility criteria are met. The budget request from the sponsor for these large, complex projects are typically in excess of one million dollars (total project cost) at the level of hundreds of thousands per year.

The MRPM program comprises two potential funding streams that may be applied for separately or in combination. In both streams, MRPM funds must be matched dollar-for-dollar by cash contributions from the supporting division(s).

MRPM Stream 1 funding is provided to support proposal development for submissions at the full proposal stage. Up to $10,000 will be provided by the MRPM fund, which must be fully matched by the applicant’s division/department (up to $20,000 total when matched).  Stream 1 is currently under moratoriam and unavailable.

MRPM Stream 2 funding is provided for compensation for a dedicated Project Manager or equivalent. During this period of financial constraint, Investigators may request up to $25K (previously $50K) per project year, which must be fully matched by the applicant’s division/department. Very limited funding is vailable.  Once the remaining MRPM funds have been committed, a moratorium will also be applied to Stream 2. 

Note, only new incremental administrative resources are eligible. This fund is not intended to recover salary of existing staff members.

Deadline: Any time

Collaborative Research Workshops Fund (VP International)

Joint workshops help lay the groundwork for future international collaborative research. They allow faculty members and students to leverage complementary research strengths and increase their access to the unique capabilities of other international institutions. The Office of the Vice-President, International will provide up to $5,000 to help facilitate a joint research workshop. Please note: workshop organizers must demonstrate a match of $10,000 in order to be eligible for the full $5,000.

Deadline: Rolling

Value: Up to $5,000 (matching commitments required)

VP International Joint Calls for Proposals

Through engagement in meaningful research collaborations with international partners, U of T faculty members and students contribute to solving complex global problems. One way the Office of the Vice President, International helps support this work is through various joint calls for research proposals with select international institutions. The collaborations supported through this seed funding leverage each institution’s unique research strengths, foster the mobility of researchers, and accelerate discovery.

Each call varies with respect to project length, allocated funding, and prioritized field depending on the nature of the partnership.

View current opportunities

Arts & Science is strongly committed to diversity in research and especially welcomes applications from individuals from all groups, including but not limited to women, Indigenous Peoples, members of racialized minorities, persons with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ2S+ community and others who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas.

Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunities

Arts & science postdoctoral fellowship program.

The Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellowships are designed to provide outstanding recent doctoral students advanced training in their field of study. These fellowships are not discipline specific, but rather can be held in any department or research unit across the Faculty of Arts & Science (A&S) at the University of Toronto. Applicants must secure sponsorship of a supervisor, or supervisors, from the professoriate (tenure stream) within the Faculty of Arts & Science (St. George Campus).

Nomination Deadline

December 1 (20:00 EST)

Note: When a deadline falls on a weekend or holiday, the next business day will be considered the deadline date.

Required Legal Status

Domestic or International

Each award will provide $53,000 (plus benefits) per year for a maximum of two years. There are two types of funding for the fellowships. One is fully-funded, where A&S contributes the full stipend of $53,000 and benefits. The other is match-funded, where supervisors and/or units contribute half the stipend ($26,500) and benefits, the second half of which is matched by A&S. A section of the Supervisor Postdoctoral Fellowship Form requires the supervisor to specify which funding type applies to their application.

Eligibility to Apply

The award is open to both domestic and international post-graduates. Successful international candidates must meet all Canadian immigration requirements before taking up the award.

Fellowships are only tenable within the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto. Proposed supervisor(s) must have a tenure-track or tenured appointment within the Faculty of Arts & Science (primary budgetary appointment in Arts & Science, St. George campus).

Nominees must:

• Demonstrate academic excellence and high potential for success in their chosen fields;
• Have completed all requirements for their doctorate degree no earlier than May 1, 2021. (Note: If within two years following the date of completion of your PhD, you had your career significantly interrupted due to parental, medical and/or family-related responsibilities, or due to research-related slowdowns or shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the eligibility period will be extended to May 2020. If this applies, applicants should add a section at the end of their CV describing special circumstances and career interruptions.)
• Not hold a faculty position or be on leave from such a position;
• Not hold concurrently another major fellowship;
• Begin the fellowship between May 1 and December 1 in the year of award;
• Be associated with a supervisor appointed to the Faculty of Arts & Science, St. George campus.

Application Process

Applications must be submitted to the Arts & Science Research Office by the primary supervisor’s department/unit chair or director’s office.

Each application should be submitted as one single PDF file, containing all application materials in the order as listed below (including 1. the components completed by the postdoctoral applicant and 2. the supervisor applicant components, respectively).

Submit applications to: [email protected] . Required email subject line: APPLICANT NAME: A&S PDF APPLICATION:

Components completed by the postdoctoral applicant:

• A&S Postdoctoral Fellowship Application Form Note: The form includes a one-page research proposal where you should describe your proposed research project, highlighting the importance and impact of the research and how this research fits into your academic goals. *Reference lists or bibliographies are not necessary for the proposal.
• Applicant’s CV.
• (NEW) Applicant Demographic Survey to be completed and submitted separately. Note: All survey answers will remain confidential and will not be used as part of the evaluation of your application or any other future application. Gathering demographic data supports our ability to evaluate the diversity of our pool of applicants in each competition and allows us to contextualize our adjudications processes and inform our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion reporting and best practices.

Supervisor Application Components

• Proposed supervisor(s) must have a tenure-track or tenured appointment in A&S (i.e., fully appointed at the St. George campus).
• This form must be signed by the chair or director of the supervisor’s unit before being submitted. Co-supervision requires signatures of the chairs and/or directors from the units of all supervisors.
• In the space provided please comment on the applicant’s research potential, the quality of the proposed research, the research environment and resources that will be available to the applicant, and how the fellowship will advance the applicant’s career development.

Evaluation and Selection Process

The Vice Dean Research Chairs the A&S Postdoctoral Fellowship Selection Committee, which meets each competition year to evaluate and recommend top candidates. The Selection Committee reflects the broad diversity of individuals and disciplines within the Faculty of Arts & Science, St. George and includes equal representation by academic leaders from the Humanities, Social Sciences and Science sectoral units in Arts & Science. Members of the Selection Committee are expected to reinforce standards of rigor, fairness, respect and equity, diversity and inclusion throughout the adjudication process. The Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation (OVPRI) has developed a tips and resources best practice guide for honours & awards nominations with a Best Practices in Peer Review Guide that may serve as a resource for members of the Selection Committee.

The single criteria for A&S Postdoctoral Fellowship applications is demonstrated academic excellence and high potential for success in the chosen field. The multidisciplinary selection committee members assess this through their evaluation of each applicant’s 1) proposal, 2) CV, and 3) the postdoctoral fellowship supervisor’s statement.

Important Information

• Please consult the information regarding postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Toronto on the website of the School of Graduate Studies .
• Canadian citizens and permanent residents must have completed their PhD requirements no later than six months after their start-date of an A&S Postdoctoral Fellowship. International applicants must have completed their PhD requirements before the start date of an A&S Postdoctoral Fellowship. In each instance, proof of PhD completion must be provided within three months of completion if the applicant did not have it in hand at the time of application. Degree completion does not mean convocation, but rather the completion of all the requirements necessary for the PhD.
• A&S Postdoctoral Fellows may not concurrently hold another postdoctoral fellowship.
• Canadian citizens and permanent resident applicants, however, are strongly encouraged to apply for the appropriate CIHR, NSERC, or SSHRC postdoctoral fellowships in addition to their Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellowship. To provide further incentive to apply to such funding agencies, if an applicant is awarded both an A&S fellowship and a CIHR/NSERC/SSHRC fellowship, A&S will provide an additional $10,000 stipend to the NSERC/SSHRC stipend and $15,000 to the CIHR stipend for each year of the fellowship.
• Employment as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto is covered by the terms of the CUPE Unit 5 Collective Agreement . The normal hours of work are 40 hours per week for a full-time postdoctoral fellow (pro-rated for those holding a partial appointment) recognizing that the needs of the employee’s research and training and the needs of the supervisor’s research program may require flexibility in the performance of the employee’s duties and hours of work.
• Requests for award interruptions for reasons that are not outlined within Article 11 (Leaves) of the CUPE Unit 5 Collective Agreement will not normally be considered.
• The University of Toronto is strongly committed to diversity within its community and especially welcomes applications from visible minority group members, women, Indigenous persons, persons with disabilities, members of sexual minority groups, and others who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

At the University of Toronto, we strive to be an equitable and inclusive community, rich with diversity, protecting the human rights of all persons, and based upon understanding and mutual respect for the dignity and worth of every person. We seek to ensure to the greatest extent possible that all students and employees enjoy the opportunity to participate as they see fit in the full range of activities that the university offers, and to achieve their full potential as members of the university community.

For information regarding the selection process, please contact: Faculty of Arts & Science Research Office [email protected]

Past Recipients of Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellowships

Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

The University of Toronto Provost's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program provides funding to increase opportunities for hiring postdoctoral fellows from underrepresented groups, specifically Indigenous to Turtle Island and/or Black researchers . These fellowships will enable postdoctoral researchers to grow their scholarly profiles, undertake academic work at the University of Toronto, and strengthen the research environment at the university with diverse perspectives.

$70,000 CDN/year for a maximum of two years (plus $5,000/year in start-up funding)

Arts & Science Deadline

March 5 (20:00 EDT)

To start the process, interested applicants should be directly in touch with potential supervisors. Applicants must secure sponsorship of a full-time supervisor, or supervisors, from the professoriate (tenured or tenure-stream) within the Faculty of Arts & Science (primary budgetary appointment in Arts & Science, St. George Campus).

Eligibility

The award is open to both domestic and international candidates.

• Identify as Indigenous to Turtle Island and/or Black;
• Have obtained a doctoral degree, at the time the fellowship commences and normally within the last five years from the start of the fellowship; and
• Not have held a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship previously.

Recipients must:

• Begin the fellowship by January 2025, following the competition;
• Be a postdoctoral employee of the University of Toronto;
• Be associated with a supervisor appointed to a graduate unit;
• Register and remain registered with the Postdoctoral Office at SGS;
• Establish an IDP (Independent Development Plan) and submit to SGS within the first three months of the fellowship. The IDP should be reviewed annually and the revised copy sent to the Postdoctoral Office at SGS; and
• Submit proof of completion of degree no later than three months after the fellowship commences if they had not fulfilled all requirements for their degree at the time of nomination.

Selection Criteria

Preference in this competition is given to nominees who have not yet held a postdoctoral fellowship.

The Evaluation Committee assesses applications using the following criteria:

Research or Scholarship Proposal

• Are the ideas put forward in the research plan innovative and/or original?
• Are the approaches and/or methodologies appropriate?
• Is the research plan relevant to the nominee’s research career objectives?
• Does the research plan have the potential of significantly advancing our understanding of the area?

Applicant Track Record

• Academic and research training received by the nominee (take an inclusive excellence lens)
• Awards or acknowledgements of academic achievement
• Scholarly activity as relevant to discipline (e.g., publications, chapters, presentations, community-engaged work, public scholarship, creative practice and related scholarly activity)
• Research accomplished to date — has the nominee started to demonstrated independence and originality? Contributions to team research?
• Quality of the nominee’s training, mentorship and supervisory activities

Scholarly Potential

• Scholarly potential in the field can be demonstrated through the nominee’s engagement as a mentor, their ability to manage research, to contribute novel ideas to their research program, to make decisions that are crucial to the success of the research program, to lead their research collaboratively, have excellent working relationships with those around them, etc.
• Will the nominee make meaningful contributions while a postdoctoral scholar at the U of T? Will the postdoctoral scholar be launched into a meaningful career trajectory?
• Does the research or scholarship plan provide evidence of the applicant’s leadership in the design and conduct of the proposed research?

Feasibility

• Is the proposed research feasible, given the resources and support available to the investigator?
• Has the supervisor demonstrated support for the scientific development of the candidate and their independent research program?
• What space, operating funds, infrastructure and/or other resources will be available to the nominee and are they adequate?
• Does the department or organization demonstrate leadership in the nominee’s chosen field?
• Will the nominee receive adequate scientific and career guidance?

Complete Program Details

Visit U of T’s School of Graduate Studies website for complete program details .

Submit applications to: [email protected]

Submission Instructions for Chairs and Academic Directors

The nomination package for each nominee should be submitted to the Arts & Science Research Office by the supervisor’s Department/Unit Chair. Each nomination package should be scanned as a single PDF file, containing all application materials in the order as listed below .

Please use file naming convention of: Last name, First name_PPFP2024

• address how the nominee meets the selection criteria, clearly state which underrepresented group (Indigenous and/or Black) the nominee identifies as, and confirm that the nominee intends to accept the offer if funding is made available;
• illustrate the synergy between the research proposal and the research goals of the supervisor/unit/department, as well as the mission of the University; and
• outline support of the nominee by describing how the applicant and faculty/unit/department will mutually benefit from this engagement.
• describe the complementarity between the research interests/background of the supervisor and nominee, how the proposed research complements the supervisor’s ongoing projects and/or new research directions, and the anticipated mutual benefits;
• reveal information specific to the field of study (e.g., benchmarks of excellence, publication norms/standards/practices, impact factor of research contributions) that would otherwise not be known outside the discipline;
• provide details regarding the applicant’s proposed research environment, clearly stating the supervisor’s and department’s commitment. Examples of commitment include (but are not limited to) mentorship, opportunities for collaboration, dissemination, and/or knowledge translation, resources (e.g., funding, facilities, personnel) that will be available to support the nominee as they carry out their proposed research; and
• illustrate the supervisor’s commitment to the applicant’s academic and professional trajectory, clearly indicating the resources and/or mentoring activities that are available through the training environment to support career development.
• Research or scholarship proposal from the nominee (max. two pages, plus up to two additional pages for references/citations);
• their professional, academic, and extracurricular experiences/achievements and how it will contribute to their training success (1/2 page); and
• how the training they expect to acquire will contribute to their productivity and to the research goals they hope to achieve. Indicate why they decided upon the proposed training location and what they expect to learn from the training experience (1/2 page).
• Nominee’s C.V. (no page restriction); and
• A short personal biography written by the nominee (max. 1/3 page), which may be used on the SGS Postdoctoral Fellows website or other communications, should they be successfully selected as a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow.

Important Links:

• Full program details

Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships Program

The Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships Program is intended to attract and retain top-tier postdoctoral talent, both nationally and internationally; develop their leadership potential; and position them for success as research leaders of tomorrow, positively contributing to Canada’s economic, social and research-based growth through a research-intensive career.

CDN $70,000/year for a maximum of two years.

Arts & Science Allocation (2023–24):

Arts & science application deadline:.

August 1 (20:00 EDT)

To start the process, interested applicants should be directly in touch with potential supervisors. Applicants must secure sponsorship of a full-time supervisor(s) from the professoriate (tenured or tenure-stream) within the Faculty of Arts & Science (primary budgetary appointment in Arts & Science, St. George Campus).

Eligibility Requirements

Applicants to the 2023–24 Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships program must fulfil or have fulfilled* all degree requirements for a PhD, PhD equivalent or health professional degree:

• between September 15, 2020 and September 30, 2024 (inclusively) and;
• before the start date of their award.

*Fulfilment of all degree requirements refers to the date you complete all the steps required for obtaining your degree, not the convocation date.

Arts & Science Submission Instructions

• The nomination package for each nominee should be submitted to the Arts & Science Research Office by the supervisor’s department chair or academic director.
• If an academic unit is submitting more than one application, the submission must include a ranked list of nominees.
• ResearchNet Application Form
• Curriculum Vitae (CCV format)
• Significance of Research Contributions
• Significance of Leadership Contributions
• Project Overview, including Lay Summary
• Research Proposal
• Supervisor Statement
• Referee Assessments
• Please use file naming convention of: Last name-First name-Banting 2023-24.

Roles and Responsibilities of Applicant and Proposed Supervisor

Below is a breakdown of who is responsible for which piece of the application before it is submitted to the academic unit for final review, approval, ranking and submission to the Arts & Science Research Office.

Applicants must complete the following:

• Curriculum Vitae. (see Application Guide Task 4)
• ResearchNet Application Form (see Application Guide Task 5 )
• Significance of Research Contributions (see Application Guide Task 7 )
• Significance of Leadership Contributions (see Application Guide Task 7 )
• Project Overview, including Lay Summary (see Application Guide Task 10 )
• Research Proposal (see Application Guide Task 10 )
• Referee letters (at least one from an arm's length assessor). (see Application Guide Task 8 )

*Applicants should direct their referees to submit a confidential copy of their assessment report directly to the supervisor's attention. These letters are required for the university’s review process. Choose carefully, ensuring that they are prepared to write supportively and in detail.

Proposed Supervisors

Proposed supervisor(s) must have a tenure-track or tenured appointment in Arts & Science (i.e., primary budgetary appointment in Arts & Science, at the St. George campus), and complete the following:

• Supervisor's statement (see Application Guide Task 10 )
• Supervisor collects the applicant referee letters and submits the complete nomination package to the department chair.

Department Chairs & Academic Directors

Department chairs/academic directors must submit the completed nomination package(s) with a ranked list of nominees.

Important Links

• School of Graduate Studies Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships Program
• Application Tips for Applicants & Supervisors (opens to a new window)

Joint Arts & Science and Max Planck Institute for Religious & Ethnic Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

The Arts & Science and Max Planck Institute for Religious & Ethnic Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowships are designed to provide advanced training to outstanding recent doctoral students working at the intersections of ethics, law, religion and politics in relation to questions of citizenship, migration and diversity. Applicants must secure sponsorship of a full-time supervisor, or supervisors, from the professoriate within the Faculty of Arts & Science (St. George campus).

Suspended until further notice.

Data Sciences Institute Postdoctoral Fellowships

The Data Sciences Institute (DSI) Postdoctoral Fellowships are designed to support multi/interdisciplinary training and collaborative research in data sciences that include faculty members from the University of Toronto and funding partner institutions. Currently, DSI Partner institutions are: Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, University Health Network, and Hospital for Sick Children.

• To be considered for the fellowship, applicants must pursue a research project that uses a data sciences focus to address major societal issues through the development of a novel methodology or the innovative application of existing approaches; and
• Applicants must identify at least two faculty members from complementary disciplinary backgrounds to serve as co-supervisors, who together can supervise the different multidisciplinary aspects of the research project.

