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The Basics of Grant and Prospect Research

Kyle h. andrei.

It doesn’t matter how many foundations, individual donors, local and regional governments, and other funders believe in your organization and can donate financial support to it if those donors can’t find you and put you on their radar. Researching grants and prospects is the first step in the process, and navigating the upper levels of major-gift fundraising often requires a different approach than individual gift campaigns.

Grant research involves a certain amount of strategy and thoughtfulness, which no software can provide for you. But a number of tools on the market can facilitate your efforts to identify and research funders and make tracking your results more manageable.

For example, online search databases are essential to help you find new potential grants quickly by listing local and national foundations sorted by interest area, saving you time that would otherwise be spent poring over catalogs and directories. Some Web-based services can also help you locate the people in your area who are likely to make major contributions to your organization.

Foundation Grant Research

At its most basic, grant prospect research essentially consists of two major practices: researching various foundations’ grant cycles and giving histories, and managing your organization’s applications for each foundation. The former is an exercise in Web research—identifying a list of foundations that might give to your organization and locating them online to identify the types of organizations they’ve funded in the past, and with what size grants—and the latter is a matter of tracking and managing data.

Grant Research Tools

When looking up giving histories and grant cycles, websites like the Foundation Center’s Foundation Directory Online  database or  GrantStation  are invaluable. They allow you to search very detailed records of foundations by a variety of criteria, including past grants, focus areas, and giving interests. For example, an animal rescue shelter might identify a list of foundations dedicated to animal welfare or with a history of funding other shelters and animal rescue groups. You can access the Foundation Center database online with a monthly subscription ; the basic package starts around $20 a month, and full access costs around $180 monthly. GrantStation has a yearly subscription for $699, but may also be available at substantial discount through your state association.  GrantStation is also available through TechSoup’s product catalog  for qualified nonprofits and libraries. Alternatively, many regional or local philanthropy centers offer access as a benefit of membership, or free on location in their “grant research libraries.”

In addition, regional associations of grantmakers can be valuable sources of information (visit the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers  for a full list). Most grantmaker associations, also known as philanthropy centers, will house a publicly available list of foundations specific to a geographic area. Some are print-only, but a number offer online databases as well. You can also find associations of grantmakers centered on a mission area, such as  Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media , or by other criteria, like the  Association of Small Foundations . Searching member lists for these associations may help identify potential grant prospects.

Federal grants are another key source of funding for many organizations. While you won’t find these grants in private and corporate foundation databases, you can search for U.S. federal grant opportunities at  Grants.gov . State and local grant listings can most often be found on your municipality’s website. A basic Web search is also a great way to find out what grants nonprofits similar to your own have received, and that your organization may qualify for. Many nonprofits list foundation funders on their websites or in annual reports.

Once you’ve identified a list of foundations, you’ll need to determine their giving histories and grant capacities. Tax records are an important source of information on past grantees, overall budget, granting capacity, and the value of past grants. You’ll likely find a lot of this information through the Foundation Center database, but you may also need to search in other places to find everything you’re looking for.  GuideStar  lets you search a database that contains more than 5 million IRS Forms 990—the form the government uses to track financial information about organizations. A number of helpful sites can show you how to find the relevant data in a 990 form, including the  Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York  and this  archived article  at BusinessJournalism.org.

Tools for Managing the Grants Cycle

As you begin to gather information about prospective funders, you’ll need a place to store it. Smaller organizations with limited budgets and nonprofits just starting their grant research may find spreadsheet applications like  Microsoft Excel  or  Google Drive  to be terrific low-budget options for managing foundation prospect lists. If you choose to go this route, create columns to track such information as foundation names, website links, giving interests, and potential giving capacities, as well as dates of RFPs (requests for proposals) and their due dates. If your organization’s internal deadline for proposals is different from the foundation’s deadline, be sure to record both dates.

Most donor management databases, like any of those listed in Idealware’s  Consumers Guide to Donor Management Systems , let you manage your list of foundations just like any other giving prospects, and can track the RFP and proposal dates, the status of your proposals, and your proposal workflows.

In addition, it can be useful to supplement your deadline- and submission-date records with calendaring or task-management software that can function as a to-do list to ensure you don’t miss any deadlines.

Individual Prospect Research

Major gift prospects—typically wealthy individuals in either your geographic area or the community associated with your issue who have the capacity and interest in donating to your organization—can be as valuable to your organization as foundations.

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Before you can start your research, you’ll need to create a list of current and potential donors.

• Start with your list of current donors. Who has been a good donor in the past? You may find through your research that these people have greater giving capacity than you expected.
• Ask your board members and other supporters to recommend people for the list.
• Identify a few key people in your community who aren’t currently on your list but are known to donate to other organizations.

While technology can help you better understand the giving potential of these donors, it can’t help you create this list.

Once you have your prospect list, you’ll need to create a profile for your potential donors that includes their contact and giving information, as well as their financial capacity. Much of this information can be found for free in public records like tax documents, property values, board affiliations, and publicly held stock portfolios. Depending on the size of your prospect list and your staff time capacity, it can be feasible to manually search for these records. Many documents, such as property value records from the assessor’s office, may require you to request this information in person; this is usually free, though there may be a small fee for photocopies. (Some high-level donors may own property in multiple states or municipalities, posing more of a record-gathering challenge.)

Wealth-Screening Services

Rather than searching manually, you could use a wealth-screening database to save staff time, which to many nonprofits is more valuable than the cost of one of these Web-based services—especially for a longer list of donors. Four of the most widely-used wealth-screening databases are  Donor Search ,  WealthEngine ,  LexisNexis Development Professionals , and  Blackbaud’s Target Analytics .

All four allow you to upload a list of potential donors in order to approximate their individual giving potential. This is similar to the process you would use to research individual prospects yourself. These services just pull information from the databases and public records to which you have access. The difference is the staff time you save by being able to run a list of thousands of names at once instead of manually searching one by one, as well as a honed ability to know where to look for detailed information.