$60,000/year plus benefits

Arts & Science Allocation :

While there is no set allocation for the Faculty of Arts & Science, A&S has set aside funding for up to five additional DSI Postdoctoral Fellowships earmarked for postdoctoral fellows who have at least one co-supervisor from A&S (a primary budgetary appointee within the tenured or tenure stream).

Undergraduate Research Opportunities

University of toronto excellence award (undergraduate students).

The University of Toronto Excellence Award (UTEA) provides opportunities for research experience at the undergraduate level in the natural sciences and engineering (NSE), social sciences and humanities (SSH), or health and life sciences (HLS) to: augment the formal research courses offered by the University of Toronto; provide undergraduate students opportunities to gain direct research experience on a faculty-led project; help students learn and appreciate the investigative methodologies of areas of particular interest; and to foster interest in and knowledge of careers in research.

Arts & Science Application Deadline

March 29 (20:00 EST)

Arts & Science Application Process

For each respective A&S academic unit (of the proposed supervisor), the undergraduate office (or delegate) must submit all UTEA applications packages as single PDFs (one per application) to: [email protected] .

Complete applications include:

• Part 1 – Student personal data
• Part II – Proposed supervisor and research project
• Student transcript (ROSI or e-transcript)

Arts & Science 2024 allocation:

• 39 UTEAs in natural sciences and engineering
• 41 UTEAs in social sciences and humanities
• 16 UTEAs in health and life sciences
• Applications will not be accepted from students or supervisors directly.
• If the supervisor has a home academic unit outside Arts & Science (St. George), the application needs to be submitted through the relevant non-A&S department/division.

Award Value

UTEAs are valued at a minimum of $7,500. Of this minimum total, $5,250 is provided by the university and must be matched by a minimum of $2,250 from the student’s supervisor or the academic unit. Any supplement above this level may be set at the supervisor's or department's discretion.

Award Duration

The award period is 14 full weeks during the summer term, beginning no earlier than May 1, 2024, and ending no later than September 30, 2024.

Eligibility of Students

To be eligible to hold a UTEA, a student must:

• be a Canadian citizen, permanent resident of Canada, or foreign student with valid student visa for the full summer work term;
• be registered in a bachelor’s degree program at the University of Toronto either as 1) a full-time student, or 2) a part-time student only if the UTEA will be held during the student’s final session and the student requires only a part-time course load to complete their degree;
• be registered either at the time of application or in the term immediately before the award start date. Graduating students may hold an award in the term immediately following the completion of their undergraduate program, as long as they have not started a graduate program; and
• have obtained a cumulative average of "B+" or higher. For students in higher years, this average can be applied to the best two years of study.

Eligible students may already hold a bachelor's degree in any discipline and be studying towards a second bachelor's degree in NSE, SSH, or HLS.

A student is ineligible to hold a UTEA if they:

• are currently enrolled in an undergraduate professional degree program in the health sciences (e.g., MD, DDS, BScN);
• hold a degree above a bachelor’s in NSE, HLS, or SSH; or
• are currently enrolled in graduate studies

Please also note:

• A student may only apply for one UTEA opportunity per year.
• A student may not concurrently hold a UTEA and an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) or other equivalent summer research award.
• Preference will be given to second- and third-year students.
• A student may hold a maximum of 3 UTEAs throughout their university career, with priority given to first-time applicants.

Eligibility of Faculty Supervisors

To be eligible as a UTEA supervisor in the Arts & Science competition, a faculty member must be:

• A primary budgetary appointee in Arts & Science (St. George campus), and
• A principal investigator (PI), either hold an active NSERC, SSHRC, or CIHR grant, or have a pending application with one of those agencies at the start date of the UTEA (May 1st)

A faculty member can be the supervisor on a maximum of 2 UTEAs per year.

Research Expenses and Fieldwork

The entire UTEA funding is to be awarded to the student as a stipend. Any additional costs, e.g. supplies, services, fieldwork (travel expenses) are the responsibility of the supervisor or the department.

The University of Toronto embraces diversity and is building a culture of belonging that increases our capacity to effectively address and serve the interests of our global community. We strongly encourage applications from Indigenous Peoples, Black and racialized persons, women, persons with disabilities, and people of diverse sexual and gender identities.

Divisions are expected to post opportunities widely to attract a broad/diverse pool of students. Academic divisions/units must establish a peer review committee to make award decisions. Academic units make award decisions through their own competitive, peer-review process. In the absence of such a committee, academic divisions can rely on their executive committee or other existing committee of faculty members.

Review committees are expected to demonstrate a strong commitment to the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion, and to adopt equitable and consistent peer review processes. Committees must develop and consistently apply predetermined selection criteria that align with information found in the posting and account for and not penalize academic interruptions/leaves/extenuating circumstances.

Activity Report

It is the responsibility of the student to submit a Research Report no later than October 1, 2024, to Cheryl Nash, Research Funding Officer ( [email protected] ). The report template will be distributed with award letters.

Visit the University Registrar's Office website for complete program details and materials .

CIHR and SSHRC Black Student Undergraduate Student Research Awards

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) have each introduced their respective Black Student Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRAs) program. Modelled on NSERC’s USRA program, the goal of both CIHR’s and SSHRC’s program is to provide research experience that complements the degree program that undergraduate students are pursuing, which may lead them to consider graduate studies in the fields of health and life sciences (CIHR) or the social sciences and humanities (SSHRC).

• CIHR and SSHRC’s Black Student USRA awards are only for Black Students.
• When students are completing their portion of the USRA application, they will confirm that they self-identify as Black, and confirm their awareness that this declaration will be shared with the institution and the funding agency.
• For 2024, the University of Toronto can select 22 CIHR Black Student USRAs and 9 SSHRC Black Student USRAs.
• As a result of the allocation provided to U of T, an internal selection process will be used as outlined in the sections below.

Program Overview

• Duration: 16 full consecutive weeks in the summer term (between May 1st and September 1st).
• Value: $6,000 from the funding agency with a mandatory match from the university (usually from the supervisor’s other research funds) of a minimum of $1,500.
• Any supplement above this level may be set at the discretion of the department or the USRA supervisor.
• Travel allowances are not permitted under the USRA program. Any costs of fieldwork and related expenses (including travel) are ineligible.
• USRAs do not include provision for paid vacation days.
• Awards cannot be deferred to the following summer term.
• Tenure: Both the USRA Awardee and their faculty supervisor must be located at the same university during the tenure of the award. USRAs cannot be transferred to another university.

Eligible Students:

• Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada, or a Protected Person under subsection 95(2) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (Canada), as of the deadline date for applications at the institution.
• Self-identify as Black on the online application form.
• Registered either full-time or part-time (at the time of application) in a bachelor's degree program in at least one of the two terms immediately before holding the award. (A student is still eligible if they already hold a bachelor’s degree, as long as they are currently studying towards a second bachelor’s degree.)
• Obtained a cumulative average of at least a grade of B- over the previous year of study (please contact the RSO about any GPA requirement questions you may have).
• Has completed, at the time of application , a minimum of two academic terms/semesters. (First year students are not eligible.)
• If graduating, is in the term immediately following the completion of their undergraduate program requirements and has not started a program of graduate studies (at U of T, students can hold a USRA in the summer immediately following their final spring term).
• Will be engaged on a full-time basis in research and development activities during the award tenure. (USRA award holders are permitted to take up to a maximum two courses during the award term. Thesis research during the award term is not permitted.)
• Will not receive academic credits for research done during the USRA term.

Ineligible Students:

• Foreign or international students.
• Currently enrolled in an undergraduate professional degree program in the health sciences (e.g., MD, BScPhm, DDS, BScN) (is not applicable to CIHR USRAs).
• Cannot be currently registered or have been previously registered, at any time, in a graduate program in the same field of study.

Eligible Supervisor:

• Can independently supervise students, as per their appointment with the university.
• Meets CIHR or SSHRC eligibility to hold research grants ( CIHR eligibility , or for SSHRC eligibility , see “Applicant”).

Ineligible Supervisor:

• Postdoctoral fellows and graduate/PhD students are not eligible USRA supervisors.

Eligible Project:

• Research proposed for the SSHRC or CIHR USRA must fall within the respective agency’s mandate.

Ineligible Project:

• Research that falls outside the respective agency’s mandate.

Application Completion & Submission Instructions

• CIHR and SSHRC Black Student USRA applications are completed on NSERC’s online system. Applicants need to choose either CIHR or SSHRC when completing the application.
• The student application ( Form 202 Part I ) and the student’s transcript (which need not be an official copy and can be an electronic copy of academic history from ACORN), which is attached to their portion of the application; and
• The faculty supervisor application ( Form 202 Part II ).
• Both Form 202 Part I and II and the student transcript must be exported into a single PDF by the supervisor to be submitted to the correct administrative contact in the supervisor’s home academic unit.
• TIP: The faculty supervisor will need to input a reference number into their application that is automatically generated in the student’s application. For this reason, the student must complete their application portion first and send the reference number to the faculty supervisor. Once the supervisor inputs the reference number into their application, the student and faculty applications will be linked together.

Useful Resources for Applying:

• Instructions for USRA applications
• Completing a USRA application  (NSERC log-in page)
• USRA program details
• For both CIHR and SSHRC Black student USRAs, please contact Susan Bustos at [email protected] .

For Students:

• Complete the latest version of t he application form (Form 202, Part I) online. Follow the instructions and adhere to NSERC’s General Presentation Guidelines. Handwritten applications are not accepted .
• Identify whether this application is for CIHR or SSHRC based on the field of study that most closely aligns with either agency’s mandate.
• Be sure to complete the self-identification section in Part I of Form 202.
• Attach a PDF copy of your transcripts (or the university e-transcripts or the most recent academic history report from ACORN) to the application form (Part I).
• Once Form 202 Part I has been completed, provide your supervisor with the reference number generated by the system so that they may complete Part II of the form.
• Once both parts of the form have been completed and verified by the supervisor, the supervisor exports a copy to PDF format.
• Submit the application to the Department or Academic unit contact that corresponds to where the supervisor is based (the supervisor’s home academic unit where their primary appointment is held).
• If any additional changes are made by either the student or the supervisor, the one not making the change will need to go back online and verify in the online system in order to re-submit the edited application. Please ensure your supervisor exports the modified application into a PDF file to submit to the correct administrative contact in the supervisor’s home academic unit.

For Supervisors:

• Once the student has completed Form 202 Part I online on NSERC’s system, they must provide you with the reference number generated by the system. You will not be able to complete Part II of Form 202 online without the reference number .
• Log on to NSERC’s online system or create a new account and complete Part II of Form 202.
• Once all the modules of Form 202 have been completed, you must go back to the ‘My Portfolio’ page and select Verify , which will assess whether all required information has been entered. Once verification is complete, the status of the application will change to " Completed ".
• No changes should be made to the form after it has been “Completed.” If you need to update any information, contact the NSERC On-Line Services Helpdesk. Once both parts of the form have been completed and verified, any additional changes made by either party—you or the student—will require the other party’s verification and confirmation in the online system.
• Export the application to PDF and submit it to the correct administrative contact in the supervisor’s home academic unit.

For Departments:

• All applications must be submitted by academic units (undergraduate office or delegate) to the A&S Research Office.
• Each application must be accompanied by the eligibility checklist signed by the chair (or delegate) confirming eligibility.

Submission Instructions for the Undergraduate Office (or Delegates ):

All USRA applications must be submitted to the Arts & Science research office. Each application must include a single PDF file, containing all application materials (Form 202 Part 1, Form 202 Part 2, student transcript) as well as the completed and signed eligibility checklist.

Arts & Science deadline:  Monday, March 25, 2024 Submit applications to: [email protected]

• Eligibility Checklist for CIHR and SSHRC Black Student USRAs
• Research Services Office Funding Opportunity webpage

Research Opportunities Program (Undergraduate Students)

The purpose of the Research Opportunities Program is to provide an opportunity for degree students in their second and third year in the Faculty of Arts & Science to work on the research project of a professor in return for 299Y or 399Y course credit. The Program is completely voluntary and serves to enhance the fundamental connection between teaching and research in a research intensive university.

Timeline: Fall/Winter and Summer term course offerings.

Research Excursions Program (Undergraduate Students)

The Research Excursions Program (REP) provides small groups of second- and third-year students the opportunity to contribute to faculty research in an off-campus setting, in Canada or abroad. These group projects are based on experiential learning and are supervised by an Arts & Science faculty member.

Timeline: Applications accepted in the fall

Value: $5,000 - $15,000

Other Trainee Research Opportunities

Mitacs research training opportunities.

Mitacs is a national, not-for-profit organization that supports the creation of research and training programs in Canada. Mitacs programs financially assist academic researchers in providing on-the-job research training opportunities for students and post doctorates. Support is available for collaborations with Canadian and international industry and not-for-profit organizations. Mitacs applications are pre-approved when included in successful Tri-Agency grant application budgets.

Learn more about Mitacs programs that can be used for recruiting trainees . Please also review the searchable database of current Mitacs Accelerate/Elevate opportunities .

View a curated list of Mitacs Accelerate opportunities

Arts & Science Mitacs Contacts:

Hayley McKay Advisor — Toronto Business Development [email protected]

Christopher Dixon Senior Advisor Strategic Partnerships [email protected]

Arts & Science Research Services:

Glaucia Lima (Science Units) Arts & Science Research Partnership and Business Development Officer [email protected]

Stephanie Fisher (Social Science & Humanities Units) Arts & Science Social Science Partnered Research Officer [email protected]

International Doctoral Clusters

A joint partnership between the School of Graduate Studies (SGS) and the Office of the Vice President International (OVPI), the program forms a foundational part of OVPI’s strategy for building Global Research Alliances with priority global peer institutions.

• SGS and OVPI will provide one third of the budget, up to a maximum of $33,000 CAD/year (up to three years) for the associated mobility costs for U of T students, PDFs and faculty.
• The remaining 2/3rds of the budget must come from within and/or beyond the university (e.g. department, division, Tri-Agency, industry, philanthropy etc.).
• Subject to a successful internal review, SGS/OVPI funding may be renewed for a maximum of two further years.

U of T applicants must have a faculty appointment with U of T and be eligible to hold research funding.

Eligible Expenditures

IDCs are designed to support expenses related to the mobility and research collaborations of U of T graduate students, postdoctoral fellows (PDFs) and PIs.

• Mobility expenses include costs incurred by U of T PIs, graduate students and PDFs for economy class flights, accommodation, meals, local transportation, etc.
• Collaboration expenses include the costs of hosting workshops at U of T, as well as online communication platforms, virtual workshops and lab group meetings, virtual journal clubs, and online open access lab notebooks.

Faculty of Arts & Science Review and Support Process

The Faculty of Arts & Science anticipates funding up to three A&S-led IDCs per fiscal year (up to a maximum Divisional contribution of $15,000 CAD/year per IDC). Requests for larger Divisional contributions will be considered on a case by case basis.

Proposals for partial IDC funding will also be considered for A&S matching funding (i.e. A&S led proposals where PIs have secured more than 1/3 of the funding from external funding sources, or proposals led in other U of T Divisions, on which A&S faculty members are Co-PIs).

In order to facilitate this for the Faculty of Arts & Science, the Vice Dean Graduate asks that interested faculty members, teams, and unit Chair(s) and Director(s) consult the A&S Office of Graduate Studies early in the application development process. Contact [email protected] .

IDCs should be aligned with A&S Strategic Priorities and/or those of the host units and be undertaken in partnership with priority peer institutions (i.e. there is potential for a broad-based institution-institution partnership with globally recognized institution(s).

IDC proposals must have secured at least one third of its funding from a combination of unit funding (cash) and/or external funding (tri-agency funding, corporate, philanthropy) that directly supports eligible IDC expenses for U of T participants.

IDC proposals must have confirmation that the financial resources of participating PIs from partnering institutions are in place to support their travel costs and those of their graduate students and PDFs for coming to the U of T.

A&S will consider requests for additional top-up funding for IDC Proposals with peer-institutions in lower and middle-income countries (LMICs), where additional funding is needed to support the mobility and collaboration expenses of PIs and trainees at the partner institution. Where possible, PIs will be expected to leverage external funding sources (i.e. peer-reviewed grant funding, philanthropy, etc.) to support these costs.

To be considered for A&S funding, proposals must demonstrate plans for:

• Collaborative knowledge creation & transfer.
• Funding: Leverage larger sources of external funding to sustain partnership.
• Attracting top global talent (doctoral students, PDFs etc.).
• Enhancing the global exposure of the U of T community.
• Building sustainable multidisciplinary global knowledge networks.

To be considered for A&S funding, PIs must submit the completed IDC proposal for review no later than two weeks in advance of the corresponding VP International deadline. A&S proposals will be reviewed four times per year (i.e., February 1 for the February 15 competition, May 1 for May 15 competition, September 1 for September 15 competition, and December 1 for December 15 competition).

Completed proposals must be submitted to [email protected] prior to submission to the OVPI.

View program details and application forms

• Experiential Learning
• Internal Resources
• Awards & Nominations
• Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships Application Tips
• Past Recipients of A&S Postdoctoral Fellowships
• Teaching in A&S
• Request new password

Towards Secure and Efficient Scientific Research Project Management Using Consortium Blockchain

• Published: 07 April 2020
• Volume 93 , pages 323–332, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

• Qingfeng Meng 1 , 2 &
• Rungeng Sun 3  

926 Accesses

8 Citations

Explore all metrics

With the development of the knowledge economy, science and technology play an increasingly crucial role in social development. Investment from the government and the enterprise in scientific research has increased significantly, and the number of scientific research projects has also shown an obvious upward trend. Due to the lack of a standardized and unified scientific research project management program, many projects are overdue or even failed, and project fund management is confused. Besides, output results are limited and the actual conversion rate is low. In this paper, we propose a scientific research project management system based on consortium blockchain. Firstly, the process of scientific research project management is standardized. According to this specification, we then design a scientific research project management system in line with consortium blockchain, the smart contract, and the IPFS system. By using these technologies, we have coped with two major problems in traditional scientific project management: breach of contract and confidentiality. The simulation results show that compared with the conventional scientific research project management, the scheme proposed in this paper can significantly enhance the efficiency and the success rate of the project, and reduce the time and manpower consumed in the process of project implementation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

AVEI: A Scientific Data Sharing Framework Based on Blockchain

Application of Blockchain Technology in Data Management of University Scientific Research

Scientific Workflows Management with Blockchain: A Survey

Ahlemann, F., Arbi, F.E., Kaiser, M.G., Heck, A. (2013). A process framework for theoretically grounded prescriptive research in the project management field. International Journal of Project Management , 31 (1), 43–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2012.03.008 . The International Network for Business and Management Journals (INBAM) 2012.

Article   Google Scholar  

Ali, M.S., Dolui, K., Antonelli, F. (2017). Iot data privacy via blockchains and ipfs. In Proceedings of the seventh international conference on the internet of things (p. 14): ACM.

Benet, J. (2014). Ipfs-content addressed, versioned, p2p file system. arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1407.3561 .

Brito, I.P., Tropaldi, L., Carbonari, C.A., Velini, E.D. (2018). Hormetic effects of glyphosate on plants. Pest Management Science , 74 (5), 1064–1070.

Christidis, K., & Devetsikiotis, M. (2016). Blockchains and smart contracts for the internet of things. IEEE Access , 4 , 2292–2303.

Crosby, M., Pattanayak, P., Verma, S., Kalyanaraman, V., et al. (2016). Blockchain technology: beyond bitcoin. Applied Innovation , 2 (6-10), 71.

Google Scholar  

Dai, P., Mahi, N., Earls, J., Norta, A. (2017). Smart-contract value-transfer protocols on a distributed mobile application platform. https://qtum.org/uploads/files/cf6d69348ca50dd985b60425ccf282f3.pdf p. 10.

Eberle, A., Meyer, H., Rosen, D. (2011). A comparison of pmi and ipma approaches. Analysis to support the project management standard and certification system selection.

Gao, F., Zhu, L., Shen, M., Sharif, K., Wan, Z., Ren, K. (2018). A blockchain-based privacy-preserving payment mechanism for vehicle-to-grid networks. IEEE Network , 32 (6), 184–192.

Guo, Y., & Liang, C. (2016). Blockchain application and outlook in the banking industry. Financial Innovation , 2 (1), 24.

Hahn, A., Singh, R., Liu, C.C., Chen, S. (2017). Smart contract-based campus demonstration of decentralized transactive energy auctions. In 2017 IEEE Power & energy society innovative smart grid technologies conference (ISGT) (pp. 1–5): IEEE.

Hope, J. (2018). Issue secure digital credentials using technology behind bitcoin. The Successful Registrar , 17 (11), 1–4.

Hukkinen, T., Mattila, J., Ilomäki, J., Seppälä, T., et al. (2017). A blockchain application in energy. ETLA Reports , 71.

Xu, J., Xue, K., Li, S., Tian, H., Hong, J., Hong, P., Yu, N. (2019). Healthchain: a blockchain-based privacy preserving scheme for large-scale health data. IEEE Internet of Things Journal , 6 (5), 8770–8781.

Jamali, G., & Oveisi, M. (2016). A study on project management based on pmbok and prince2. Modern Applied Science , 10 (6), 142–146.

Jessup, C.B., Moore, S.C., Palozzi, G., Stefanski, P.A., Trisko, S.D., Wilkie, L.E. (2010). Method, system and program product for assessing a product development project employing a computer-implemented evaluation tool. US Patent 7,680,682.

Jirgensons, M., & Kapenieks, J. (2018). Blockchain and the future of digital learning credential assessment and management. Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability , 20 (1), 145–156.

Shen, M., Ma, B., Zhu, L., Mijumbi, R., Du, X., Hu, J. (2017). Cloud-based approximate constrained shortest distance queries over encrypted graphs with privacy protection. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security , 13 (4), 940–953.

Matos, S., & Lopes, E. (2013). Prince2 or pmbok–a question of choice. Procedia Technology , 9 , 787–794.

McCorry, P., Shahandashti, S.F., Hao, F. (2017). A smart contract for boardroom voting with maximum voter privacy. In International conference on financial cryptography and data security (pp. 357–375): Springer.

Mir, F.A., & Pinnington, A.H. (2014). Exploring the value of project management: linking project management performance and project success. International Journal of Project Management , 32 (2), 202–217.

Nakamoto, S. (2008). Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf . (cited on pp. 15 and 87) (2017).

Savelyev, A. (2017). Contract law 2.0:‘smart’contracts as the beginning of the end of classic contract law. Information & Communications Technology Law , 26 (2), 116–134.

Shen, M., Deng, Y., Zhu, L., Du, X., Guizani, N. (2019). Privacy-preserving image retrieval for medical iot systems: a blockchain-based approach. IEEE Network , 33 (5), 27–33.

Shen, M., Tang, X., Zhu, L., Du, X., Guizani, M. (2019). Privacy-preserving support vector machine training over blockchain-based encrypted iot data in smart cities. IEEE Internet of Things Journal .

Shen, M., Zhang, J., Zhu, L., Xu, K., Tang, X., Liu, H. (2019). Security svm training over vertically-partitioned datasets using consortium blockchain for vehicular social networks. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology , 1–10.

Toljaga-Nikolić, D., Obradović, V., Mihić, M. (2011). Certification of project managers based on ipma and pmi models through conforming to iso 17024: 2003 1. Management (1820-0222) (59).

Turk, ž, & Klinc, R. (2017). Potentials of blockchain technology for construction management. Procedia Engineering , 196 , 638–645.

Guan, Z., Zhang, Y., Zhu, L., Wu, L., Yu, S. (2019). Effect: An efficient flexible privacy-preserving data aggregation scheme with authentication in smart grid. Science China Information Sciences , 62 (3), 32103.

Guan, Z., Liu, X., Wu, L., Wu, J., Xu, R., Zhang, J., Li, Y. (2020). Cross-lingual multi-keyword rank search with semantic extension over encrypted data. Information Sciences , 514 , 523–540.

Zhang, Y., Kasahara, S., Shen, Y., Jiang, X., Wan, J. (2018). Smart contract-based access control for the internet of things. IEEE Internet of Things Journal , 6 (2), 1594–1605.

Zheng, Z., Xie, S., Dai, H., Chen, X., Wang, H. (2017). An overview of blockchain technology: architecture, consensus, and future trends. In 2017 IEEE International congress on big data (BigData congress) (pp. 557–564): IEEE.

Zheng, Z., Xie, S., Dai, H.N., Chen, X., Wang, H. (2018). Blockchain challenges and opportunities: a survey. International Journal of Web and Grid Services , 14 (4), 352–375.

Zhu, L., Tang, X., Shen, M., Du, X., Guizani, M. (2018). Privacy-preserving ddos attack detection using cross-domain traffic in software defined networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications , 36 (3), 628–643.

Qiu, M., Sha, E.H.-M., Liu, M., Lin, M., Hua, S., Yang, L.T. (2008). Energy minimization with loop fusion and multi-functional-unit scheduling for multidimensional dsp. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing , 68 (4), 443–455.

Li, J., Ming, Z., Qiu, M., Quan, G., Qin, X., Chen, T. (2011). Resource allocation robustness in multi-core embedded systems with inaccurate information. Journal of Systems Architecture , 57 (9), 840–849.

Shao, Z., Xue, C., Zhuge, Q., Qiu, M., Xiao, B., Sha, E.H.-M. (2006). Security protection and checking for embedded system integration against buffer overflow attacks via hardware/software. IEEE Transactions on Computers , 55 (4), 443–453.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Tarim University, Xinjiang, China

Qingfeng Meng

National Natural Science Foundation of China, Beijing, China

The School of Computer Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

Rungeng Sun

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qingfeng Meng .

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Meng, Q., Sun, R. Towards Secure and Efficient Scientific Research Project Management Using Consortium Blockchain. J Sign Process Syst 93 , 323–332 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-020-01529-y

Download citation

Received : 15 January 2020

Revised : 16 February 2020

Accepted : 03 March 2020

Published : 07 April 2020

Issue Date : March 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-020-01529-y

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Research project management
• Smart contracts
• Consortium blockchain
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• My Account Login
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Open access
• Published: 21 September 2021

The value of research funding for knowledge creation and dissemination: A study of SNSF Research Grants

• Rachel Heyard   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7531-4333 1 &
• Hanna Hottenrott   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1584-8106 2 , 3  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  8 , Article number:  217 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

10k Accesses

29 Citations

54 Altmetric

Metrics details

• Science, technology and society

This study investigates the effect of competitive project funding on researchers’ publication outputs. Using detailed information on applicants at the Swiss National Science Foundation and their proposal evaluations, we employ a case-control design that accounts for individual heterogeneity of researchers and selection into treatment (e.g. funding). We estimate the impact of the grant award on a set of output indicators measuring the creation of new research results (the number of peer-reviewed articles), its relevance (number of citations and relative citation ratios), as well as its accessibility and dissemination as measured by the publication of preprints and by altmetrics. The results show that the funding program facilitates the publication and dissemination of additional research amounting to about one additional article in each of the three years following the funding. The higher citation metrics and altmetrics by funded researchers suggest that impact goes beyond quantity and that funding fosters dissemination and quality.

Similar content being viewed by others

Interdisciplinary researchers attain better long-term funding performance

Ye Sun, Giacomo Livan, … Vito Latora

Winners and runners-up alike?—a comparison between awardees and special mention recipients of the most reputable science award in Colombia via a composite citation indicator

Julián D. Cortés & Daniel A. Andrade

Scientific prizes and the extraordinary growth of scientific topics

Ching Jin, Yifang Ma & Brian Uzzi

Introduction

Scientific research generated at universities and research organizations plays an important role in knowledge-based societies (Fleming et al., 2019 ; Poege et al., 2019 ). The created knowledge drives scientific and technological progress and spills over to the broader economy and society (Hausman, 2021 ; Jaffe, 1989 ; Stephan, 2012 ). The growing importance of science-based industries puts additional emphasis on the question of how scientific knowledge is generated and whether public funding can accelerate knowledge creation and its diffusion. In an effort to promote scientific research, grant competitions as a means of allocating public research funding have become an important policy tool (Froumin and Lisyutkin, 2015 ; Oancea, 2016 ). The goal is to incentivize the generation of ideas and to allocate funding such that it is most likely to deliver scientific progress and eventually economic and social returns Footnote 1 . In light of these developments, it is important to understand whether research grants indeed facilitate additional, relevant research outputs and whether these are accessible to the public.

In particular individual-level analyses are highly interesting since most grants are awarded to individual researchers or to small teams of researchers. The estimation of the effect that a grant has on research outputs is, however, challenging. The main difficulties are the availability of information on all applicants (not only winners) as well as detailed information about the individual researchers (demographic information). Moreover, the non-randomness of the award of a grant through the selection of the most able researchers into the funding program results in the non-comparability of funded and non-funded researchers. The fact that researchers can receive multiple grants at the same time as well as several consecutive grants further challenges the estimation of effects from funding (Jaffe, 2002 ). Another difficulty stems from finding appropriate measures for research output (Oancea, 2016 ). Publications and citations are easy to count, but likely draw an incomplete picture of research impact, its dissemination and the extent to which funded research contributes to public debates. Moreover, both publication and citation patterns as well as funding requirements are highly field-dependent which makes output analyses in mixed samples or inter-disciplinary programs difficult.

In this study, we aim to quantify the effect of the Swiss National Science Foundation’s (SNSF) Footnote 2 project funding (PF) grants on the individual researcher in terms of future scientific publications and their dissemination. Our analyses is based on detailed information on both grants and awardees covering 20,476 research project grants submitted during the period 2005 and 2019. This study adds to previous work in several dimensions. By focusing on the population of applicants which constitutes a more homogeneous set of researchers than when comparing grant winners to non-applicants and by accounting of individual characteristics of the applicants, our study results are less prone to overlook confounding factors affecting both the likelihood to win a grant as well as research outputs. Information on the evaluation scores submitted in the peer-review process of the grant proposals allows us to compare researchers with similarly rated proposals. In other words, by comparing winning applicants to non-winners and by taking into account the evaluation scores that their applications receive, we can estimate the causal effect of the grant on output while considering that both research ideas, as well as grant writing efforts (and skills), are required for winning a grant. By studying a long time period and accounting for the timing of research grants and outcomes, we can further take into account that there are learning effects from the grant writing itself even for unsuccessful applicants (Ayoubi et al., 2019 ). To benchmark our results to previous studies, we first investigate the impact of grants on publication outputs. In addition, we consider preprints which have become an important mode of disseminating research results quickly but received so far no attention in the research of funding effects. Preprints do not undergo peer-review (Berg et al., 2016 ; Serghiou and Ioannidis, 2018 ), but help researchers to communicate their results to their community and to secure priority of discovery.

This study goes beyond previous work that mainly considered citation-weighted publication counts, by measuring impact in a researcher’s field of study by relative citation ratios (RCR) and field citation ratios (FCR). These metrics account for field-specific citation patterns. Additionally, we explicitly explore researchers’ altmetric scores as a measure of attention, research visibility, and accessibility of research outcomes beyond academia. Altmetrics reflect media coverage, citations on Wikipedia and in public policy documents, on research blogs and in bookmarks of reference managers like Mendeley, as well as mentions on social networks such as Twitter. While altmetrics may reflect fashionable or provocative research, they may indicate accessible insights disseminated through the increasingly important online discussion of research and may therefore measure the general outreach of research (Warren et al., 2017 ). Although they are a potentially important measure of dissemination to the wider public and therefore of research impact in the age of digital communication (Bornmann, 2014 ; Konkiel, 2016 ; Lăzăroiu, 2017 ), the effect of funding on altmetrics has not been investigated so far.

Finally, by explicitly investigating outputs over several years after funding, our study contributes new insights on the persistency of effects. Since a large share of project funding typically goes into wages of doctoral and post-doctoral researchers which require training and learning on the job, there may be a considerable time lag between the start of the project and the publication of any research results and an underestimation of output effects when considering only immediate outcomes.

The results from our analysis based on different estimation methods show that grant-winning researchers publish about one additional peer-reviewed publication more per year in the 3 years following funding than comparable but unsuccessful applicants. Moreover, these publications are also influential as measured by the number of citations that they receive later on. SNSF PF seems to promote timely dissemination as indicated by the higher number of published preprints and researchers’ higher altmetrics scores. The funding impact is particularly high for young(er) researchers as well as for researchers at a very late career stage when funding keeps output levels high. These results add new insights to the international study of funding effects which provided partially ambiguous findings as our review in the next section illustrates. In summary, the results presented in the following stress the important role played by project funding for research outcomes and hence for scientific progress. Institutional funding alone does not appear to facilitate successful research to the same extent as targeted grants which complement institutional core funds.

The impact of funding on research outcomes

The impact of competitive research funding on knowledge generation (typically proxied by scientific publications) has been studied in different contexts and at multiple levels: the institutional level, the research group or laboratory, and the level of the individual researcher. At the level of the university, Adams and Griliches ( 1998 ) find a positive elasticity of scientific publications to university funding. Payne ( 2002 ) and Payne and Siow ( 2003 ), using congressional earmarks and appropriation committees as instruments for research funding, present similar results. They show that a $1 million increase in funding yields 10–16 additional scientific articles. Wahls ( 2018 ) analyses the impact of project grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States and finds positive institution-level returns (in terms of publications and citation) to funding which, however, diminish at higher levels of funding.

At the laboratory level, the results are rather inconclusive so far which is likely due to heterogeneity in unobserved lab characteristics and the variety of grants and resources that typically fund lab-level research. An analysis of an Italian biotechnology funding program by Arora et al. ( 1998 ) finds a positive average elasticity of research output to funding, but with a stronger impact on the highest quality research groups. These findings, however, seem to be specific to engineering and biotechnology. Carayol and Matt ( 2004 ) included a broader set of fields and did not find a strong link between competitive research funding and lab-level outputs.

At the level of the individual researcher, Arora and Gambardella ( 2005 ) find that research funding from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) in the field of Economics has a positive effect on publication outcomes (in terms of publication success in highly ranked journals) for younger researchers. For more advanced principle investigators (PIs between 5 and 15 years since PhD), however, they do not find a significant effect of NSF funding when taking the project evaluation into account. Jacob and Lefgren ( 2011 ) study personal research funding from the NIH and find that grants resulted in about one additional publication over the next 5 years. These results are close to the estimated effect from public grants of about one additional publication in a fixed post-grant window in a sample of Engineering professors in Germany (Hottenrott and Thorwarth, 2011 ). Likewise, a study on Canadian researchers in nanotechnology (Beaudry and Allaoui, 2012 ) documents a significant positive relationship between public grants and the number of subsequently published articles.

More recent studies considered output effects both in terms of quantity and quality or impact. Evaluating the impact of funding by the Chilean National Science and Technology Research Fund on research outputs by the PIs, Benavente et al. ( 2012 ) find a positive impact in terms of a number of publications of about two additional publications, but no impact in terms of citations to these publications. In contrast to this, Tahmooresnejad and Beaudry ( 2019 ) show that there is also an influence of public grants (unlike private sector funding) on the number of citations for nanotechnology researchers in Canada. In addition, Hottenrott and Lawson ( 2017 ) find that grants from public research funders in the United Kingdom contribute to publication numbers (about one additional publication per year) as well as to research impact (measured by citations to these publications) even when grants from other private sector sources are accounted for. Results for a sample of Slovenian researchers analyzed by Mali et al. ( 2017 ), however, suggest that public grants result in ‘excellent publications’ Footnote 3 only if researchers’ funding comes mostly from one source.

Explicitly looking at research novelty Footnote 4 , Wang et al. ( 2018 ) find that projects funded by competitive funds in Japan have on average higher novelty than projects funded through institutional funding. However, this only holds for senior and male researchers. For junior female researchers, competitive project funding has a negative relation to novelty.

In a study on Switzerland-based researchers, Ayoubi et al. ( 2019 ) find, in a sample of 775 grant applications for special collaborative, multi-disciplinary and long-term projects, that participating in the funding competition does indeed foster collaborative research with co-applicants. For grant-winners, they observe a lower average number of citations received per paper compared to non-winners (not controlling for other sources of funding that the non-winners receive). The authors relate this finding to the complexity of such interdisciplinary projects, the cost of collaboration, and the fact that also applicants who do not eventually win this particular type of grant publish more as a result of learning from grant writing or through funding obtained from alternative sources.