While all of these tools tend to be expensive (prices are available only through a quote from the vendors), WealthEngine and LexisNexis cost more than DonorSearch or Target Analytics. Since they usually run on a subscription basis, you can either run large lists all at once, or smaller donor lists as needed. Many of these services will also filter your prospect list to identify the most likely donors, such as your top one percent or top one hundred prospects. Because the information used to create these donor profiles comes from public records, these services tend to use the same sources with minor variations among them. When choosing a tool, it can be helpful to arrange a trial list from the ones you’re considering by using a few names you already have up-to-date profiles on to judge the accuracy of the tools.

Now That You Have Your List…

As with foundation research, you’ll need a place to record and manage your individual prospects. This should be done using a donor management database, which will let you track each prospect and their giving histories, asset pools, giving interests, and the likelihood that they will give again. Many donor databases can also manage pledges and scheduled or recurring gifts, allowing you to keep track of large gifts spread out over a period of months or years—which can be an important source of reliable funding.

Once you’ve compiled a list of feasible prospects and put them through wealth screening, it’s time to start appending the records already in your database. If you’ve used a wealth-screening tool, you’ll find that some of them—WealthEngine or Blackbaud’s Target Analytics, for example—will integrate with your existing donor database or CRM, while others will require you to import the list manually. You also should check over the profiles you get back from these tools—to make sure, for instance, that the John Smith they’ve highlighted as your most likely prospect is the John Smith you think it is—before you import the list wholesale into your system.

It’s important to remember that these prospects are a starting point for cultivating new, high-value donors, not a piggy bank. If you don’t already have a relationship with your top potential donors, find a way to introduce your organization and take the time to build a relationship before soliciting thousands of dollars from them. You also may find from your research that your current long-term donors have greater capacity than you expected. Because you already have a relationship with them, you can consider asking them to increase their contributions.

As you can see, the technology exists to help you find available grants and track their grant cycle, but there still isn’t software to replace the human element—say, to write your proposals for you. And it’s the same with your individual prospects. Wealth-screening services can quickly track down information for your list that would take hours and hours of staff time, but they can’t sit down with each prospect and build a relationship. It’s still essential to have a seasoned fundraiser with the knowledge and capabilities to write good proposals and/or wine and dine potential donors. It’s a good idea to use the high-tech databases and wealth-screening services to help you find the door, but it’s still your job to get your foot in it.

This article was first published by TechSoup, who provided financial support for its creation. The author would like to thank the following nonprofit technology professionals for providing recommendations, advice, and other help: Robert Weiner ; Erin Baltes,  Thomas College ; Carolyn Appleton , Independent Nonprofit Fundraising Executive; Laura Jansen,  Pierce Family Foundation .

Copyright © 2014 TechSoup Global. This work is published under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License .

About the author

Kyle H. Andrei is a research associate for Idealware, a nonprofit that provides thoroughly researched, impartial, and accessible resources about software to help other nonprofits make smart decisions. Visit www.idealware.org to find dozens of free articles, reports, and trainings about technology topics of interest to nonprofits.

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How a Government Grant Works, How to Apply, With an Example

Yarilet Perez is an experienced multimedia journalist and fact-checker with a Master of Science in Journalism. She has worked in multiple cities covering breaking news, politics, education, and more. Her expertise is in personal finance and investing, and real estate.

What Is a Government Grant?

A government grant is a financial award given by a federal, state, or local government authority for a beneficial project. It is effectively a transfer payment . A grant does not include technical assistance or other financial assistance, such as a loan or loan guarantee, an interest rate subsidy , direct appropriation , or revenue sharing. The grantee is not expected to repay the money but is expected to use the funds from the grant for their stated purpose, which typically serves some larger good.

In certain cases, there may also be revenue-sharing agreements with the government—for instance, in the case of a discovery that leads to a profit-generating patent.

Twenty-six federal agencies administer more than 1,000 grant programs annually to provide funding for the arts, the sciences, and educational institutions. Government grants help fund ideas and projects providing public services and stimulating the economy. For example, an economics program may be designed to strengthen empirical and theoretical economic analysis , as well as the methods for rigorous research on economic behavior.

Grants may also support critical recovery initiatives, agricultural projects, and innovative research in all sorts of fields.

Key Takeaways

• A government grant is a financial award given by the federal, state, or local government to fund some type of beneficial project.
• Because government grants are funded by tax dollars, they include stringent compliance and reporting measures to ensure the money is well-spent.
• Receiving a government grant is highly prestigious and often brings an individual or entity to the attention of other donors or sources of revenue.
• The website grants.gov lists currently available grants.

How a Government Grant Works

Government grants aren't just bestowed: they must be applied for. Getting a government grant is an extremely competitive process. The paperwork is complex and applicants must describe how the awarded funds will benefit the local community or the public at large. Crafting a convincing proposal is so challenging that applicants often hire professional help. Some freelance writers specialize in writing grant proposals.

Grants from the federal government are authorized and appropriated through bills passed by Congress and signed by the president. Grant authority varies among agencies. For example, the Small Business Administration (SBA) may distribute grants to nonprofit organizations in many of its counseling and training programs.

Receiving a Government Grant

Government grants have no hidden costs or fees: they are outright gifts, not loans. However, because government grants are funded by tax dollars, they include stringent compliance and reporting measures to ensure the money is well-spent.

After receiving a check, the grantee must submit detailed reports accounting for how the money is disbursed. If the funds are received in stages, these reports must continue during the grant period. Any accomplishments or failures also must be documented and submitted to the sponsoring agency according to various deadlines.

Receiving a government grant is a prestigious event, a sign an individual or nonprofit organization has a significant, positive impact on a community or in a field of study or industrial sector. Often, it puts a project on the donor map, attracting other providers of funding, both nonprofit and profit. It also might lend the grantee some influence with, or attention from, the sponsoring agency.

Applying for a Government Grant

Grants.gov is a free online source for researching and applying for more than 1,000 federal grant programs with access to approximately $500 billion in awards annually. A grant proposal writer may register by completing a standard business profile on behalf of an individual, a nonprofit organization, a research institution, or a similar entity.

The writer also submits an authorized organization representative application, supplies an e-business point of contact, and completes a detailed application. The writer then has access to finding federal grant opportunities, applying for and tracking grants, and receiving grant email alerts, webinar schedules, and tips from grantors.