By studying grants distributed via the main Swiss research funding agency, we are capturing the vast majority of competitive research grants in the country. The Swiss research funding system is characterized by a relatively strong centralization of research funding distribution with the SNSF accounting by far for the largest share of the external research funding of universities (Jonkers and Zacharewicz, 2016 ; Schmidt, 2008 ) Footnote 5 . To account for major sources outside of Switzerland such as from the European Research Council (ERC), we collected information on Swiss-based researchers who received such funding during our period of analysis.

Empirical model of funding and research outputs

All of the following is based on the assumption that academic researchers strive to make tangible contributions to their fields of research. The motivations for doing so can be diverse and heterogeneous ranging from career incentives to peer recognition (Franzoni et al., 2011 ). We also assume that producing these outputs requires resources (personnel, materials, equipment) and hence researchers have incentives to apply for grants to fund their research. However, research output, that is the success of a researcher in producing results and the frequency with which this happens, also depends on researcher characteristics, characteristics of the research field and the home institution. Research success is also typically path-dependent following a success-breeds-success pattern. Thus, we build on the assumption that a researcher who generates an idea for a research project files a grant application to obtain funding to pursue the project. If the application succeeds, the researcher will spend the grant money and may or may not produce research outputs. The uncertainty is inherent to the research process. The funding agency screens funding proposals and commissions expert reviews to assess the funding worthiness of the application. If the submitted proposal received an evaluation that is sufficiently good in comparison to the other proposals, funding is granted in accordance with the available funding amount. This implies that even in case of a rejected grant proposal the researcher may pursue the project idea, but without these dedicated resources available. In many instances, funding decisions are made at the margin, with some winning projects being only marginally better than non-wining projects (Fang and Casadevall, 2016 ; Graves et al., 2011 ; Neufeld et al., 2013 ). If the funding itself has indeed an effect on research outcomes, we would expect that the funded researcher is more successful in generating outputs both in terms of quantity and quality.

In addition to resource-driven effects, there may also be direct dissemination incentives related to public project funding. On the one hand, funding agencies may encourage or even require the dissemination of any results from the funded project. On the other hand, the researchers may have incentives to publish research outcomes to signal project success to the funding agency and win reputation gains valuable for future proposal assessments.

While estimating the contribution of funding to research outputs measured by different indicators, we have to take into consideration that the estimation of the funding effect requires assumptions about output generation by researchers. The extent to which the output produced can be attributed to the funding itself also depends on the econometric model used (Silberzahn et al., 2018 ). We, therefore, take a quantitative multi-method approach taking up and adding to methods applied in previous related studies. Comparing the results from different estimation methods also allows an assessment of the sensitivity of our conclusions to specific modeling assumptions. In particular, we estimate longitudinal regression models which aim to account for unobserved heterogeneity between researchers. In addition, we use non-parametric matching methods to explicitly model the selectivity in the grant awarding process.

Mixed effects models

We define P i t as the research output of researcher i in year t and F i t −1 as a binary variable indicating whether this same researcher i had access to SNSF funding in year t −1. Note that this indicator takes the value one for the entire duration of the granted project. The funding information is lagged by one year as an immediate effect of funding on output is unlikely. Note that, we will differentiate between funding as PI and as co-PI (only). The general empirical model can then be expressed as

with ϕ being the vector of parameters. X i t represents a vector with explanatory factors at t including observed characteristics of the researcher and the average quality of the grant applications as reflected in the average evaluation score. Further T t captures the overall time trend, v i is the unobserved individual heterogeneity, and ϵ i t is the error term.

The specification above describes a production function for discrete outcomes following Blundell et al. ( 1995 ). As a first estimation strategy, count data models will be used to estimate research outputs, as for example, the number of peer-reviewed articles or preprints. Moreover, these models account for unobserved individual characteristics, v i , which likely predict research outputs besides observable characteristics and are independent of project funding. One way to estimate this unobserved heterogeneity is to use random intercepts for the individuals Footnote 6 , here the researchers, and account for the hierarchical structure of the information (e.g. panel data). Thus, we estimate mixed count models to capture v i Footnote 7 . The mixed regression models for count data take the following form:

In addition to count-type outputs, we estimate the effect of funding on continuous output variables such as the average number of yearly citations per article or the researcher’s average yearly altmetric score. For these output types we estimate linear regression models based on a comparable model specification with regard to F i t −1 , X i t , T t and v i .

Non-parametric treatment effect estimation

In an alternative estimation approach, we apply a non-parametric technique: The average treatment effect of project funding on scientific outcomes is estimated by an econometric matching estimator which addresses the question of “How much would a funded researcher have published (or how much attention in terms of altmetrics or citations would her research have received) if she had not received the grant?”. This implies comparing the actually observed outcomes to the counterfactual ones to derive an estimate for the funding effect. Given that the counterfactual situation is not observable, it has to be estimated.

For doing so, we employ a nearest neighbor propensity score matching. That is, we pair each grant recipient with a non-recipient by choosing the nearest ‘twin’ based on the similarity in the estimated probability of receiving a grant and the average score that the submitted applications received. Note that we select the twin researcher from the sample of unsuccessful applicants so that matching on both, the general propensity to win (which includes personal and institutional characteristics) and the proposal’s evaluation score, allows to match both on an individual as well as on proposal (or project idea) characteristics to find the most comparable individuals.

The estimated propensity to win a grant is obtained from a probit estimation on a binary treatment indicator which takes the value of one for each researcher-year combination in which an individual had received project funding. The advantage of propensity score matching compared to exact matching is that it allows combining a larger set of characteristics into a single indicator avoiding the curse of dimensionality. Nevertheless, introducing exact matching for some key indicators can improve the balancing of the control variables after matching. In particular, we match exactly on the year of the funding round as this allows to have the same post-treatment time window for treated and control individual and also captures time trends in outputs which could affect the estimated treatment effect. In addition, we match only within a research field to not confound the treatment effect with heterogeneity in resource requirements and discipline differences in output patterns. We follow a matching protocol as suggested by Gerfin and Lechner ( 2002 ) and calculate the Mahalanobis distance between a treatment and a control observation as

where Ω is the empirical covariance matrix of the matching arguments (propensity score and evaluation score). We employ a caliper to avoid bad matches by imposing a threshold of the maximum distance allowed between the treated and the control group. That is, a match for researcher i is only chosen if ∣ Z j − Z i ∣ < ϵ , where ϵ is a pre-specified tolerance. After having paired each researcher with the most similar non-treated one, any remaining differences in observed outcomes can be attributed to the funding effect. The resulting estimate of the treatment effect is unbiased under the conditional independence assumption (Rubin, 1977 ). In other words, in order to overcome the selection problem, participation and potential outcome have to be independent for individuals with the same set of characteristics X i t Footnote 8 . Note that by matching on the evaluation score in addition to the propensity score, our approach is similar to the idea of regression discontinuity design (RDD). The advantage of the selected approach is, however, that it allows us to draw causal conclusions for a more representative set of individuals. While RDD designs have the advantage of high internal consistency, this comes at the price of deriving effects estimates only for researchers around the cut-off (de la Cuesta and Imai, 2016 ). Yet, in our case, this threshold is not constant, but depends on the pool of submitted proposals and there is considerable variation in the evaluation scores that winning proposals receive. In our application, we also expect heterogeneous impacts across researchers so that a local effect might be very different from the effect for researchers away from the threshold for selection (Battistin and Rettore, 2008 ).

Using the matched comparison group, the average effect on the treated can thus be calculated as the mean difference of the matched samples:

with \({P}_{i}^{T}\) being the outcome variable in the treated group, \({P}_{j}^{{\rm {C}}}\) being the counterfactual for i and n T is the sample size (of treated researchers). Footnote 9

Data and descriptive analysis

Data provided by the SNSF has been used to retrieve a set of researchers of interest. These researchers have applied to the SNSF funding instrument project funding (PF) or Sinergia Footnote 10 as main applicant (e.g. PI) or co-applicant Footnote 11 (e.g. co-PI). The PF scheme is a bottom-up approach as it funds costs of research projects with a topic of the applicant’s own choice.

The study period is dynamic and researcher-specific: it starts with the year in which the SNSF observes the researcher for the first time as (co-)PI to PF or as a career funding grantholder (after the postdoctoral level); the year the independent research career starts. However, this study period has its lower bound in 2005. The period ends in 2019 for everyone, and some researchers are observed for a longer period than others. For each researcher, a pre-sample period is defined, including the 5 years before the observation started. Pre-sample information on all outcome variables of interest is needed to account for heterogeneity between the individuals in the way that they enter the study in linear feedback models and for matching on ex-ante performance in the non-parametric estimation approach. Further, only researchers who applied at least once after 2010 to the SNSF are included to ensure a minimum research activity. In a next step, we retrieve a unique Dimensions-identifier (Dim-ID) from the Dimensions database (Digital Science, 2018 ) using a person’s name, research field, age and information about past and current affiliations Footnote 12 . The Dim-ID enables us to collect disambiguated publication information for these researchers to be used in the empirical analysis.

Variables and descriptive statistics

The original data set comprised 11,228 eligible researchers. 10% (1,143) of the latter could not be identified in the Dimensions database. Among the researchers found using their name, the supplementary information from the SNSF database (country, ORCID, institution, etc.) did not match in 1% of the cases, and we were not sure that we found the correct researcher. For 12% of the researchers found in Dimensions no unique ID could be retrieved. After removing these observations, we observe a total of 8,793 distinct researchers (78% of the eligible researchers Footnote 13 ) and the final data set is composed of 82,249 researcher-year observations. On average researchers are observed for 9.35 years. The maximum observation length, from 2005 to 2019 is 15 years, and 2,319 researchers are observed over this maximal study period. All the publication data was retrieved in September 2020.

Research funding

The central interest of the study is the effect competitive project funding has on a researcher’s subsequent research outputs. The information on SNSF funding indicates whether a researcher had access to SNSF funding as a PI and/or co-PI in a certain year. We differentiate between PIs and co-PIs to test whether the funding effect differs depending on the role in the project. On average the researchers in our data set are funded by the SNSF for 4.6 years during the observation period; for 3.3 years as PI of a project (see Table 1 ). In total 20,476 distinct project applications (not necessarily funded) are included in the data. On average a PIs is involved in a total of 3.7 project applications (as PI or co-PI); in 3.1 submissions as PI, and in 2.3 submissions as co-PI. About 66% of all projects in the data have one sole PI applying for funding, 22% have a PI and a co-PI, 8% a PI and two co-PIs, and 4% are submitted by a PI together with three or more co-PIs. Note that the percentage of successful applications in our data set is 48% over the whole study period (the success rate for the STEM applications is ~60%, it is ~44% in SSH and the one of the LS is the lowest with ~40%).

These numbers reflect that in the Swiss research funding system, project funding does play an important role, but that institutional core funding is also relatively generous. The latter accounts for—on average—more than 70% of overall university funding (Reale, 2017 ; Schmidt, 2008 ). This allows researchers to sustain in the system without project funding. While overall, institutional funding is quite homogeneous across similar research organizations in the country, it differs between institution types. It is therefore important to account for institutional funding in the following analyses as it provides important complementary resources to researchers (Jonkers and Zacharewicz, 2016 ). Moreover, within the different institution types, we also account for the research field and the career stage of researchers as this may also capture individual differences in core budgets. We present sample characteristics in terms of these variables in the subsection “Confounding variables”. Another important aspect to consider when analyzing the effect of research funding is funding from other sources, other than institutional funding (Hottenrott and Lawson, 2017 ). In all European countries the ERC plays an important role. Hence, we collected data on Swiss-based researchers who received ERC funding and matched them to our sample. Of all the researchers considered in this study only a small fraction (4.2%) ever received funding by the ERC. Most of these researchers had a PF grant running at the same time (87%). Fig S. 3 in the supplementary material shows the count of observations in the different funding groups in more detail Footnote 14 .

Research outputs

Table 1 summarizes the output measures as well as the funding length. The most straightforward research output measure is the number of (peer-reviewed) articles. On average, a researcher in our data publishes 4.9 articles each year. The annual number of articles is higher in the STEM (5.7) and life sciences (LS) (6.5) than in the Social Science and Humanities (SSH) where researchers published about 1.5 publications per year, on average. See Table S. 1 in the supplementary material for differences in all output variables (as well as funding and researcher information) by field. In some disciplines, such as biomedical research, physics, or economics, preprints of articles are widely used and accepted (Berg et al., 2016 ; Serghiou and Ioannidis, 2018 ). As preliminary outputs they are made available early and thus are an interesting additional output, potentially indicating the dissemination and accessibility of research results. The average of the yearly number of preprints is a lot lower than the one of articles (0.4) which is due to preprints being a research output that emerged only rather recently and are more common in STEM fields than in others (see Table S. 1 in the supplementary material). Another output measure is the number of yearly citations per researcher. This is the sum of all citations of work by a certain researcher during a specific year to all her peer-reviewed articles published since the start of the observation period. Citations to articles published before the start of the observation period are not taken into account. On average a researcher’s work in the study period is cited 132.9 times per year. This variable is however substantially skewed with 6.8% of researchers accounting for 50% of all citations and highly correlated with the overall number of articles that a researcher published. There are also field differences with the average citation numbers between the Life Sciences (185.2) and the STEM fields (157.7), but both numbers are substantially higher than in the SSH (25.6). The average number of citations per (peer-reviewed) article of a researcher is informative about the average relevance of a researcher’s article portfolio. The articles in our sample are cited on average 4.2 times per year.

The altmetric score of each article is retrieved as an attention or accessibility measure of published research. Following the recommendation by Konkiel ( 2016 ), we employ a ‘baskets of metrics’ rather than single components of the altmetric score. This score is a product of Digital Science and represents a weighted count of the amount of attention that is picked up for a certain research output Footnote 15 . Note that the average altmetric score for a researcher at t is the mean of the altmetrics of all articles published in the year t . Footnote 16 On average a researcher in our sample achieves an altmetric of 13. Similar to citation counts, this variable is heavily skewed. The differences in altmetrics across disciplines are rather small (see Table S. 1 in the supplementary material).

When using simple output metrics like citation counts, it is important to account for field-specific citation patterns. In order to do so, we collect the relative citation ratio (RCR) and the field citation ratio (FCR). The RCR was developed by the NIH (Hutchins et al., 2016 ). As described by Surkis and Spore ( 2018 ), the RCR uses an approach to evaluate an article’s citation counts normalized to the citations received by NIH-funded publications in the same area of research and year. The calculation of the RCR implies to dynamically determine the field of an article based on its co-citation network, that is, all articles that have been cited by articles citing the target article. The advantage of the RCR is to field- and time-normalize the number of citations that an article received. A paper that is cited exactly as often as one would expect based on the NIH-norm receives an RCR of 1 and an RCR larger one indicated that an article is cited more than its expectation given the field and year. The RCR is only calculated for the articles that are present on PubMed, have at least one citation and are older than two years. Thus, when analyzing this output metric, we focus on researchers in the life sciences only. The FCR is calculated by dividing the number of citations a paper has received by the average number received by publications published in the same year and in the same fields of research (FoR) category. Obviously, the FCR is very dependent on the definition of the FoR. Dimensions uses FoR that are closest to the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC, 2019 ). For the calculation of the FCR a paper has to be older than two years. Simlar to the RCR, the FCR is normalized to one and an article with zero citations has an FCR of zero. As the altmetric, the RCR and FCR cannot be retrieved time-dependently but are snapshots at the day of retrieval. We will refer to the average FCR/RCR at t , as the average of the FCRs/RCRs of the papers published in t . According to Hutchins et al. ( 2016 ), articles in high-profile journals have average RCRs of ~3. The key difference between the RCR and the FCR is that the FCR uses fixed definition of the research field, while for the RCR a field is relative to each publication considered. Table S. 1 in the supplementary material shows that the average rates are comparable across fields.

Figure 1 represents the evolution of the yearly average number of articles, preprints and the altmetric score per researcher depending on the funding status of the year before (as co- and/or PI). The amount of articles published each year has been rather constant or only slightly increasing, while the preprint count increased substantially over the past years. Recent papers also have a higher altmetric scores than older publications, even though they had less time to raise attention. It is important to note, however, that since we do not account for any researcher characteristics here, the differences between funded and unfunded researchers cannot be interpreted as being the result of funding. Yet, increasing prevalence of preprints and altmetrics suggest that they should be taken into account in funding evaluations.

Shown are the averages of the publication an preprint counts and the altmetrics for each year of observation. PI stands for principal investigator.

Confounding variables

Table 1 further shows descriptive statistics for the gender of the researchers, their biological age, as well their field of research and the institution type. These variables capture drivers of researcher outputs and are therefore taken into account in all our analyses. Almost 77% of the researchers are male and about 60% are employed at cantonal universities, 24% at technical universities (ETH Domain) and about 17% at University of Applied Sciences (UAS) and University of Teacher Education (UTE). The research field and institution type are defined as the area or the type the researcher applies most often to or from. The field of life sciences has the largest proposal share in the data with about 39%. These variables serve as confounders together with the pre-sample information on the outcome variables since they may explain differences in output and therefore need to be accounted for. Note that 1615 researchers in our data did not publish any peer-reviewed papers in the five year pre-sample period. Table S. 1 in the supplementary material shows how the confounding variables vary between the research fields.

The submitted project proposals are graded on a six-point scale: 1 =  D , 2 =  C , 3 =  B C , 4 =  B , 5 =  A B , 6 =  A . We use the information on project evaluation to control for (or match on) average project quality following the approach by (Arora and Gambardella, 2005 ). We construct the evaluation score as a rolling average over the last four years of all the grades a researcher ‘collected’ in submitted proposals as PI and co-PI (if no grade was available over the last four years for a certain researcher, we use her all time average). We do so because future research is also impacted by the quality of past and co-occurring projects. The funding decision is, however, not exclusively based on those grades. It has to take the amount of funding available to the specific call into account. Therefore the ranking of an application among the other competing applications plays an important role and even highly rated projects may be rejected if the budget constraint is reached. Projects graded with an A/AB have good chances of being funded, while projects graded as D are never funded, see Fig. S. 2 in the Supplementary material representing the distribution of the grades among rejected and accepted projects.