Government grants come with no strings, and that includes the application process, so if you are asked to submit a fee to apply or to learn more about a grant, there’s a good chance it is a scam.

Example of a Government Grant

The performing arts is one popular category for many government agencies awarding grants. For example, in early 2019 the U.S. Embassy’s Public Affairs Section in Moscow sought grant applications to identify and select American artists and performers to bring to Russia for short-term programs in the fields of music, dance, theater, film and television acting, and culinary arts.

Eligible applicants could include nonprofits, small businesses, and public or private universities; grantees could receive up to $650,000 to produce performances in Russia. The goals of the grant included strengthening "people-to-people ties" between the U.S. and Russia and "showcasing American values by presenting the full range of American creativity and innovation."

Grants.gov. " Grant Terminology—Award ." Accessed Aug. 17, 2021.

Grants.gov. " About the Grants.gov Program Management Office ." Accessed Aug. 17, 2021.

Grants.gov. " What Federal Agencies Award Grants? " Accessed Aug. 17, 2021.

USA.gov. " Government Grants and Loans ." Accessed Aug. 15, 2021.

Grants.gov. " Understanding the Reporting and Oversight Process ." Accessed Aug. 17, 2021.

Grants.gov. " How to Apply for Grants: Getting Started ." Accessed Aug. 17, 2021.

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. " Appropriations 101 ." Accessed Aug. 15, 2021.

Grants.gov. " Grants.gov Roles & Privileges ." Accessed Aug. 17, 2021.

Grants.gov. " Grant Fraud & Scams ." Accessed Aug. 17, 2021.

U.S. Embassy, Moscow. " Public Affairs Section Request for Grant Proposals: FY 2019 Cultural Programming Support ," Pages 1-10. Accessed Aug. 17, 2021.

U.S. Embassy, Moscow. " Public Affairs Section Request for Grant Proposals: FY 2019 Cultural Programming Support ," Page 1. Accessed Aug. 17, 2021.

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

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• Published: 16 September 2023
• Volume 128 , pages 6085–6106, ( 2023 )

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• Mike Thelwall   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6065-205X 1 , 2 ,
• Subreena Simrick   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0170-6940 3 ,
• Ian Viney   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9943-4989 4 &
• Peter Van den Besselaar   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8304-8565 5 , 6  

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Evaluating the effects of some or all academic research funding is difficult because of the many different and overlapping sources, types, and scopes. It is therefore important to identify the key aspects of research funding so that funders and others assessing its value do not overlook them. This article outlines 18 dimensions through which funding varies substantially, as well as three funding records facets. For each dimension, a list of common or possible variations is suggested. The main dimensions include the type of funder of time and equipment, any funding sharing, the proportion of costs funded, the nature of the funding, any collaborative contributions, and the amount and duration of the grant. In addition, funding can influence what is researched, how and by whom. The funding can also be recorded in different places and has different levels of connection to outputs. The many variations and the lack of a clear divide between “unfunded” and funded research, because internal funding can be implicit or unrecorded, greatly complicate assessing the value of funding quantitatively at scale. The dimensions listed here should nevertheless help funding evaluators to consider as many differences as possible and list the remainder as limitations. They also serve as suggested information to collect for those compiling funding datasets.

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Introduction

Academic research grants account for billions of pounds in many countries and so the funders may naturally want to assess their value for money in the sense of financing desirable outcomes at a reasonable cost (Raftery et al., 2016 ). Since many of the benefits of research are long term and difficult to identify or quantify financially, it is common to benchmark against previous results or other funders to judge progress and efficiency. This is a complex task because academic funding has many small and large variations and is influenced by, and may influence, many aspects of the work and environment of the funded academics (e.g., Reale et al., 2017 ). The goal of this article is to support future analyses of the effectiveness or influence of grant funding by providing a typology of the important dimensions to be considered in evaluations (or otherwise acknowledged as limitations). The focus is on grant funding rather than block funding.

The ideal way to assess the value of a funding scheme would be a counterfactual analyses that showed its contribution by identifying what would have happened without the funding. Unfortunately, counterfactual analyses are usually impossible because of the large number of alternative funding sources. Similarly, comparisons between successful and unsuccessful bidders are faced with major confounding factors that include groups not winning one grant winning another (Neufeld, 2016 ), and complex research projects attracting funding of different kinds from multiple sources (Langfeldt et al., 2015 ; Rigby, 2011 ). Even analyses with effective control groups, such as a study of funded vs. unfunded postdocs (Schneider & van Leeuwen, 2014 ), cannot separate the effect of the funding from the success of the grant selection process: were better projects funded or did the funding or reviewer feedback improve the projects? Although qualitative analyses of individual projects help to explain what happened to the money and what it achieved, large scale analyses are sometimes needed to inform management decision making. For example: would a funder get more value for money from larger or smaller, longer or shorter, more specific or more general grants? For such analyses, many simplifying assumptions need to be made. The same is true for checks of the peer review process of research funders. For example, a funder might compute the average citation impact of publications produced by their grants and compare it to a reference set. This reference set might be as outputs from the rejected set or outputs from a comparable funder. The selection of the reference set is crucial for any attempt to identify the added value of any funding, however defined. For example, comparing the work of grant winners with that of high-quality unsuccessful applicants (e.g., those that just failed to be funded) would be useful to detect the added value of the money rather than the success of the procedure to select winners, assuming that there is little difference in potential between winners and narrow losers (Van den Besselaar & Leydesdorff, 2009 ). Because of the need to make comparisons between groups of outputs based on the nature of their funding, it is important to know the major variations in academic research funding types.

The dimensions of funding analysed in previous evaluations can point to how the above issues have been tackled. Unfortunately, most evaluations of the effectiveness, influence, or products of research funding (however defined) have probably been private reports for or by research funders, but some are in the public domain. Two non-funder studies have analysed whether funding improves research in specific contexts: peer review scores for Scoliosis conference submissions (Roach et al., 2008 ), and the methods of randomised controlled trials in urogynecology (Kim et al., 2018 ). Another compared research funded by China with that funded by the EU (Wang et al., 2020 ). An interesting view on the effect of funding on research output suggests that a grant does not necessarily always result in increased research output compared to participation in a grant competition (Ayoubi et al., 2019 ; Jonkers et al., 2017 ). Finally, a science-wide study of funding for journal articles from the UK suggested that it associated with higher quality research in at least some and possibly all fields (the last figure in: Thelwall et al., 2023 ).