Note that the researchers with missing age were deleted since this is an important control variable; the missing institution type were regrouped into unclassified. Additionally, for the analyses, the funding information will be used with a one (or more) year lag and at least one year of observation is lost per researcher. The final sample used for the analyses consists of 72,738 complete observations from 8,282 unique researchers.

Mixed effects model—longitudinal regression models

Table 2 summarizes the results of both negative binomial mixed models for the count outcomes (yearly numbers of publications and preprints). The incidence rate ratios (IRR) inform us on the multiplicative change of the baseline count depending on funding status. The model for the publication count was fitted on the whole data set, while the model for the preprint count is fitted on data since 2010, because the number of preprints was rather small in general before. SNSF funding seems to have a significant positive effect on research productivity, regarding yearly publication counts (1.21 times higher for PI than without SNSF funding) as well as yearly preprint counts (1.30 times higher for the PI compared to researchers without SNSF funding). Footnote 17 An ‘average’ researcher without SNSF funding in t −1 publishes on average 4.64 articles in t . A similar researcher (with all confounding variables kept constant) with SNSF funding as PI in t −1 would publish 5.6 articles in t . PIs on an SNSF project publish more. The same is true for male researchers and younger researchers for preprints. Researchers from ETH Domain publish more than the ones from Cantonal Universities. Researchers publish more in recent years. Researchers in the LS publish more peer-reviewed articles compared to other research areas. Regarding preprints, we observe a different picture. Here STEM researchers publish more than researchers in LS.

Table 3 summarizes the results of the four linear mixed models for the continuous outcomes: the average yearly number of citations per publication, the yearly average altmetric, the yearly average RCR and the yearly average FCR. Regarding the citation patterns, there is strong evidence that SNSF funding has a positive effect; especially PIs on SNSF projects have their articles cited more frequently (increase in average yearly citations of 0.33 per article for the PIs). Articles by LS researchers are cited most compared to researchers from other fields. This is also the case for researchers from ETH Domain and older researchers. For altmetrics and citation ratios, we employ a logarithmic scale to account for the fact that their distributions are highly skewed; we can then interpret the coefficients as percentage change. Regarding altmetrics, research funded by the SNSF gets an attention score that is 5.1% higher (by September 2020) compared to other researchers. Researchers in LS have by far the highest altmetrics followed by researchers in the SSH. There is no strong evidence for an effect of the funding on the average yearly RCR. This implies that in the short-run research outcomes of SNSF-funded researchers are as often cited as a mixed average of articles funded by the NIH or other important researcher funded world-wide, but also not significantly more than that. Younger researchers and researchers from the ETH Domain have higher RCRs. The results also suggest a positive relation between SNSF funding and a researcher’s FCR.

Non-parametric estimation

While the previous estimation approaches modeled unobserved heterogeneity across individuals, the non-parametric matching approach addresses the selection into the treatment explicitly. It accounts for selection on observable factors which may—if not accounted for—lead to wrongly attributing the funding effect to the selectivity of the grant-awarding process. We model a researcher’s funding success as a function of researcher characteristics. In particular, this includes their previous research track record (publication experience and citations) and the average of all evaluation scores for submitted proposals (PI or co-PI) received by the researcher. In addition, we include age, gender, research field and institution type. We obtain the propensity score to be used in the matching process as described in the section “Non-parametric treatment estimation”.

The results from the probit estimation on the funding outcome (success vs. rejection) are presented in Table 4 . The table first shows the model for the full sample which provides the propensity score for the estimation of treatment effects on articles and citations to these articles, and on preprints. The second model shows the model for the sub-sample of researchers in the LS used for estimating treatment effects on the RCR. The third model shows the estimation for the full sample, but accounting for pre-sample FCR, and provides the propensity score for the estimation of the treatment effect on the FCR. The fourth model controls for pre-sample altmetrics values and serves the estimation of the treatment effect on future altmetrics scores. Consistent across all specification, the results show that the evaluation score is a key predictor of grant success. The higher the score, the more likely is it that a proposal gets approved. The grant likelihood for male researches is higher than for females as well as for older researchers. The latter result can have various reasons, which are outside the scope of this paper and are being discussed elsewhere Footnote 18 . As expected, past research performance is another strong predictor of grant success where peer-reviewed articles matter more than preprints. In addition to quantity, past research quality (as measured by citations) increases the probability of a proposal being granted. Interesting in more recent years (as shown in model 4), quality rather than quantity appears to predict grant success as it is the average number of citations to pre-period publication rather than their number that explains funding success.

The comparison of the distribution of the propensity score and the evaluation score before and after matching shows that the nearest neighbor matching procedure was successful in balancing the sample in terms of the grant likelihood and—importantly—also the average scores (see Fig. S. 1 in the supplementary material). This ensures that we are comparing researchers with funding to researchers without funding that have similarly good ideas (the scores are the same, on average) and are also otherwise comparable in their characteristics predicting a positive application outcome. The balancing of the propensity scores and the evaluation scores in both groups (grant winners and unsuccessful applicants) after each matching are shown in Tables 5 and 6 . Note that we draw matches for each grant-winner from the control group with replacement and that hence some observations from researchers in the control group are used several times as ‘twins’. Table S. 5 in the supplementary material shows that across the different matched samples <10% of control researcher–year observations are used only once and about 60% up to 25 times. About 10% of control group researchers are used very frequently, i.e. more than 160 times.

Tables 5 and 6 show the estimated treatment effects after matching, i.e. the test for the magnitude and significance of mean differences across groups. Note that the number of matched pairs differs depending on the sample used and that log values of output variables were used to account for the impact of skewness of the raw variable distribution in the mean comparison test. The magnitude of the estimated effects is comparable to the ones of the parametric estimation models. Researchers with a successful grant publish on average 1.2 articles (exp[0.188]) and about one additional preprint (exp[0.053]) more in the following year, their articles receive 1.7 citations (exp(0.532)) more than articles from the control group. In terms of altmetrics we also see a significant difference in means which is 1.15 (exp[0.138]) points higher in the group of grant receivers. Also, in terms of the FCR and the RCR, there are significant effects on the treatment group. The probability to be among the ‘highly cited researchers’ (as measured by an FCR > 3) is 5.5 ( α TT  = 0.055) percentage points higher in the group of funded researchers. This means publications in t  + 1 are cited at least three times as much as the average in the field.

Persistency of treatment effects

In addition to the effect in the year after funding ( t  + 1), we are interested in the persistency of the effect in the following years up to ( t  + 3). It is likely that any output effects occur with a considerable time-lag after funding received. The start-up of the research project including the training of new researchers and the set-up of equipment may take some time before the actual research starts. In principle, we could of course expect the effect to last also longer than three to four years. However, after 4 years, the treatment effect of one project grant may become confounded by one (or several) follow-up grants. Tables 5 and 6 show the results for the different outcome variables also for different time horizons.

The results suggest that the funding has a persistent output effect amounting to about one additional article in each of the 3 years following the year of funding. The effect on preprints is already significant in the first year, but also turns out to sustain in later years suggesting that research results from the project are probably circulated via this channel. In contrast to these results, we find for altmetrics that they are significantly higher early on, but not in the medium-run. When looking at citation-based measures as indicators for impact and relevance, we see that the number of citations stays significantly higher in the medium-run, but effect size declines somewhat indicating that researchers publish the most important results earlier after funding. This is also reflected in the results for the average number of citations and the probability to be highly cited. For the FCR, the effect is less persistent as the difference between groups fades after the first year. For the RCR the differences in means is strongest in the first year after the grant and only significant at the 10% level in t  + 3.

Impact heterogeneity over the academic life-cycle and research fields

For most outcomes, we find a significant and persistent difference between funded and unfunded researchers, while controlling for other drivers of research outcomes. As shown in earlier studies (Arora and Gambardella, 2005 ; Jacob and Lefgren, 2011 ), a grant’s impact may depend on the career stage of a researcher. As a proxy for career stage, we use the biological age of the researchers. Additionally, there might be heterogeneity in the funding effect depending on the research fields. We perform interaction tests between (i) the age and the funding and (ii) between the research field and the funding. More specifically, we employ a categorical variable for age and allow for an interaction term with the funding variable in the mixed models presented in the section “Mixed effects model—longitudinal regression models”. The same procedure is repeated with research field. The interaction tests suggests indeed that there is evidence for a difference in the effect of funding on the article and preprint count depending on the age group (with p -value < 0.001, for both outcomes) and the research field (with p -value of <0.001 for articles and p -value of 0.0045 for preprints). When we test for those same interaction effects in the continuous outcome models, the results suggest that there is a difference in the funding effect on the average number of citations per article depending on the age group ( p -value < 0.001) and the research field ( p -value = 0.0242). For altmetrics and the citation ratios, we see no evidence for major differences across age groups ( p -value of 0.328 for the altmetric, 0.802 for the RCR and 0.873 for the FCR) nor research fields ( p -value of 0.2296 for altmetric and p -value of 0.5124 for FCR Footnote 19 ).

To better understand those differences in funding effect, we refer to Fig. 2 for the article counts and Fig. 3 for the average number of citations per article. Those figures show the predicted article or citation count depending on the funding group (in t −1) and the age group or the research field. For all those subgroups, SNSF funding (as PI) in t −1 has a positive effect on the outcome. However the size of this effect differs substantially. The youngest age group (<45) seems to benefit considerably from the funding in terms of predicted difference between treatment and control researchers in article count, but also in citation per article (the confidence intervals of funded as PI and no funding do not overlap). More senior funded researchers (45–54 and 55–65 years of age) perform similarly well compared to researchers with the same characteristics but no funding. It is noteworthy that for older researchers (65+) the difference between groups is again higher indicating that funding helps to keep productivity up. We obtain very similar results based on post-estimations with interaction effects in the matched samples from the propensity score matching approach (see Fig. S. 7 in the supplementary material).

To predict the article count the baseline confounding variables were fixed to Year 2015–19, Male, Evaluation Score Score AB-A, University, LS in the age interaction model and age lower to 45 for the field interaction model. We see a significant positive percentage change of 18% for the youngest age group among PIs (<45) and 115% for the most senior researchers (>65) compared to no SNSF funding. Additionally, the effect of funding is largest for STEM researchers (23% more articles as PI compared to unfunded researchers. The effect in LS and SSH is less prominent, +15% and +12%, respectively.

For the predictions the baseline confounding variables were fixed to Year 2010–14, Male, Evaluation Score Score AB-A, University, LS in the age interaction model and age lower to 45 for the field interaction model. A significant positive percentage change of 10% for the youngest age group among PIs (<45) compared to no SNSF funding can be observed for the average number of citations. The remaining changes in citation number are not significant. Then, the effect of funding is largest for SSH researchers (15% more citations per article as PI compared to unfunded researchers). The effect in LS (+6%) and STEM (+8%) is less prominent. Note that the intervals however all overlap.

For all research areas, SNSF funding has a positive effect on article count and number of citations. STEM researchers however benefit most with a percentage change of 23% more articles as funded PI compared to no funding; funded (PI) researchers from the LS publish 15% more articles and the SSH researchers 12%. This could reflect that in STEM and LS the extent to which research can be successfully conducted is highly funding-dependent, while this is not necessarily the case in the SSH. Yet regarding the number of citations per article, the SSH researchers benefit most (14% more citations for SSH, 8% for STEM and 6% for LS). This suggest that funding may support the quality of research and hence its impact more in the SSH field. Thus, it should be noted that even though SSH researcher publish and are cited less in absolute numbers, we still see a substantial positive effect of SNSF funding on the outcomes. The respective figures for the remaining outcomes can be found in the supplementary material; more specifically Fig. S. 5 for the altmetric score, Fig. S. 4 for the preprint count and Fig. S. 6 for the FCR, in the supplementary material.

Conclusions

Understanding the role played by competitive research funding is crucial for designing research funding policies that best foster knowledge generation and diffusion. By investigating the impact of project funding on scientific output, its relevance and accessibility, this study contributes to research on the effects of research funding at the level of the individual researcher.

Using detailed information—including personal characteristics and the evaluation scores that their submitted projects received by peers—on the population of all project funding applicants at the SNSF during the 2005–2019 period, we estimate the impact of receiving project funding on publication outcomes and their relevance. The strengths of this study are in the detailed information on both researchers and grant proposals. First, the sample consists of both successful as well as unsuccessfully applicants. Therefore researchers who also had a research idea to submit are part of the control group. Second, information on the proposal evaluation scores allows to compare researchers which have submitted project ideas of—on average—comparable quality. The estimated treatment effects therefore take into account that all applicants may benefit from the competition for funding through participation effects (Ayoubi et al., 2019 ).

Besides these methodological aspects, a key contribution of this study is that—in addition to articles in scientific journals—it is the first to include preprints. Preprints are an increasingly important means of disseminating research results early and without access restrictions (Berg et al., 2016 ; Serghiou and Ioannidis, 2018 ). Besides this, we investigate relevance and impact in terms of absolute and relative citation measures. In the analysis of citations that published research receives, it is important to account for field-specific citation patterns. We do so by including the RCR and the FCR as measures for relative research impact in a researcher’s own field of study as additional outcome measures. Finally, this is the first study to investigate the link between funding and researchers’ altmetrics scores which mirror the attention paid to research outcomes in the wider public (Bornmann, 2014 ; Lăzăroiu, 2017 ; Warren et al., 2017 ).

The results show a similar pattern across all estimation methods indicating an effect size of about one additional article in each of the 3 years following the funding. In addition, we find a similarly sized effect on the number of preprints. The comparison across methods suggests that if accounting for important observable researcher characteristics (e.g. age, field, gender and experience) as well as proposal quality (as reflected in evaluation scores) parametric regression results and non-parametric models lead to similar conclusions with regard to publication outputs. Importantly, a significant effect on the number of citations to articles could be observed indicating that funding does not merely translate into more, but only marginally relevant research. Funded research also appears to reach the general public more than other research as indicated by higher average altmetrics in the group of grant-winners. In terms of the RCR and FCR the results indicate that there might be an effect on the funded researchers’ overall visibility in the research community. However, the effects on the RCR are not robust to the estimation method used.

The funding program analyzed in this study is open to all researchers in Switzerland affiliated with institutions eligible to receive SNSF funding. This allows us to study treatment effect heterogeneity over researchers’ life cycle and research field. The results suggest here, that funding is particularly important at earlier career stages where PF facilitates research that would not have been pursued without funding. With regard to treatment effect heterogeneity across fields, we find the highest effect of funding on the article count for STEM researchers and the highest funding effect on citations in SSH.

While the insights on a positive effect of funding on the number of subsequent scientific articles are in line with previous studies, compared to previous results, the effects that we document here are larger. The reason for that may be related to the fact that the SNSF is the main source of research funding in Switzerland we can therefore identify researchers for the control group who really had no other project grant in the period for which they are considered a control. We also observe co-PIs which may in other studies—due to a focus on PIs or lack of information—be assigned to the control group. Both may lead to an under-estimation of funding effects in previous studies. Moreover, by counting all publications of these researchers, we further take not only articles directly related to the project into account, but also that there are learning spillovers and synergies beyond the project that improve a researcher’s overall research performance.

Despite all efforts, this study is not without limitations. First, we do not observe industry funding for research projects which may be important in the engineering sciences (Hottenrott and Lawson, 2017 ; Hottenrott and Thorwarth, 2011 ). Moreover, the fact that researchers receive grants repeatedly and may switch between treatment and control group over time, makes a simple difference-in-difference analysis difficult. These factors further complicate the assessment of long-term impact of the research outcomes that we observe. The methods presented here aim to account for the non-randomness of the funding award and the underlying data structure. While we find that the main results are robust to the estimation method used, the reader should keep in mind that time-varying unobserved factors that affect an individual’s publication outcomes such as family or health status, involvement in professional services or administrative roles and duties (Fudickar et al., 2016 ) may be not sufficiently accounted for. Moreover, we do not have detailed information on the involved research teams and individual responsibilities within the projects. Therefore we do not investigate the role of team characteristics for any outcome effects. In such an analysis, it would be desirable to study whether and how sole-PI and multiple-PI projects differ and which role different PI profiles play for project success. A more detailed analysis of teams would also be interesting in order to differentiate between group and individual effort. Third, we used preprints and altmetrics as output measures which is novel compared to previous research on funding effects. Since we cannot compare our results to previous ones, we encourage future research on the effects of funding on early publishing and science communication more directly. It should be kept in mind that altmetrics may measure popularity in addition to efforts at dissemination as well as the extent to which authors are embedded in a network, but not the quality of individual research outcomes. Probably more than publications in peer-reviewed journals, preprints and altmetrics may be gamed—for example by repeated sharing of own articles or by ‘Salami slicing’ research outcomes into several preprints. Finally, it should be noted that we did not investigate several aspects that might be important in impact evaluation in this study. This list includes the role of the funding amount, the degree of novelty of the produced research, as well as treatment effect heterogeneity in terms of individual characteristics other than age.

Data availability

An anonymized and aggregated data set can be found on Zenodo ( https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5011201 ). In order to anonymize the data we only provide applicants’ age as categorical variable.

Importance of competitive research funding increased substantially over the past three decades. The basic idea of promoting such science policy goes back to New Public Management reforms which aimed to increase the returns to public science funding through the selective provision of more funding to the most able researchers, groups and universities (winners in funding competitions), and to create performance incentives at all levels of the university system (Gläser and Serrano-Velarde, 2018 ; Krücken and Meier, 2006 ).

The SNSF is Switzerland’s main research funding agency. The SNSF is mandated by the Swiss confederation to allocate research funding to eligible researchers at universities, (technical) colleges and research organizations.

Excellent publications in this study were for instance papers in the upper quarter of journals included in the Science Citation Index (SCI).

Novelty is measured by the extent to which a published paper makes first time ever combinations of referenced journals while taking into account the difficulty of making such combinations.

Charities and private sector grants do play an increasing, but still a relatively minor role in Switzerland (Jonkers and Zacharewicz, 2016 ; Schmidt, 2008 ).

An alternative approach is to employ pre-sample information of the researcher as a proxy for unobservable characteristics, such as a researcher’s ability or writing talent which impact research output in the (later) sample period. We conducted such linear feedback models (LFM) as robustness tests and present them in Supplement S. 2.1 .

We use the lmer package in R and a negative binomial family.

In addition to the closeness on MD, we use elements of exact matching by requiring that selected control researchers belong exactly to the same subject field and to be observed in the same year as the researchers in the treatment group. This allows to account for different publication patterns across disciplines and also for time trends in funding likelihood and in the outcome variables.

As we perform sampling with replacement to estimate the counterfactual situation, an ordinary t -statistic on mean differences after matching is biased, because it does not take the appearance of repeated observations into account. Therefore, we have to correct the standard errors in order to draw conclusions on statistical inference, following Lechner ( 2001 ).

The Sinergia scheme is closely linked to PF, so that we will not differentiate between them in the following.

If granted, a co-applicant is entitled to parts of the funding.

If Dimensions found more than one ID for a certain name, we used further information on the researcher available to the SNSF to narrow the ID-options down. This supplementary information was, if present the ORCID, the current and previous research institution(s), country and birth year. Only researchers with a unique ID could be used in the following. See Table S 2 in the supplementary material for a comparison of the researchers that were found and not found.

Some characteristics on the researchers without unique ID can be found in Table S 2 in the Supplementary material.

Since only a few cases are identified to hold major international grants but no SNSF funding, we do not differentiate between these groups in the following. Note that the data was retrieved from the ERC Funded Projects Database included only grants acquired since 2007.

https://help.altmetric.com/support/solutions/articles/6000233311-how-is-the-altmetric-attention-score-calculated-

Unfortunately the altmetric cannot be retrieved as a time-dependent variable from Dimensions but only as the altmetric state at the time point of data retrieval (September 2020). Therefore the altmetric informs us on the cumulative importance an article published at t got until September 2020.

Note that we also tested the robustness of this result to when focusing on PF as treatment and adding the researchers with a funded Sinergia project to the control group, but adjusting with a Sinergia dummy variable. The size of funding as PI and co-PI effects and their confidence intervals were comparable.

Severin et al. ( 2020 ), for example, discuss gender biases on the reviewer scores leading to lower grant likelihood for female researchers.

Note that we did not test the interaction for the RCR outcome, as this analysis was done only for the LS field.

Adams JD, Griliches Z (1998) Research productivity in a system of universities. Ann Écon Stat 49–50, 127–162.

ANZSRC (2019) Outcomes paper: Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification Review 2019. Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment.

Arora A, David P, Gambardella A (1998) Reputation and competence in publicly funded science: estimating the effects on research group productivity. Ann Econ Stat 49–50, 163–198.

Arora A, Gambardella A (2005) The impact of NSF support for basic research in economics . Ann Écon Stat 79–80, 91–117.

Ayoubi C, Pezzoni M, Visentin F (2019) The important thing is not to win, it is to take part: what if scientists benefit from participating in research grant competitions? Res Policy 48:84–97

Article   Google Scholar  

Battistin E, Rettore E (2008) Ineligibles and eligible non-participants as a double comparison group in regression-discontinuity designs. J Econom 142:715–730

Article   MathSciNet   Google Scholar  

Beaudry C, Allaoui S (2012) Impact of public and private research funding on scientific production: the case of nanotechnology Res Policy 41:1589–1606

Benavente JM, Crespi G, Figal Garone L, Maffioli A (2012) The impact of national research funds: a regression discontinuity approach to the Chilean fondecyt Res Policy 41:1461–1475

Berg JM, Bhalla N, Bourne PE, Chalfie M, Drubin DG, Fraser JS, Greider CW, Hendricks M, Jones C, Kiley R, King S, Kirschner MW, Krumholz HM, Lehmann R, Leptin M, Pulverer B, Rosenzweig B, Spiro JE, Stebbins M, Strasser C, Swaminathan S, Turner P, Vale RD, VijayRaghavan K, Wolberger C (2016) Preprints for the life sciences. Science 352:899–901

Article   ADS   CAS   Google Scholar  

Blundell R, Griffith R, Windmeijer F (1995), Dynamics and correlated responses in longitudinal count data models. In: Seeber GUH, Francis BJ, Hatzinger R, Steckel-Berger G (eds), Statistical modelling. Springer New York, New York, pp. 35–42.

Bornmann L (2014) Do altmetrics point to the broader impact of research? An overview of benefits and disadvantages of altmetrics J Informetr 8:895–903

Carayol N, Matt M (2004) Does research organization influence academic production? laboratory level evidence from a large european university Res Policy 33:1081–1102

de la Cuesta B, Imai K (2016) Misunderstandings about the regression discontinuity design in the study of close elections. Annu Rev Political Sci 19:375–396

Digital Science (2018) Dimensions [software] available from https://app.dimensions.ai . Accessed Sept 2020, under licence agreement.

Fang F, Casadevall A (2016) Research funding: the case for a modified lottery. mBio 7(2):e00422-16.

Fleming L, Greene H, Li G, Marx M, Yao D (2019) Government-funded research increasingly fuels innovation. Science 364:1139–1141

Franzoni C, Giuseppe S, Stephan P (2011) Changing incentives to publish. Science (New York, NY) 333:702–3

Froumin I, Lisyutkin M (2015) Excellence-driven policies and initiatives in the context of bologna process: rationale, design, implementation and outcomes. In: Curej A, Matei L, Pricopie R, Salmi J, Scott P (eds) The European higher education area. Springer.

Fudickar R, Hottenrott H, Lawson C (2016) What’s the price of academic consulting? effects of public and private sector consulting on academic research. Ind Corp Change 27:699–722

Gerfin M, Lechner M (2002) A microeconometric evaluation of the active labour market policy in Switzerland. Econ J 112:854–893

Gläser J, Serrano-Velarde K (2018) Changing funding arrangements and the production of scientific knowledge: introduction to the special issue. Minerva 56:1–10

Graves N, Barnett AG, Clarke P (2011) Funding grant proposals for scientific research: retrospective analysis of scores by members of grant review panel. BMJ 343:d4797.

Hausman N (2021) University innovation and local economic growth. Rev Econ Stat (forthcoming). https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01027 .

Hottenrott H, Lawson C (2017) Fishing for complementarities: research grants and research productivity Int J Ind Organ 51:1–38

Hottenrott H, Thorwarth S (2011) Industry funding of university research and scientific productivity. Kyklos 64:534–555

Hutchins BI, Yuan X, Anderson JM, Santangelo GM (2016) Relative citation ratio (RCR): a new metric that uses citation rates to measure influence at the article level. PLoS Biol 14:1–25

Jacob BA, Lefgren L (2011) The impact of research grant funding on scientific productivity. J Public Econ 95:1168–1177

Jaffe AB (1989) Real effects of academic research. Am Econ Rev 79:957–970

Google Scholar  

Jaffe AB (2002) Building programme evaluation into the design of public research support programmes. Oxf Rev Econ Policy 18:22–34

Jonkers K, Zacharewicz T (2016) Research performance based funding systems: a comparative assessment. Technical Report JRC101043, Publications Office of the European Union.

Konkiel S (2016) Altmetrics: diversifying the understanding of influential scholarship. Palgrave Commun 2:16057

Krücken G, Meier F (2006) Turning the university into an organizational actor. In: Drori GS, Meyer JW, Hwang H (eds) Globalization and organization: world society and organizational change, vol 18. pp. 241–257.

Lechner M (2001) Identification and estimation of causal effects of multiple treatments under the conditional independence assumption. In: Lechner M, Pfeiffer F (eds) Econometric evaluation of labour market policies. Physica-Verlag HD, Heidelberg, pp. 43–58.

Lăzăroiu G (2017) What do altmetrics measure? Maybe the broader impact of research on society. Educ Philos Theory 49:309–311

Mali F, Pustovrh T, Platinovšek R, Kronegger L, Ferligoj A (2017) The effects of funding and co-authorship on research performance in a small scientific community. Sci Public Policy 44:486–496

Neufeld J, Huber N, Wegner A (2013) Peer review-based selection decisions in individual research funding, applicants’ publication strategies and performance: the case of the ERC starting grants. Res Eval 22:237–247

Oancea A (2016) Research governance and the future(s) of research assessment. Palgrave Commun 5:27

Payne A (2002) Do US congressional earmarks increase research output at universities? Sci Public Policy 29:314–330

Payne A, Siow A (2003) Does federal research funding increase university research output? Adv Econ Anal Policy 3:1018–1018

Poege F, Harhoff D, Gaessler F, Baruffaldi S (2019) Science quality and the value of inventions. Sci Adv 5(12):eaay7323.

Reale E (2017) Analysis of national public research funding (PREF)—final report, Technical Report JRC107599, Publications Office of the European Union.

Rubin DB (1977) Assignment to treatment group on the basis of a covariate. J Educ Stat 2:1–26

Schmidt J (2008) Das Hochschulsystem der Schweiz: Aufbau, Steuerung und Finanzierung der schweizerischen Hochschulen. Beitr Hochschulforsch 30:114–147

Serghiou S, Ioannidis JPA (2018) Altmetric scores, citations, and publication of studies posted as preprints. JAMA 319:402–404

Severin A, Martins J, Heyard R, Delavy F, Jorstad A, Egger M (2020) Gender and other potential biases in peer review: cross-sectional analysis of 38–250 external peer review reports. BMJ Open 10:e035058

Silberzahn R, Uhlmann EL, Martin DP, Anselmi P, Aust F, Awtrey E, Bahník Š, Bai F, Bannard C, Bonnier E, Carlsson R, Cheung F, Christensen G, Clay R, Craig MA, Rosa AD, Dam L, Evans MH, Cervantes IF, Fong N, Gamez-Djokic M, Glenz A, Gordon-McKeon S, Heaton TJ, Hederos K, Heene M, Mohr AJH, Högden F, Hui K, Johannesson M, Kalodimos J, Kaszubowski E, Kennedy DM, Lei R, Lindsay TA, Liverani S, Madan CR, Molden D, Molleman E, Morey RD, Mulder LB, Nijstad BR, Pope NG, Pope B, Prenoveau JM, Rink F, Robusto E, Roderique H, Sandberg A, Schlüter E, Schönbrodt FD, Sherman MF, Sommer SA, Sotak K, Spain S, Spörlein C, Stafford T, Stefanutti L, Tauber S, Ullrich J, Vianello M, Wagenmakers E-J, Witkowiak M, Yoon S, Nosek BA (2018) Many analysts, one data set: making transparent how variations in analytic choices affect results. Adv Methods Pract Psychol Sci 1:337–356

Stephan PE (2012) How economics shapes science. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Surkis A, Spore S (2018) The relative citation ratio: what is it and why should medical librarians care? J Med Libr Assoc 106:508–513

Tahmooresnejad L, Beaudry C (2019) Citation impact of public and private funding on nanotechnology-related publications Int J Technol Manag 79:21–59

Wahls WP (2018) High cost of bias: diminishing marginal returns on NIH grant funding to institutions. Preprint at https://doi.org/10.1101/367847 .

Wang J, Lee Y-N, Walsh JP (2018) Funding model and creativity in science: competitive versus block funding and status contingency effects Res Policy 47:1070–1083

Warren HR, Raison N, Dasgupta P (2017) The rise of altmetrics. JAMA 317:131–132

Download references

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Tobias Phillip for helpful comments on the study design and on previous versions of this manuscript and to Matthias Egger for an additional careful review of the manuscript prior to submission. This work was supported by the SNSF (internal funds).

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Swiss National Science Foundation, Berne, Switzerland

Rachel Heyard

TUM School of Management, Munich, Germany

Hanna Hottenrott

Munich Data Science Institute, Garching bei München, Germany

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hanna Hottenrott .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary material, rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Heyard, R., Hottenrott, H. The value of research funding for knowledge creation and dissemination: A study of SNSF Research Grants. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 8 , 217 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00891-x

Download citation

Received : 23 November 2020

Accepted : 31 August 2021

Published : 21 September 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00891-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

This article is cited by

Choice of open access in elsevier hybrid journals.

• Sumiko Asai

Publishing Research Quarterly (2024)

Exploring individual character traits and behaviours of clinical academic allied health professionals: a qualitative study

• Elizabeth King
• Terry Cordrey
• Owen Gustafson

BMC Health Services Research (2023)

A new approach to grant review assessments: score, then rank

• Stephen A. Gallo
• Michael Pearce
• Elena A. Erosheva

Research Integrity and Peer Review (2023)

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

• Mike Thelwall
• Subreena Simrick
• Peter Van den Besselaar

Scientometrics (2023)

Scientific laws of research funding to support citations and diffusion of knowledge in life science

• Melika Mosleh
• Saeed Roshani
• Mario Coccia

Scientometrics (2022)

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

• About Grants
• Grants Basics

Types of Grant Programs

A comprehensive list of extramural grant and cooperative agreement activity codes is available, or you can search for specific codes below:

The following groupings represent the main types of grant funding we provide:

• Research Grants (R series)
• Career Development Awards (K series)
• Research Training and Fellowships (T series & F series)

Program Project/Center Grants (P series)

• Resource Grants (various series)

Trans-NIH Programs

• Inactive Programs (Archive)

Research Grants

The following represent frequently used research grant programs. A comprehensive list of all activity codes is also available.

Program project/center grants are large, multi-project efforts that generally include a diverse array of research activities. The following represents the most frequently used programs. ICs may vary in the way they use these programs. A comprehensive list of all activity codes is also available.  

Resource Grants

The following represent some of the more frequently used types of grant programs that provide research-related support or access to resources. A comprehensive list of all activity codes is also available.

NIH supports a variety of broad-reaching programs that are trans-NIH in nature. 

This page last updated on: April 11, 2023

• Bookmark & Share
• E-mail Updates
• Help Downloading Files
• Privacy Notice
• Accessibility
• National Institutes of Health (NIH), 9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland 20892
• NIH... Turning Discovery Into Health

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Indian Dermatol Online J
• v.12(1); Jan-Feb 2021

Research Funding—Why, When, and How?

Shekhar neema.

Department of Dermatology, Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, Maharashtra, India

Laxmisha Chandrashekar

1 Department of Dermatology, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Dhanvantari Nagar, Puducherry, India

Research funding is defined as a grant obtained for conducting scientific research generally through a competitive process. To apply for grants and securing research funding is an essential part of conducting research. In this article, we will discuss why should one apply for research grants, what are the avenues for getting research grants, and how to go about it in a step-wise manner. We will also discuss how to write research grants and what to be done after funding is received.

Introduction

The two most important components of any research project is idea and execution. The successful execution of the research project depends not only on the effort of the researcher but also on available infrastructure to conduct the research. The conduct of a research project entails expenses on man and material and funding is essential to meet these requirements. It is possible to conduct many research projects without any external funding if the infrastructure to conduct the research is available with the researcher or institution. It is also unethical to order tests for research purpose when it does not benefit patient directly or is not part of the standard of care. Research funding is required to meet these expenses and smooth execution of research projects. Securing funding for the research project is a topic that is not discussed during postgraduation and afterwards during academic career especially in medical science. Many good ideas do not materialize into a good research project because of lack of funding.[ 1 ] This is an art which can be learnt only by practising and we intend to throw light on major hurdles faced to secure research funding.

Why Do We Need the Funds for Research?

It is possible to publish papers without any external funding; observational research and experimental research with small sample size can be conducted without external funding and can result in meaningful papers like case reports, case series, observational study, or small experimental study. However, when studies like multi-centric studies, randomized controlled trial, experimental study or observational study with large sample size are envisaged, it may not be possible to conduct the study within the resources of department or institution and a source of external funding is required.

Basic Requirements for Research Funding

The most important requirement is having an interest in the particular subject, thorough knowledge of the subject, and finding out the gap in the knowledge. The second requirement is to know whether your research can be completed with internal resources or requires external funding. The next step is finding out the funding agencies which provide funds for your subject, preparing research grant and submitting the research grant on time.

What Are the Sources of Research Funding? – Details of Funding Agencies

Many local, national, and international funding bodies can provide grants necessary for research. However, the priorities for different funding agencies on type of research may vary and this needs to be kept in mind while planning a grant proposal. Apart from this, different funding agencies have different timelines for proposal submission and limitation on funds. Details about funding bodies have been tabulated in Table 1 . These details are only indicative and not comprehensive.

Details of funding agencies

Application for the Research Grant

Applying for a research grant is a time-consuming but rewarding task. It not only provides an opportunity for designing a good study but also allows one to understand the administrative aspect of conducting research. In a publication, the peer review is done after the paper is submitted but in a research grant, peer review is done at the time of proposal, which helps the researcher to improve his study design even if the grant proposal is not successful. Funds which are available for research is generally limited; resulting in reviewing of a research grant on its merit by peer group before the proposal is approved. It is important to be on the lookout for call for proposal and deadlines for various grants. Ideally, the draft research proposal should be ready much before the call for proposal and every step should be meticulously planned to avoid rush just before the deadline. The steps of applying for a research grant are mentioned below and every step is essential but may not be conducted in a particular order.

• Idea: The most important aspect of research is the idea. After having the idea in mind, it is important to refine your idea by going through literature and finding out what has already been done in the subject and what are the gaps in the research. FINER framework should be used while framing research questions. FINER stands for feasibility, interesting, novel, ethical, and relevant
• Designing the study: Well-designed study is the first step of a well-executed research project. It is difficult to correct flawed study design when the project is advanced, hence it should be planned well and discussed with co-workers. The help of an expert epidemiologist can be sought while designing the study
• Collaboration: The facility to conduct the study within the department is often limited. Inter-departmental and inter-institutional collaboration is the key to perform good research. The quality of project improves by having a subject expert onboard and it also makes acceptance of grant easier. The availability of the facility for conduct of research in department and institution should be ascertained before planning the project
• Scientific and ethical committee approval: Most of the research grants require the project to be approved by the institutional ethical committee (IEC) before the project is submitted. IEC meeting usually happens once in a quarter; hence pre-planning the project is essential. Some institutes also conduct scientific committee meeting before the proposal can be submitted for funding. A project/study which is unscientific is not ethical, therefore it is a must that a research proposal should pass both the committees’ scrutiny
• Writing research grant: Writing a good research grant decides whether research funding can be secured or not. So, we will discuss this part in detail.