From a different perspective, at least two studies have investigated whether academic funding has commercial value. The UK Medical Research Council (MRC) has analysed whether medical spinouts fared better if they were from teams that received MRC funding rather than from unsuccessful applicants, suggesting that funding helped spin-outs to realise commercial value from their health innovations (Annex A2.7 of: MRC, 2019 ). Also in the UK, firms participating in UK research council funded projects tended to grow faster afterwards compared to comparator firms (ERC, 2017 ).

Discussing the main variations in academic research funding types to inform analyses of the value of research funding is the purpose of the current article. Few prior studies seem to have introduced any systematic attempt to characterise the key dimensions of research funding, although some have listed several different types (e.g., four in: Garrett-Jones, 2000 ; three in: Paulson et al., 2011 ; nine in: Versleijen et al., 2007 ). The focus of the current paper is on grant-funded research conducted at least partly by people employed by an academic institution rather than by people researching as part of their job in a business, government, or other non-academic organisation. The latter are presumably funded usually by their employer, although they may sometimes conduct collaborative projects with academics or win academic research funding. The focus is also on research outputs, such as journal articles, books, patents, performances, or inventions, rather than research impacts or knowledge generation. Nevertheless, many of the options apply to the more general case. The list of dimensions relevant to evaluating the value of research funding has been constructed from a literature review of academic research about funding and insights from discussions with funders and analyses of funding records. The influence of funding on individual research projects is analysed, rather than systematic effects of funding, such as at the national level (e.g., for this, see: Sandström & Van den Besselaar, 2018 ; Van den Besselaar & Sandström, 2015 ). The next sections discuss dimensions in difference in the funding awarded, the influence of the funding on the research, and the way in which the funding is recorded.

Funding sources

There are many types of funders of academic research (Hu, 2009 ). An effort to distinguish between types of funding schemes based on a detailed analysis of the Dutch government budget and the annual reports of the main research funders in the Netherlands found the following nine types of funding instruments (Versleijen et al., 2007 ), but the remainder of this section gives finer-grained breakdown of types. The current paper is primarily concerned with all these except for the basic funding category, which includes the block grants that many universities receive for general research support. Block grants were originally uncompetitive but now may also be fully competitive, as in the UK where they depend on Research Excellence Framework scores, or partly competitive as in the Netherlands, where they partly depend on performance-based parameters like PhD completions (see also: Jonkers & Zacharewicz, 2016 ).

Contract research (project—targeted—small scale)

Open competition (project—free—small scale)

Thematic competition (project—targeted—small scale)

Competition between consortia (project—targeted—large scale)

Mission oriented basic funding (basic—targeted—large scale)

Funding of infrastructure and equipment (basic—targeted—diverse)

Basic funding for universities and public research institutes (basic—free—large scale)

International funding of programs and institutes (basic, both, mainly large scale)

EU funding (which can be subdivided in the previous eight types)

Many studies of the influence of research funding have focused on individual funders (Thelwall et al, 2016 ) and funding agencies’ (frequently unpublished) internal analyses presumably often compare between their own funding schemes, compare overall against a world benchmark, or check whether a funding scheme performance has changed over time (BHF, 2022 ). Public evaluations sometimes analyse individual funding schemes, particularly for large funders (e.g., Defazio et al., 2009 ). The source of funding for a project could be the employing academic institution, academic research funders, or other organisations that sometimes fund research. There are slightly different sets of possibilities for equipment and time funding.

Who funded the research project (type of funder)?

A researcher may be funded by their employer, a specialist research funding organisation (e.g., government-sponsored or non-profit) or an organisation that needs the research. Commercial funding seems likely to have different requirements and goals from academic funding (Kang & Motohashi, 2020 ), such as a closer focus on product or service development, different accounting rules, and confidentiality agreements. The source of funding is an important factor in funding analysis because funders have different selection criteria and methods to allocate and monitor funding. This is a non-exhaustive list.

Self-funded or completely unfunded (individual). Although the focus of this paper is on grant funding, this (and the item below) may be useful to record because it may partly underpin projects with other sources and may form parts of comparator sets (e.g., for the research of unfunded highly qualified applicants) in other contexts.

University employer. This includes funding reallocated from national competitive (e.g., performance-based research funding: Hicks, 2012 ) or non-competitive block research grants, from teaching income, investments and other sources that are allocated for research in general rather than equipment, time, or specific projects.

Other university (e.g., as a visiting researcher on a collaborative project).

National academic research funder (e.g., the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council: ESRC).

International academic research funder (e.g., European Union grants).

Government (contract, generally based on a tender and not from a pot of academic research funding)

Commercial (contract or research funding), sometimes called industry funding.

NGO (contract or research funding, e.g., Cancer Research charity). Philanthropic organisations not responsible to donors may have different motivations to charities, so it may be useful to separate the two sometimes.

Who funded the time needed for the research?

Research typically needs both people and equipment, and these two are sometimes supported separately. The funding for a researcher, if any, might be generic and implicit (it is part of their job to do research) or explicit in terms of a specified project that needs to be completed. Clinicians can have protected research time too: days that are reserved for research activities as part of their employment, including during advanced training (e.g., Elkbuli et al., 2020 ; Voss et al., 2021 ). For academics, research time is sometimes “borrowed” from teaching time (Bernardin, 1996 ; Olive, 2017 ). Time for a project may well be funded differently between members, such as the lead researcher being institutionally supported but using a grant to hire a team of academic and support staff. Inter-institutional research may also have a source for each team. The following list covers a range of different common arrangements.

Independent researcher, own time (e.g., not employed by but emeritus or affiliated with a university).

University researcher, own time (e.g., holidays, evenings, weekends).

University, percentage of the working time of academic staff devoted for research. In some countries this is large related to the amount of block finding versus project funding (Sandström & Van den Besselaar, 2018 ).

University, time borrowed from other activities (e.g., teaching, clinical duties, law practice).

Funder, generic research time funding (e.g., Gates chair of neuropsychology, long term career development funding for a general research programme).

University/Funder, specific time allocated for research programme (e.g., five years to develop cybersecurity research expertise).

University/Funder, employed for specific project (e.g., PhD student, postdoc supervised by member of staff).

University/Funder, specific time allocated for specific study (e.g., sabbatical to write a book).

Who funded the equipment or other non-human resources used in the research?

The resources needed for a research project might be funded as part of the project by the main funder, it may be already available to the researcher (e.g., National Health Service equipment that an NHS researcher could expect to access), or it may be separately funded and made available during the project (e.g., Richards, 2019 ). Here, “equipment” includes data or samples that are access-controlled as well as other resources unrelated to pay, such as travel. These types can be broken down as follows.

Researcher’s own equipment (e.g., a musician’s violin for performance-based research or composition; an archaeologist’s Land Rover to transport equipment to a dig).

University equipment, borrowed/repurposed (e.g., PC for teaching, unused library laptop).

University equipment, dual purpose (e.g., PC for teaching and research, violin for music teaching and research).

University/funder equipment for generic research (e.g., research group’s shared microbiology lab).

University/funder equipment research programme (e.g., GPU cluster to investigate deep learning).

University/funder equipment for specific project (e.g., PCs for researchers recruited for project; travel time).

University/funder equipment for single study (e.g., travel for interviews).

Of course, a funder may only support the loan or purchase of equipment on the understanding that the team will find other funding for research projects using it (e.g., “Funding was provided by the Water Research Commission [WRC]. The Covidence software was purchased by the Water Research fund”: Deglon et al., 2023 ). Getting large equipment working for subsequent research (e.g., a space telescope, a particle accelerator, a digitisation project) might also be the primary goal of a project.

How many funders contributed?

Although many projects are funded by a single source, some have multiple funders sharing the costs by agreement or by chance (Davies, 2016 ), and the following seem to be the logical possibilities for cost sharing.

Partially funded from one source, partly unfunded.

Partially funded from multiple sources, partly unfunded.

Fully funded from multiple sources.

Fully funded from a single source.

As an example of unplanned cost sharing, a researcher might have their post funded by one source and then subsequently bid for funding for equipment and support workers to run a large project. This project would then be part funded by the two sources, but not in a coordinated way. It seems likely that a project with a single adequate source of funding might be more efficient than a project with multiple sources that need to be coordinated. Conversely, a project with multiple funders may have passed through many different quality control steps or shown relevance to a range of different audiences. Those funded by multiple sources may also be less dependent on individual funders and therefore more able to autonomously follow their own research agenda, potentially leading to more innovative research.

How competitive was the funding allocation process?

Whilst government and charitable funding is often awarded on a competitive basis, the degree of competition (e.g., success rate) clearly varies between countries and funding calls and changes over time. In contrast, commercial funding may be gained without transparent competition (Kang & Motohashi, 2020 ), perhaps as part of ongoing work in an established collaboration or even due to a chance encounter. In between these, block research grants and prizes may be awarded for past achievements, so they are competitive, but the recipients are relatively free to spend on any type of research and do not need to write proposals (Franssen et al., 2018 ). Similarly, research centre grants may be won competitively but give the freedom to conduct a wide variety of studies over a long period. This gives the following three basic dimensions.

The success rate from the funding call (i.e., the percentage of initial applicants that were funded) OR

The success rate based on funding awarded for past performance (e.g., prize or competitive block grant, although this may be difficult to estimate) OR

The contract or other funding was allocated non-competitively (e.g., non-competitive block funding).

How was the funding decision made?

Who decides on which researchers receive funding and through which processes is also relevant (Van den Besselaar & Horlings, 2011 ). This is perhaps one of the most important considerations for funders.

The procedure for grant awarding: who decided and how?

There is a lot of research into the relative merits of different selection criteria for grants, such as a recent project to assess whether randomisation could be helpful (Fang & Casadevall, 2016 ; researchonresearch.org/experimental-funder). Peer review, triage, and deliberative committees are common, but not universal, components (Meadmore et al., 2020 ) and sources of variation include whether non-academic stakeholders are included within peer review teams (Luo et al., 2021 ), whether one or two stage submissions are required (Gross & Bergstrom, 2019 ) and whether sandpits are used (Meadmore et al., 2020 ). Although each procedure may be unique in personnel and fine details, broad information about it would be particularly helpful in comparisons between funders or schemes.

What were the characteristics of the research team?

The characteristics of successful proposals or applicants are relevant to analyses of competitive calls (Grimpe, 2012 ), although there are too many to list individually. Some deserve some attention here.

What are the characteristics of the research team behind the project or output (e.g., gender, age, career status, institution)?

What is the track record of the research team (e.g., citations, publications, awards, previous grants, service work).

Gender bias is an important consideration and whether it plays a role is highly disputed in the literature. Recent findings suggest that there is gender bias in reviews, but not success rates (Bol et al., 2022 ; Van den Besselaar & Mom, 2021 ). Some funding schemes have team requirements (e.g., established vs. early career researcher grants) and many evaluate applicants’ track records. Applicants’ previous achievements may be critical to success for some calls, such as those for established researchers or funding for leadership, play a minor role in others, or be completely ignored (e.g., for double blind grant reviewing). In any case, research team characteristics may be important for evaluating the influence of the funding or the fairness of the selection procedure.

What were the funder’s goals?

Funding streams or sources often have goals that influence what type of research can be funded. Moreover, researchers can be expected to modify their aspirations to align with the funding stream. The funder may have different types of goal, from supporting aspects of the research process to supporting relevant projects or completing a specific task (e.g., Woodward & Clifton, 1994 ), to generating societal benefits (Fernández-del-Castillo et al., 2015 ).

A common distinction is between basic and applied research, and the category “strategic research” has also been used to capture basic research aiming at long term societal benefits (Sandström, 2009 ). The Frascati Manual uses Basic Research, Applied Research and Experimental Development instead (OECD, 2015 ), but this is more relevant for analyses that incorporate industrial research and development.