How to write a research grant proposal [ 13 , 14 , 15 ] The steps in writing a research grant are as follows

• Identifying the idea and designing the study. Study design should include details about type of study, methodology, sampling, blinding, inclusion and exclusion criteria, outcome measurements, and statistical analysis
• Identifying the prospective grants—the timing of application, specific requirements of grant and budget available in the grant
• Discussing with collaborators (co-investigators) about the requirement of consumables and equipment
• Preparing a budget proposal—the two most important part of any research proposal is methodology and budget proposal. It will be discussed separately
• Preparing a specific proposal as outlined in the grant document. This should contain details about the study including brief review of literature, why do you want to conduct this study, and what are the implications of the study, budget requirement, and timeline of the study
• A timeline or Gantt chart should always accompany any research proposal. This gives an idea about the major milestones of the project and how the project will be executed
• The researcher should also be ready for revising the grant proposal. After going through the initial proposal, committee members may suggest some changes in methodology and budgetary outlay
• The committee which scrutinizes grant proposal may be composed of varied specialities. Hence, proposal should be written in a language which even layman can understand. It is also a good idea to get the proposal peer reviewed before submission.

Budgeting for the Research Grant

Budgeting is as important as the methodology for grant proposal. The first step is to find out what is the monetary limit for grant proposal and what are the fund requirements for your project. If these do not match, even a good project may be rejected based on budgetary limitations. The budgetary layout should be prepared with prudence and only the amount necessary for the conduct of research should be asked. Administrative cost to conduct the research project should also be included in the proposal. The administrative cost varies depending on the type of research project.

Research fund can generally be used for the following requirement but not limited to these; it is helpful to know the subheads under which budgetary planning is done. The funds are generally allotted in a graded manner as per projected requirement and to the institution, not to the researcher.

• Purchase of equipment which is not available in an institution (some funding bodies do not allow equipment to be procured out of research funds). The equipment once procured out of any research fund is owned by the institute/department
• Consumables required for the conduct of research (consumables like medicines for the conduct of the investigator-initiated trials and laboratory consumables)
• The hiring of trained personnel—research assistant, data entry operator for smooth conduct of research. The remuneration details of trained personnel can be obtained from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) website and the same can be used while planning the budget
• Stationary—for the printing of forms and similar expense
• Travel expense—If the researcher has to travel to present his finding or for some other reason necessary for the conduct of research, travel grant can be part of the research grant
• Publication expense: Some research bodies provide publication expense which can help the author make his findings open access which allows wider visibility to research
• Contingency: Miscellaneous expenditure during the conduct of research can be included in this head
• Miscellaneous expenses may include expense toward auditing the fund account, and other essential expenses which may be included in this head.

Once the research funding is granted. The fund allotted has to be expended as planned under budgetary planning. Transparency, integrity, fairness, and competition are the cornerstones of public procurement and should be remembered while spending grant money. The hiring of trained staff on contract is also based on similar principles and details of procurement and hiring can be read at the ICMR website.[ 4 ] During the conduct of the study, many of grant guidelines mandate quarterly or half-yearly progress report of the project. This includes expense on budgetary layout and scientific progress of the project. These reports should be prepared and sent on time.

Completion of a Research Project

Once the research project is completed, the completion report has to be sent to the funding agency. Most funding agencies also require period progress report and project should ideally progress as per Gantt chart. The completion report has two parts. The first part includes a scientific report which is like writing a research paper and should include all subheads (Review of literature, material and methods, results, conclusion including implications of research). The second part is an expense report including how money was spent, was it according to budgetary layout or there was any deviation, and reasons for the deviation. Any unutilized fund has to be returned to the funding agency. Ideally, the allotted fund should be post audited by a professional (chartered accountant) and an audit report along with original bills of expenditure should be preserved for future use in case of any discrepancy. This is an essential part of any funded project that prevents the researcher from getting embroiled in any accusations of impropriety.

Sharing of scientific findings and thus help in scientific advancement is the ultimate goal of any research project. Publication of findings is the part of any research grant and many funding agencies have certain restrictions on publications and presentation of the project completed out of research funds. For example, Indian Association of Dermatologists, Venereologists and Leprologists (IADVL) research projects on completion have to be presented in a national conference and the same is true for most funding agencies. It is imperative that during presentation and publication, researcher mentions the source of funding.

Research funding is an essential part of conducting research. To be able to secure a research grant is a matter of prestige for a researcher and it also helps in the advancement of career.

Financial support and sponsorship

Conflicts of interest.

There are no conflicts of interest.

NIGMS Feedback Loop Blog – National Institute of General Medical Sciences

A catalyst for interaction with the scientific community

Search This Blog

Major research project grant types that nigms supports and where to apply.

The first post in this series introduced our Institute’s research priorities. This post outlines the major types of research project grants that NIGMS supports and where to find notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs) to which you can apply.

Most NIGMS-supported research receives funding from four award types: the Institute’s R35 program , the R16 SuRE program , the AREA R15 , and NIH R01 grants . NIGMS also uses the R21 activity code only in specific cases, such as our technology development program (which includes both R21 and NIH R01 grants). We summarize these programs in this post, but be sure to check the appropriate NOFO, as each one includes detailed organization and principal investigator (PI) eligibility information. You can also consult the NIGMS interactive decision tree Which Research Grant Is Right for Me? for more information.  Applicants must meet all eligibility criteria to qualify. The NIH grants and funding webpage is NIH’s official publication and includes all the NOFOs for these awards. 

Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA; R35)

The MIRA program provides support for research within the NIGMS mission in the laboratories of investigators at domestic/U.S. institutions. Within the scope of MIRA, investigators have the freedom to explore new avenues of inquiry that arise during the course of their research, as long as they remain within NIGMS’ mission. There are two types of MIRA grants that have distinct NOFOs: one for early stage investigators and one for established and new investigators. You can read more about the application requirements for each on the MIRA program webpage .

Support for Research Excellence (SuRE; R16)

The SuRE program supports research capacity building at eligible higher education institutions through funding investigator-initiated research in the biomed​ical, clinical, behavioral, and social sciences that falls in the NIH mission areas. There are two active NOFOs: SuRE research awards and SuRE-First research awards.

Eligible institutions must meet the following requirements:

• Award undergraduate (B.S. or B.A.) and/or graduate degrees in biomedical sciences
• At the time of the application, have received no more than $6 million per year (total costs) from NIH research project grants in each of the preceding 2 fiscal years
• Enroll at least 25% of undergraduate students supported by Pell grants based on the most recent 2 years of data, or be an accredited medical/health professional school with a historical mission statement that explicitly states that it was founded to educate students from nationally underrepresented backgrounds

Academic Research Enhancement Award (AREA; R15)

The AREA program supports small-scale research projects at domestic educational institutions that have not been major recipients of NIH support. Eligible applicants may request support for up to a total of $300,000 in direct costs for up to 3 years.

Eligible institutions or components cannot have received support from NIH totaling more than $6 million per year in 4 of the last 7 fiscal years (more information including some exceptions on this webpage ), and the PI may not be the PI of an active NIH research grant at time of award.

Note that NIGMS does not participate in the related Research Enhancement Award Program for Health Professional Schools and Graduate Schools.

NIH Research Project Grant (R01)

The NIH Research Project Grant is the original and historically oldest grant mechanism that NIH uses. The R01 provides support for health-related research and development based on the NIH mission.

NIGMS supports research relevant to our mission . R01 grants are generally for discrete, specified, circumscribed projects representing an investigator’s specific interest and competencies. They’re awarded for 4 to 5 years, and NIGMS modular budget direct costs average $200,000. Most NIGMS R01 awards are to investigator-initiated applications rather than a specific request for applications. 

Visit the links throughout this post for additional information on each of the major research project grant types NIGMS supports. And read the relevant NOFO carefully before deciding which opportunity may be the right one for you. Check and doublecheck all instructions as you prepare your application and before submitting. Ask colleagues and mentors to read your application to catch anything you’ve missed.

If you submit earlier than the official due date, you can also withdraw and resubmit an updated application as necessary—another reason to start preparing early.

Finally, keeping up to date with the NIH Guide is crucial to identifying funding opportunities you may want to apply for. The simplest way to do that is to subscribe to the weekly table of contents. You’ll get an email each Friday listing all the new NOFOs and notices that NIH has published that week.

Submit a Comment Cancel reply

Please note: Comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment.

Subscribe to Feedback Loop

Receive a digest of our latest blog posts delivered straight to your inbox!

• Login for Applicant
• Login for ICSSR Officials
• Research Projects (Major and Minor)
• Google Plus

You are here

Guidelines for research projects (major and minor), 1. introduction.

1.1 Promotion of social science research is one of the major objectives of the ICSSR. Research grant is financial support to research projects undertaken by the Indian Social Scientists. ICSSR provides funding to Indian scholars to conduct cutting edge research in various fields of social sciences that have theoretical, conceptual, methodological and policy implications. The Research Projects may belong to any of the social science disciplines or may be multi-disciplinary in nature.

The broad disciplines of study, within the domain of social sciences, are:

1. Economics/ Development Studies 2. Management 3. Commerce 4. Sociology 5. Social Work 6. Social Anthropology 7. Cultural Studies 8. Sanskrit Studies 9. Socio-Philosophical Studies 10. Sociolinguistics 11. Gender Studies 12. Health Studies 13. Political Science 14. International Studies 15. Public Administration 16. Diaspora Studies 17. National Security and Strategic Studies 18. Education 19. Social Psychology 20. Legal Studies 21. Social Geography 22. Environmental Studies 23. Social History 24. Media Studies 25. Library Science 26. Language Studies

Note: Support may also be provided to researchers/scholars belonging to disciplines other than the ones mentioned above provided he/she is interested in and has in the opinion of the ICSSR the necessary competence to conduct research in social sciences or social aspects of other sciences. Projects that span across disciplinary boundaries also fall within the areas of the Council’s interests.

1.2 Categories of Research Projects

The ICSSR awards two types of research projects on the basis of the scope, duration of the study and budget: (a) Minor Projects will be awarded for a duration of 12 months with a budget up to Rs.10.00 lakh. (b) (b) Major Projects will be awarded for a duration of 24 months with a budget up to Rs.25.00 lakh.

2. Eligibility

2.1 ICSSR Regional Centres, ICSSR Research Institutes, ICSSR Recognised Institutes, Institutes of National Importance as defined by the Ministry of Education (MoE), UGC Recognized Indian Universities/Deemed Universities/ Affiliated Colleges/Institutions under (2)F / 12(B) etc., are eligible to apply. However, other registered organisations with established research and academic standing may collaborate with any of the above-mentioned institutions for implementation of the study and may form a joint team consisting of Project Director, Co-Project Director(s) etc. Such collaborations have to be clearly stated in application itself.

2.2 Professional social scientists who are permanently employed or retired as faculty in a UGC (University Grants Commission) recognized Indian university/ deemed University / Colleges with requisite research infrastructure / institute of national importance / ICSSR Regional Centres, ICSSR Research Institutes, ICSSR Recognised Institutes and possessing a Ph.D. and demonstrable research experience through publications of books / research papers / reports are eligible to apply. Both the Project Director and Co- Director must possess a Ph.D. degree and a proven track record of high-quality research as evidenced by past studies, publications and their academic background.

2.3 Senior government and defence officers (not less than 25 years of regular service) and persons with proven Social Science expertise possessing a Ph. D. degree or equivalent research work in any social science disciplines and demonstrable research experience through publications of books/research papers/reports can also apply, preferably in collaboration with a faculty in a social science discipline from institutions given in 2.1 above.

2.4 Retired faculty/teachers and government/defence officers are required to affiliate to ICSSR Regional Centers / ICSSR Research Institutes /  ICSSR Recognised Institutes / Institute of national importance / UGC recognized Indian University / Deemed University of his / her choice with the prior approval of the ICSSR.

3. How to Apply

3.1 The applications will be invited through an advertisement on ICSSR website, social media platforms of ICSSR and if required, in print media.

3.2. The applicants shall submit an online application which includes the research proposal in the given prescribed format. They are also required to submit the hard copies of their application and annexures, duly forwarded by the Competent Authorities of the affiliating university/college/institute, within 10 days of the prescribed last date of online submission.

3.3 In case, the hard copy of application is not received within 10 days of asking, the candidature of applicants shall be treated as withdrawn/cancelled.

3.4 Research proposals and final reports should either be in English or Hindi. (Use Devanagari to fill Application form in Hindi).

3.5. Scholars can only apply for one project at a time. In case of any ongoing or completed project with the ICSSR, the cooling-off period for applying to another project will be two years, with the duration calculated from the date of acceptance of the final report.

4. Procedure for Awards

4.1 Applications are scrutinised by the ICSSR Secretariat/and or by a Screening Committee in respect of eligibility.  Eligible applications are then examined and evaluated by the Expert Committee(s). Shortlisted candidates are then called for presentation and interaction at ICSSR (in person or online) before another expert committee. The expert committee(s) make(s) recommendation for award of studies and also suggest(s) budget for the recommended studies.

4.2 The number of candidates called for presentations / interaction will be twice the number of projects to be awarded.

5. Budget and Heads of Expenditure

5.1 The amount will be disbursed in number of instalments, depending on the phases and duration of the study, as indicated in the Sanction Letter. ICSSR reserves the right, based on Expert opinion, to convert a proposal for Major Research Project into Minor Research Project or vice versa.

5.2 The detailed budget estimates along with the proportionate Heads of Expenditure for these proposals are to be prepared by the Institute / Project Director / group of scholars. Those Project Director(s) would like to work without Research Personnel, especially under Minor Research Project would make the proportionate Heads of Expenditure for the proposed Budget.

5.3 Allocation of Heads of Expenditure

• The remuneration for the Research Staff must be according to the ICSSR guidelines.
• The proportionate allocation of expenditure for the budget heads such as Fieldwork (Travel / Logistics / Boarding, Survey Preparation or Consultancy etc.); Equipment and Study material (Computer, Printer, Source Material, Books, Journals, Software, Data Sets, workshop etc.); and Contingency charges etc., to be decided by the Project Director in consultation with the affiliating institution.
• Affiliating Institutional Overhead Charges @ 7.5% over and above on the awarded grant of the project, subject to a maximum limit of Rs.1, 00,000/- will be released by the ICSSR after successful completion of the project.

5.4 Remuneration and Emoluments of Project Staff shall be engaged/appointed as per the rules by the Project Director on a full/ part-time basis during the research work. The duration may be decided by the project director. The consolidated monthly emoluments of the project staff must be according to the following:

5.5 Selection of Research Staff should be done through an advertisement publishing on respective institute’s website and a selection committee consisting of (1) Project Director; (2) One outside Expert (other than the institute where the project is located); (3) a nominee of the Vice Chancellor/Head of the Institution and (4) Dean of the faculty or Head of the Department of the Project Director duly approved by the competent authority.

5.6 For all field work related expenses of Project Director, Co-Project Director(s) and project personnel, rules of affiliating institutes/universities shall be followed.

5.7 All equipment and books purchased out of the project fund shall be the property of the affiliating institution, and a certificate duly signed by the Head of the Institute / Registrar / Principal has to submit to the ICSSR. However, ICSSR may ask for books or/and equipment if it so requires

6. Joining and Release of Grants

6.1 The Project Director has to join the project within one month of the award letter.  For this the scholar has to submit an ‘undertaking’ on an Rs.100 stamp paper, declaration on an Rs.100 stamp paper, date of commencement of the study and grant-in-aid bill towards the first instalment. This period can be extended only in exceptional circumstances up to a maximum of three months by the ICSSR.

6.2 The total awarded grant for the Major Research Project will be released in instalments as indicated in the Sanction Order.

• The first instalment (50% from the total awarded grant) is released after completing the necessary formalities of joining by the Project Director.
• The second instalment (20% from the total awarded grant) is released after receiving a satisfactory twelve months Progress Report, Simple Statement of Accounts with 60% and above utilisation of the first instalment amount, one published research paper in the peer reviewed journal along with grant-in-aid bill towards the second instalment.
• The third instalment (20% from the total awarded grant) will be released after receiving book length Final Report, Executive Summary of Final Report, 500 words abstract of the Final Report (both MS word and PDF formats), second  published research paper (total 2 papers during the project period) in the peer reviewed journal, similarity index score sheet of final report, simple statement of accounts for the expenditure of the so far spent amount along with grant-in-aid bill towards the third instalment.
• Final instalment (remaining 10% from the total awarded grant) will be issued after receipt of recommendation of the expert for acceptance of the Final Report, Audited statement of accounts (AC) in prescribed format with utilization certificate (UC) in GFR-12A form for the entire approved project amount duly signed by the Finance Officer/Registrar/Director of the affiliating Institution, verification of all documents and decision on retaining of equipment and books etc. The institutions of which the accounts are not audited by CAG/AG, their utilisation certificate will be signed by the Finance Officer and a chartered accountant.

6.3 The total awarded grant for the Minor Research Project will be released in instalments as indicated below or in the Sanction Order.

• Scholar needs to submit a satisfactory six months Progress Report during the project period.
• The second instalment (40% from the total awarded grant) will be released after receiving book length Final Report, Executive Summary of Final Report, 500 words abstract of the Final Report (both MS word and PDF formats), one published research paper in the peer reviewed journal, similarity index score sheet of final report, simple statement of accounts for the expenditure of the so for spent amount along with grant-in-aid bill towards the second instalment.

6.4 The Overhead Charges to the affiliating institution will be released after the acceptance of Final Report along with the receipt of the final audited Statement of Accounts and Utilisation Certificate in prescribed formats which are verified by the ICSSR.

6.5 The Project Director will ensure that the expenditure incurred by him conforms to the approved budget heads and relevant rules.  Audited Statement of accounts with Utilization Certificate in GFR of 12A form is for the entire project amount approved for the project.

7. Monitoring of Research Projects

7.1 Research undertaken by a Project Director will be reviewed through the submission of periodic progress reports in the prescribed format and the project may be discontinued/terminated if research progress is found unsatisfactory or any ICSSR rules are violated.

7.2 The scholar/awardee must acknowledge the support of ICSSR in all their publications resulting from the project output such as Research Paper, Journal Articles, Articles in edited Books etc., and must submit a copy of the same to the ICSSR during the course or after completion of the project. If, in case of no acknowledgements by the scholars, they will be block listed and will not be able to apply for any schemes of ICSSR in the future. Papers published in Conference/Seminar proceedings will not be considered as they are not peer reviewed. However, proceedings published by Scopus indexed / UGC care listed journals can be considered.

7.3 All project related queries will be addressed to the Project Director/ Affiliating Institution for their timely reply. 