Research funding does not necessarily have the goal to fund research because some streams support network formation in the expectation that the network will access other resources to support studies (Aagaard et al., 2021 ). European Union COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Actions are an example (cost.eu). Others may have indirect goals, such as capacity building or creating a strong national research base that helps industry or attracts to international business research investment (Cooksey, 2006 ), or promoting a topic (e.g., educational research: El-Sawi et al., 2009 ). As a corollary to the last point, some topics may be of little interest to most funders, for example because they would mainly benefit marginalised communities (Woodson & Williams, 2020 ).

Since the early 2000s, many countries have also issued so-called career grants which have become prestigious. At the European level career grants started in 2009: the European Research Council (ERC) grants. These grants have a career effect (Bloch et al., 2014 ; Danell & Hjerm, 2013 ; Schroder et al., 2021 ; Van den Besselaar & Sandström, 2015 ) but this dimension, and the longer-term effects of funding other than on specific outputs, is not considered here. A funding scheme may also have multiple of the following goals.

Basic research (e.g., the Malaysia Toray Science Foundation supports basic research by young scientists to boost national capacity: www.mtsf.org ).

Strategic research (e.g., the UK Natural Environment Research Council’s strategic research funding targets areas of important environmental concern, targeting long term solutions: www.ukri.org/councils/nerc/ ).

Applied research (e.g., the Dutch NWO [Dutch Research Council] applied research fund to develop innovations supporting food security: www.nwo.nl/en/researchprogrammes/food-business-research ).

Technology transfer (i.e., applying research knowledge or skills to a non-research problem) or translational research.

Researcher development and training (including career grants).

Capacity building (e.g., to support research in resource-poor settings).

Collaboration formation (e.g., industry-academia, international, inter-university).

Research within a particular field.

Research with a particular application area (e.g., any research helping Alzheimer’s patients, including a ring-fenced proportion of funding within a broader call).

Tangible academic outputs (e.g., articles, books).

Tangible non-academic outputs (e.g., policy changes, medicine accreditation, patents, inventions).

Extent of the funding

The extent of funding of a project can vary substantially from a small percentage, such as for a single site visit, to 100%. A project might even make a surplus if it is allowed to keep any money left over, its equipment survives the project, or it generates successful intellectual property. The financial value of funding is clearly an important consideration because a cheaper project delivering similar outcomes to a more expensive one would have performed better. Nevertheless, grant size is often ignored in academic studies of the value of funding (e.g., Thelwall et al., 2023 ) because it is difficult to identify the amount and to divide it amongst grant outputs. This section covers four dimensions of the extent of a grant.

What proportion of the research was funded?

A research project might be fully funded, funded for the extras needed above what is already available, or deliberately partly funded (Comins, 2015 ). This last approach is sometimes called “cost sharing”. A grant applied on the Full Economic Cost (FEC) model would pay for the time and resources used by the researchers as well as the administrative support and accommodation provided by their institution. The following seem to be the main possibilities.

Partly funded.

Fully funded but on a partial FEC or sub-FEC model cost sharing model.

FEC plus surplus.

The Frascatti Manual about collecting research and development statistics distinguishes between funding internally within a unit of analysis or externally (OECD, 2015 ) but here the distinction is between explicit and implicit funding, with the latter being classed as “Unfunded”.

How was the funding delivered?

Whilst a research grant would normally be financial, a project might be supported in kind by the loan or gift of equipment or time. For instance, agricultural research might be supported with access to relevant land or livestock (Tricarico et al., 2022 ). Here are three common approaches for delivering funding.

In kind—lending time or loaning/giving equipment or other resources.

Fixed amount of money.

A maximum amount of money, with actual spending justified by receipts.

How much funding did the project receive?

Project funding can be tiny, such as a few pounds for a trip or travel expenses, or enormous, such as for a particle accelerator. Grants of a few thousand pounds can also be common in some fields and for some funders (e.g., Gallo et al., 2014 ; Lyndon, 2018 ). In competitive processes, the funder normally indicates the grant size range that it is prepared to fund. The amount of funding for research has increased over time (Bloch & Sørensen, 2015 ).

The money awarded and/or claimed by the project.

How long was the funding for?

Funded projects can be short term, such as for a one-day event, or very long term, such as a 50-year nuclear fusion reactor programme. There seems to be a trend for longer term and larger amounts of funding, such as for centres of excellence that can manage multiple different lines of research (Hellström, 2018 ; OECD, 2014 ).

The intended or actual (e.g., due to costed or non-costed extensions) duration of the project.

Influence of the funding on the research project

A variety of aspects of the funding system were discussed in the previous sections, and this section and the next switch to the effects of funding on what research is conducted and how. Whist some grant schemes explicitly try to direct research (e.g., funding calls to build national artificial intelligence research capacity), even open calls may have indirect influences on team formation, goals, and broader research directions. This section discusses three different ways in which funding can influence a research project.

Influence on what the applicant did

Whilst funding presumably has a decisive influence on whether a study occurs most of the time because of the expense of the equipment or effort (e.g., to secure ethical approval for medical studies: Jonker et al., 2011 ), there may be exceptions. For example, an analysis of unfunded medical research found that it was often hospital-based (Álvarez-Bornstein et al., 2019 ), suggesting that it was supported by employers. Presumably the researcher applying for funding would usually have done something else research-related if they did not win the award, such as conducting different studies or applying for other funding. The following seem to be the main dimensions of variation here.

No influence (the study would have gone ahead without the funding).

Improved existing study (e.g., more time to finish, more/better equipment, more collaborators, constructive ideas from the peer review process). An extreme example of the latter is the Medical Research Council’s Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme (DPFS), which has expert input and decision making throughout a project.

Made the study possible, replacing other research-related activities (e.g., a different type of investigation, supporting another project, PhD mentoring).

Made the study possible, replacing non-research activities (e.g., teaching, clinical practice).

Researchers may conduct unfunded studies if financing is not essential and they would like to choose their own goals (Edwards, 2022 ; Kayrooz et al., 2007 ), or if their research time can be subsidised by teaching revenue (Olive, 2017 ). Some types of research are also inherently cheaper than others, such as secondary data analysis (Vaduganathan et al., 2018 ) and reviews in medical fields, so may not need funding. At the other extreme, large funding sources may redirect the long-term goals of an entire research group (Jeon, 2019 ). In between these two, funding may improve the quality of a study that would have gone ahead anyway, such as by improving its methods, including the sample size or the range of analyses used (Froud et al., 2015 ). Alternatively, it may have changed a study without necessarily improving it, such as by incorporating funder-relevant goals, methods, or target groups. Scholars with topics that do not match the major funding sources may struggle to be able to do research (Laudel, 2005 ).

Influence on research goals or methods

In addition to supporting the research, the nature of the influence of the source of funding can be minor or major, from the perspective of the funded researcher. It seems likely most funding requires some changes to what a self-funded researcher might otherwise do, if only to give reassurance that the proposed research will deliver tangible outputs (Serrano Velarde, 2018 ), or to fit specific funder requirements (Luukkonen & Thomas, 2016 ). Funding influence can perhaps be split into the following broad types, although they are necessarily imprecise, with considerable overlaps.

No influence (the applicant did not modify their research goals for the funder, or ‘relabelled’ their research goals to match the funding scheme).

Partial influence (the applicant modified their research goals for the funder)

Strong influence (the applicant developed new research goals for the funder, such as a recent call for non-AI researchers to retrain to adopt AI).

Full determination (the funder specified the project, such as a pharmaceutical industry contract to test a new vaccine).

Focusing on more substantial changes only, the funding has no influence if the academic did not need to consider funder-related factors when proposing their study, or could select a funder that fully aligned with their goals. On the other hand, the influence is substantial if the researcher changed their goals to fit the funder requirements (Currie-Alder, 2015 ; Tellmann, 2022 ). In between, a project goals may be tailored to a funder or funding requirements (Woodward & Clifton, 1994 ). An indirect way in which health-related funders often influence research is by requiring Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) at all levels of a project, including strategy development (e.g., Brett et al., 2014 ). Funding initiatives may aim to change researchers’ goals, such as to encourage the growth of a promising new field (Gläser et al., 2016 ). The wider funding environment may also effectively block some research types or topics if it is not in scope for most grants (Laudel & Gläser, 2014 ).

It seems likely that funding sources have the greatest influence on researchers’ goals in resource intensive areas, presumably including most science and health research, and especially those that routinely issue topic-focused calls (e.g., Laudel, 2006 ; Woelert et al., 2021 ). The perceived likelihood of receiving future funding may also influence research methods, such as by encouraging researchers to hoard resources (e.g., perform fewer laboratory experiments for a funded paper) when future access may be at risk (Laudel, 2023 ).

Influence on research team composition

The funder call may list eligibility requirements of various types. For example, the UK national funders specify that applicants must be predominantly UK academics. One common type of specification seems to be team size and composition since many funders (e.g., EU) specify or encourage collaborative projects. Funding may also encourage commercial participants or end user partnerships, which may affect team composition (e.g., Gaughan & Bozeman, 2002 ). Four different approaches may be delineated as follows.

No influence (the funder allows any team size).

Partial influence (the applicant chooses a team size to enhance their perceived success rate).

Funder parameters (the funder specifies parameters, such as a requirement for collaboration or partners from at least three EU countries, disciplinary composition or interdisciplinarity mandate).

Full determination (the funder specifies the team size, such as individual applicants only for career-related grants).

The influence of funders on research team composition is unlikely to be strict even if they fully determine grant applicant team sizes because the funded researchers may choose to collaborate with others using their own grants or unfunded.

Influence of the funding on the research outputs

The above categories cover how research funding helps or influences research studies. This section focuses on what may change in the outputs of researchers or projects due to the receipt of funding. This is important to consider because research outputs are the most visible and countable outcomes of research projects, but they are not always necessary (e.g., funding for training or equipment) and different types can be encouraged. Four relevant dimensions of influence are discussed below.

Influence of funding on the applicant’s productivity

Funding can normally be expected to support the production of new outputs by an academic or team (Bloch et al., 2014 ; Danell & Hjerm, 2013 ), but this may be field dependent. Studying the factors affecting productivity, DFG grants had a positive effect on the productivity for German political scientists (Habicht et al., 2021 ). However, in some cases funding may produce fewer tangible outputs because of the need to collaborate with end users or conduct activities of value to them (Hottenrott & Thorwarth, 2011 ), or if the funding is for long-term high-risk investigations. In areas where funding is inessential or where or core/block funding provides some baseline capability, academics who choose not to apply for it can devote all their research time to research rather than grant writing, which may increase their productivity (Thyer, 2011 ). Although simplistic, the situation may therefore be characterised into three situations.

Reduction in the number or size of outputs of relevant types by the applicant(s) during and/or after the project.

No change in the number or size of outputs of relevant types by the applicant(s) during and/or after the project.

Increase in the number or size of outputs of relevant types by the applicant(s) during and/or after the project.

Funding can also have the long-term indirect effect of improving productivity, though career benefits for those funded, such as making them more likely to attract collaborators and future funding (Defazio et al., 2009 ; Heyard & Hottenrott, 2021 ; Hussinger & Carvalho, 2022 ; Saygitov, 2018 ; Shimada et al., 2017 ). Writing grant applications may also provide an intensive learning process, which may help careers (Ayoubi et al., 2019 ; Jonkers et al., 2017 ).

Influence of funding on the applicant’s research output types

Funding may change what a researcher or research team produces. For example, a commercial component of grants may reduce the number of journal articles produced (Hottenrott & Lawson, 2017 ). Funder policies may have other influences on what a researcher does, such as conditions to disseminate the results in a certain way. This may include open access, providing accessible research data, or writing briefings for policy makers or the public. Whilst this may be considered good practice, some may be an additional overhead for the researcher. This may be summarised as follows, although the distinctions are qualitative.

No change in the nature of the outputs produced.

Partial change in the nature of the outputs produced.

Complete change in the nature of the outputs produced (e.g., patents instead of articles).