7.4 The ICSSR may, at any time ask for verification of accounts and other relevant documents related to the Project. 

7.5 The ICSSR reserves the right to change the affiliation if it is found that the affiliating institute is not co-operating with the scholar and it is not facilitating timely completion of the study.

7.6 Final report submitted by the Project Director is mandatorily evaluated by an Expert appointed by the ICSSR before considering the release of the final instalment.

7.7 The Project Director shall be personally responsible for timely completion of the Project. The Project proposal/final report cannot be submitted for the award of any University degree/diploma or funding by any Institution by any member of the project staff, including the Project Director. The ICSSR however, will have no objection if any member of the project staff utilizes the project data for this purpose.

7.8 If the scholars are not submitting the requisite documents and the final report in timely or not completing the project in a stipulated period, the scholars will be block listed and the legal recourse will be initiated.

7.9 As per the directions of the Ministry of Education (MoE) the amount of grant sanctioned is to be utilized within the duration of the project. Any amount of the grant remaining unspent shall be refunded to the ICSSR immediately after the expiry of the duration of the project. If the grantee fails to utilize the grant for the purpose for which the same has been sanctioned/or fails to submit the audited statement of expenditure within the stipulated period, the grantee will be required to refund the amount of the grant with interest thereon @ 10% per annum.

8.  Completion of the Study 

8.1 On completion of the study, the Project Director should submit:

• Final report in a publishable form (Softcopies in both PDF and word format);
• Abstract in 500 words (Softcopies in both PDF and word format);
• Executive Summary of the final report in 5000 words (Softcopies in both PDF and word format);
• Similarity index sheet (Plagiarism check) for the final report.

8.2 After acceptance of the report by the ICSSR, upon incorporating the suggested changes if any, the Project Director should submit:

• Soft copy of modified final report (in both PDF and word format) along with two hard copies;
• Five copies of executive summary;
• Softcopies of (if any) Data Sets, along with well-defined definition of data and other important information for documentation.

8.3 ICSSR gets every report checked for plagiarism and the similarity report is also generated.  As a policy, ICSSR does not accept contents beyond 10 per cent on similarity index.  Scholars are required to get their final as well modified report checked on their own for similarity index and attach a report of the same at the time of submission. 

8.4 The final report submitted by the scholar will be considered as satisfactory only after final recommendation of acceptance by the expert appointed by the ICSSR.

9. Obligations of the Affiliating Institution

9.1 The affiliating institution is required to give an undertaking in the prescribed format contained in the Application Form to administer and manage the ICSSR grant.

9.2 It is also required to provide the requisite research infrastructure to the scholar and maintain proper accounts.

9.3 The affiliating institution shall open / maintain a dedicated bank account for ICSSR grant (Scheme Code-0877) that is duly registered at EAT Module of PFMS portal for release of the Project Grant without any delay.

9.4 The affiliating institution will be under obligation to ensure submission of the final report and an Audited Statement of Accounts and Utilization Certificate, (in the prescribed Proforma GFR 12-A) duly certified by the Competent authority of the institution including the refund of any unspent balance. The affiliating institution shall make suitable arrangements for preservation of data such as filled in schedules, tabulation sheets, manuscripts, reports, etc. relating to the study. The ICSSR reserves the right to demand raw data, or such parts of the study as it deems fit.

9.5 In case a scholar leaves /discontinues/dies during project before completion of the tenure, the affiliating institution shall immediately inform ICSSR, settle the accounts including the refund of any unspent balance within a year of submission.

10.  Other Conditions

10.1 The duration of the project shall be a maximum period of two years for Major Projects and one year for Minor Projects which includes the time for Final Report writing. In case of exceptional circumstances, an extension may be granted by the ICSSR without any additional financial burden on being satisfied about the progress of the work including quality publication. If the extension is required, the Project Director needs to request at least three months prior to the completion for no-cost extension with a copy of the progress made, reason for the delay by justifying the extension. Retrospective extension will not be permitted.

10.2 The contingency grant may be utilized for stationery, computer typing related costs, specialised assistance such as data analysis and consultation for field trip etc., related to the research work.

10.3 Defaulters of any previous fellowship/project/grant of the ICSSR will not be eligible for consideration. 

10.4 No scholar will be allowed to take up a research project along with any ICSSR fellowship.

10.5 Foreign trip is not permissible within the awarded budget of a project. However, the Project Director may undertake data collection outside India in exceptional cases and if warranted by the needs of the proposal. For this he/she is required to apply separately for consideration under the Data Collection Scheme of the ICSSR International Collaboration Division but any rejection there should not have any bearing on the study and cannot be taken as an excuse.

10.6 Any request for additional grant in excess of the sanctioned budget will not `be considered. 

10.7 Purchase of equipment/ assets for the research Project is permissible only if it is originally proposed and approved by the ICSSR and does not exceed the permissible amount and follows the rules of the affiliating institution.

 10.8   The project director cannot make any changes in the research design at any stage.

10.9 Regarding Transfer of a Project/Appointment of substitute Project Director:

• On the request from a university/institute, the ICSSR may permit the appointment of a Substitute Project Director in exceptional circumstances.
• The ICSSR may also appoint a Substitute Project Director if it is convinced that the original awardee of the Project will not be in a position to carry out the study successfully.
• The ICSSR may transfer the place of the Project from one affiliating institution to another subject to submission of the following:
• Satisfactory progress report (s);
• No objection certificate from both previous and the new university/institute;
• Audited statement of account and utilization certificate along with unspent balance, if any.

However, no transfer of project / Project director should be requested in the last six months of the study.

• Overhead charges will be apportioned proportionally among the institutes as per the grant released or as may be finally decided by the ICSSR.
• In case of superannuation of Project Director and if the rules of the institution so require the transfer of the project to a serving faculty member may be done with prior approval of the ICSSR.  The credit of Project shall belong to the original submitting Project Director.

10.10 Consideration under other call(s) would require a fresh proposal.

10.11 The Council reserves the right to reject any application without assigning any reason. It will not be responsible for any postal delays/loss.

10.12 Incomplete applications in any respect will not be considered.

10.13 The final authority related to the interpretation of the guidelines or any issue left is vested with the ICSSR.

10.14 No queries will be entertained by the ICSSR Secretariat until the final declaration of results against a call. Any lobbying for award will lead to disqualification.

10.15 While accepting Research Project from the ICSSR, an awardee should not accept any other fellowship or research project or assignment from any other institution.

10.16 The ICSSR reserves all rights to publish the project funded by it, provided the work is recommended for publication by ICSSR appointed expert/experts.

• Special Call for Short-term Empirical Research 2023-24
• Research Programmes
• Special Call for Studies of the culture, history and geography of the Scheduled Tribes
• Special Call for Research Studies on Social Science Dimensions of Covid-19 Coronavirus Pandemic

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS. A lock ( Lock Locked padlock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Office of Budget Finance and Award Management (BFA)

• Office of Budget, Finance, & Award Management
• Budget Division
• Division of Acquisition and Cooperative Support
• Division of Financial Management
• Division of Grants & Agreements
• Division of Institution & Award Support
• Research Infrastructure Office
• Research Infrastructure Documents

Advisory Committees

• Business and Operations Advisory Committee

External Links

• Chief Financial Officer Council
• Contact BFA
• Budget Finance & Award Management

Research Infrastructure Office (RIO)

The statutory role of the Research Infrastructure Office, formerly the Large Facilities Office, is to support the research directorates in the development, implementation, and oversight of Major Facilities, by:

• serving as the agency's primary resource for all policy or process issues related to the development and implementation of Major Facilities;
• providing expert assistance on the nonscientific and nontechnical aspects of project planning, budgeting, implementation, management, and oversight;
• coordinating and collaborating with research directorates to share best management practices and lessons learned from prior Major Facility activities; and
• assessing each Major Facility construction project for cost and schedule risk.

This same role has been extended by the agency to the Mid-scale Research Infrastructure portfolio, Major Facilities and a Mid-scale RI are defined by their cost to construct, acquire, or implement (regardless of funding account) with Major Facilities costing more than $100M and Mid-scale RI bounded by the upper limit of the Major Research Instrumentation program (currently $4M) and the lower threshold for a Major Facility. Sharing of lessons learned and good practices has also been extended to the scientific community through the annual Research Infrastructure Workshop and other periodic learning opportunities.

Based on its role, RIO is positioned within the Office of Budget, Finance and Award Management (BFA). The Head of RIO works closely with the Chief Officer for Research Facilities (CORF) in the Office of the Director, who is ultimately responsible for full life-cycle oversight of Major Facilities across the Foundation and advises the NSF Director on strategic issues.

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REPORTS

• GAO Report: COVID-19 Affected Ongoing Construction of Major Facilities Projects
• GAO Report: NSF Cost and Schedule Performance of Major Facilities Construction Projects and Progress on Prior GAO Recommendations
• GAO Report: NSF Cost and Schedule Performance of Large Facilities Construction Projects and Opportunities to Improve Project Management
• GAO Report: NSF Revised Policies on Developing Costs and Schedules Could Improve the Estimates for Large Facilities
• NAPA Report: NSF Use of Cooperative Agreement to Support Large Scale Investment in Research
• NSF 16-128, Dear Colleague Letter: National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) Implementation
• Major Facilities List , current as of 1/31/2024
• Mid-scale Research Infrastructure List , current as of 1/31/2024
• Map of NSF Major Research Infrastructure
• Research Infrastructure Documents and Guidance
• Trusted CI - NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence Large Facilities Security Team

WORKSHOPS AND WEBINARS

PROJECT MANAGEMENT MID-SCALE WEBINAR SERIES

In the Spring of 2023, NSF RIO engaged with experienced Project Management experts to produce a series of three project management webinars tailored toward NSF current and future Mid-scale Research Infrastructure awardees and all others wishing to add to their project management knowledge.

Part I: Mid-scale Project Planning & Management

Part II: Mid-scale Project Development, Definition and Risk

Part III: Mid-scale Project Performance Management

KNOWLEDGE SHARING

NSF's Research Infrastructure Office has additional resources designed to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and lessons learned between facilities throughout the year: the NSF Research Infrastructure Knowledge Sharing Gateway where the community can search for past presentations, webinars and posters from NSF research infrastructure events, and the RI Communities of Interest portal, a cloud-based interactive community forum.

President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda Provides the Single Largest Industrial Decarbonization Investment in the Nation’s History, Driving $20+ Billion in Total Investment to Revitalize Manufacturing Communities and Create and Maintain Good-Paying Jobs 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda , the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced up to $6 billion for 33 projects across more than 20 states to decarbonize energy-intensive industries, reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions, support good-paying union jobs, revitalize industrial communities, and strengthen the nation’s manufacturing competitiveness. Funded by the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, the projects will create and maintain tens of thousands of high-quality jobs and help accelerate the commercial-scale demonstration of emerging industrial decarbonization technologies crucial to meeting the Biden-Harris administration's climate and domestic manufacturing goals.  

The projects will focus on the highest emitting industries where decarbonization technologies will have the greatest impact, including aluminum and other metals, cement and concrete, chemicals and refining, iron and steel, and more. Together, the projects are expected to reduce the equivalent of more than 14 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions each year—an amount equivalent to the annual emissions of 3 million gasoline-powered cars. Many of the projects will deploy first-in-the-nation emissions-reducing technologies that have the potential for sector-wide adoption and transformation, multiplying the magnitude of the emissions cuts and supporting the future of U.S. manufacturing. Today’s announcement is the largest investment in industrial decarbonization in American history, helping to position American manufacturers and workers to lead the global clean energy economy.  

“Spurring on the next generation of decarbonization technologies in key industries like steel, paper, concrete, and glass will keep America the most competitive nation on Earth,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Thanks to President Biden’s industrial strategy, DOE is making the largest investment in industrial decarbonization in the history of the United States. These investments will slash emissions from these difficult-to-decarbonize sectors and ensure American businesses and American workers remain at the forefront of the global economy.” 

This transformative federal investment will help strengthen local economies and create and maintain tens of thousands of good-paying, high-quality jobs—particularly those that support worker organizing and collective bargaining. As part of President Biden’s efforts to build an equitable and inclusive clean energy future, each project is also expected to develop and ultimately implement a comprehensive Community Benefits Plan that ensures meaningful community and labor engagement. Nearly 80% of the projects are located in a disadvantaged community, as defined by President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative , offering a significant opportunity to invest in good jobs and clean air in communities that have experienced years of divestment. 

The industrial sector contributes nearly one-third of the nation’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. This transformative federal investment is matched by the selected projects to leverage more than $20 billion in total to demonstrate commercial-scale decarbonization solutions needed to move the industrial sector toward net-zero emissions. Funded projects will cut carbon emissions by an average of 77%. The industrial sector’s unique and complex decarbonization challenges require equally unique and innovative decarbonization solutions that leverage multiple pathways including energy efficiency, electrification, and alternative fuels and feedstocks such as clean hydrogen. The projects announced today are part of the Industrial Demonstrations Program , managed by DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), and will help strengthen America’s manufacturing and industrial competitiveness. Funding for these projects includes $489 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and $5.47 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Decarbonizing Energy- and Emissions-Intensive Industries

The 33 projects selected for award negotiations represent difficult-to-decarbonize industries, including seven chemicals and refining projects, six cement and concrete projects, six iron and steel projects, five aluminum and metals projects, three food and beverage projects, three glass projects, two process heat-focused projects, and one pulp and paper project.  

An overview of selected projects broken down by industry include:  

• Chemicals and Refining : The seven selected chemicals and refining projects demonstrate how one of the world’s largest industries can turn its carbon intensity from a liability into an advantage, increase circularity, and onshore critical supply chains for clean fuels and key electric vehicle components. These projects plan to demonstrate opportunities to upcycle captured carbon to value-added products, create high-quality fuels and materials from recycled products, and replace fossil-fired, high-heat processes with decarbonized fuels. Together, the seven projects would create products like clean fuels for the marine sector, electrolytes for electric vehicle batteries, and high-quality plastics.  
• Cement and Concrete : The six selected cement and concrete projects plan to demonstrate a comprehensive set of technologies capable of eliminating all CO2 emissions from today’s plants while setting the stage for a future where cement—one of the single largest sources of CO2 emissions globally—can be net-negative. These game-changing projects will revolutionize a sector that has relied on emissions-intensive processes for millennia. From capturing and sequestering the emissions from one of the largest cement plants in the U.S. to pioneering chemistry changes to mitigate emissions at their source, DOE’s investments can fundamentally transform cement—the world’s most abundant man-made material and a building block of our world’s infrastructure. Together, the projects will develop new pathways for making traditional Portland cement with lower or zero emissions and to pioneer new materials and new mixtures that can drive the sector to zero emissions.  
• Iron and Steel : The six selected iron and steel projects plan to demonstrate emerging technologies, including some of the world’s first clean hydrogen-fueled direct reduced ironmaking facilities, which can eliminate the vast majority of steelmaking emissions. The projects will help decarbonize iron and steelmaking and enable the industry to phase out more traditional carbon-intensive production methods that rely on coal. This investment is expected to help create products like high grades of steel for the automotive industry, while solidifying the nation’s position as the global leader in low-carbon iron and steel products.  
• Aluminum and Metals : The five selected aluminum and metals projects include a major capital injection to decarbonize and revitalize the U.S. primary aluminum industry along with world-leading recycling approaches for both aluminum and copper. After decades of decline, these investments lay the groundwork for a potential rebound of this critical sector. These investments aim to improve U.S. industry’s competitiveness and efficiency while simultaneously decarbonizing and onshoring supply chains for materials critical for defense and energy sectors. In addition to the high-purity aluminum needed for the defense and energy sectors, the selections include projects that would create recycled aluminum for the food and beverage industry and copper for semiconductors and electric vehicles.  
• Food and Beverage : The three selected food and beverage projects will demonstrate highly replicable energy efficiency and electrification solutions for low- to medium-temperature process heat across 16 locations. These projects can increase consumer awareness around embodied emissions by decarbonizing products that Americans consume every day like ice cream, ketchup, and BBQ sauce.  
• Glass : The three selected glass projects plan to validate electric/fuel hybrid furnaces producing low-emission glass bottles, tableware, and food packaging. This suite of projects will help decarbonize high-temperature heat and set a roadmap for other heat-intensive industrial processes.  
• Process Heat : These two projects plan to validate the use of electric boilers and electric steam production to reduce emissions associated with process heating across a wide range of industries. By demonstrating applicability across sectors, these projects will chart a path for addressing one of the biggest challenges in the industrial sector—heat-related emissions. 
• Pulp and Paper : The one selected pulp and paper project aims to improve energy efficiency by using a novel membrane for an important separations process instead of heat. This technology is highly replicable for many applications, including chemicals and critical materials.  

Learn more about the 33 projects selected for award negotiations . 

Laying the Foundation of an Inclusive Clean Energy Future 

The Biden-Harris administration is dedicated to working in partnership with communities and industries to build an equitable clean energy economy that benefits every American. As part of the Administration’s commitments to invest in America’s workforce, support high-quality American jobs, advance environmental and energy justice, and strengthen tribal energy sovereignty, each project was required to develop and ultimately implement a comprehensive community benefits plan —which will be informed by early and meaningful community and labor engagements in each region. Applicants were required to describe how their proposals would provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people in a facility’s location, recognizing the opportunity this funding provides to address pollution for those disproportionately affected by industrial sector emissions and begin remediating existing social, economic, and health burdens.  

To kickstart ongoing engagement around these projects, OCED will hold a series of national and regional virtual briefings to provide information on the selected projects, introduce OCED’s approach to clean energy demonstrations, and provide opportunities for industry and communities to engage further on specific projects of interest. Learn about IDP engagement opportunities and register to attend .  

Selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding. Before funding is issued, DOE and the selected applicants will undergo a negotiation process, and DOE may cancel negotiations and rescind the selection for any reason during that time. Lead applicants also may change during the award negotiations process. If awarded, OCED will evaluate these projects through a phased approach to project management that includes “go/no-go” decision points between each project phase where DOE reviews and evaluates implementation progress, including community benefits. 

Learn more about how OCED , the Department’s Pathway to Industrial Decarbonization Commercial Liftoff , the Department’s Industrial Decarbonization Roadmap , and the Industrial Technologies Joint Strategy support the research, development, demonstration, and deployment of technologies that will help the U.S. industrial sector reach President Biden’s ambitious goal of a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.