Influence of funding on the impact or quality of the research

Although cause-and-effect may be difficult to prove (e.g., Aagaard & Schneider, 2017 ), funding seems likely to change the citation, scholarly, societal, or other impacts of what a researcher or research team produces. For example, a reduction in citation impact may occur if the research becomes more application-focused and an increase may occur if the funding improves the quality of the research.

Most studies have focused on citation impact, finding that funded research, or research funded by a particular funder, tends to be more cited than other research (Álvarez-Bornstein et al., 2019 ; Gush et al., 2018 ; Heyard & Hottenrott, 2021 ; Rigby, 2011 ; Roshani et al., 2021 ; Thelwall et al., 2016 ; Yan et al., 2018 ), albeit with a few exceptions (Alkhawtani et al., 2020 ; Jowkar et al., 2011 ; Muscio et al., 2017 ). Moreover, unfunded work, or work that does not explicitly declare funding sources, in some fields can occasionally be highly cited (Sinha et al., 2016 ; Zhao, 2010 ). Logically, however, there are three broad types of influence on the overall impacts of the outputs produced, in addition to changes in the nature of the impacts.

Reduction in the citation/scholarly/societal/other impact of the outputs produced.

No change in the citation/scholarly/societal/other impact of the outputs produced.

Increase in the citation/scholarly/societal/other impact of the outputs produced.

The quality of the research produced is also important and could be assessed by a similar list to the one above. Research quality is normally thought to encompass three aspects: methodological rigour, innovativeness, and societal/scientific impact (Langfeldt et al., 2020 ). Considering quality overall therefore entails attempting to also assess the rigour and innovativeness of research. These seem likely to correlate positively with research impact and are difficult to assess on a large scale. Whilst rigour might be equated with passing journal peer review in some cases, innovation has no simple proxy indictor and is a particular concern for funding decisions (Franssen, et al., 2018 ; Whitley et al., 2018 ).

The number and types of outcomes supported by a grant

When evaluating funding, it is important to consider the nature and number of the outputs and other outcomes produced specifically from it. Research projects often deliver multiple products, such as journal articles, scholarly talks, public-facing talks, and informational websites. There may also be more applied outputs, such as health policy changes, spin-out companies, and new drugs (Ismail et al., 2012 ). Since studies evaluating research funding often analyse only the citation impact of the journal articles produced (because of the ease of benchmarking), it is important to at least acknowledge that other outputs are also produced by researchers, even if it is difficult to take them into account in quantitative analyses.

The number and type of outcomes or outputs associated with a grant.

Of course, the non-citation impacts of research, such as policy changes or drug development, are notoriously difficult to track down even for individual projects (Boulding et al., 2020 ; Raftery et al., 2016 ), although there have been systematic attempts to identify policy citations (Szomszor & Adie, 2022 ). Thus, most types of impacts could not be analysed on a large scale and individual qualitative analyses are the only option for detailed impact analyses (Guthrie et al., 2015 ). In parallel with this, studies that compare articles funded by different sources should really consider the number of outputs per grant, since a grant producing more outputs would tend to be more successful. This approach does not seem to be used when average citation impact is compared, which is a limitation.

A pragmatic issue for studies of grants: funding records

Finally, from a pragmatic data collection perspective, the funding for a research output can be recorded in different places, not all of which are public. A logical place to look for this information is within the output, although it may be recorded within databases maintained by the funder or employer. Related to this, it is not always clear how much of an output can be attributed to an acknowledged funding source. Whilst the location of a funding record presumably has no influence on the effectiveness of the funding, so is not relevant to the goals of this article, it is included here an important practical consideration that all studies of grant funding must cope with. Three relevant dimensions of this ostensibly simple issue are discussed below.

Where the funding is recorded inside the output

Funding can be acknowledged explicitly in journal articles (Aagaard et al., 2021 ) and other research outputs, whether to thank the funder or to record possible conflicts of interest. This information may be omitted because the authors forget or do not want to acknowledge some or all funders. Here is a list of common locations.

A Funding section.

An Acknowledgements section.

A Notes section.

A Declaration of Interests section.

The first footnote.

The last footnote.

The last paragraph of the conclusions.

Elsewhere in the output.

Not recorded in the output.

The compulsory funding declaration sections of an increasing minority of journals are the ideal place for funder information. These force corresponding authors to declare funding, although they may not be able to track down all sources for large, multiply-funded teams. This section also is probably the main place where a clear statement that a study was unfunded could be found. A Declaration of Interests section may also announce an absence of funding, although this cannot be inferred from the more usual statement that the authors have no competing interests. Funding statements in other places are unsystematic in the sense that it seems easy for an author to forget them. Nevertheless, field norms may dictate a specific location for funding information (e.g., always a first page footnote), and this seems likely to reduce the chance that this step is overlooked.

Where the funding is recorded outside the output

Large funders are likely to keep track of the outputs from their funded research, and research institutions may also keep systematic records (Clements et al., 2017 ). These may be completed by researchers or administrators and may be mandatory or optional. Funders usually also record descriptive qualitative information about funded projects that is not essential for typical large-scale analyses of funded research but is important to keep track of individual projects. It may also be used large scale descriptive analyses of grant portfolio changes over time. For example, the UKRI Gateway to Research information includes project title, abstract (lay and technical), value (amount awarded by UKRI—so usually 80% FEC), funded period (start and end), project status (whether still active), category (broad research grant type—e.g., Fellowship), grant reference, Principle Investigator (PI) (and all co-Investigators), research classifications (e.g. Health Research Classification System [HRCS] for MRC grants), research organisations involved (whether as proposed collaborators or funding recipients/partners), and, as the project progresses, any outputs reported via Researchfish.

Academic employers may also track the outputs and funding of their staff in a current research information system or within locally designed databases or spreadsheets. Dimensions for Funders (Dimensions, 2022 ), for example, compiles funding information from a wide range of sources. Other public datasets include the UKRI Gateway to Research (extensive linkage to outputs), the Europe PMC grant lookup tool (good linkage to publications) or the UKCDR covid funding tracker (some linkage to publications via Europe PMC), or the occasional UK Health Research Analysis (.net), and the European commission CORDIS dataset. There are also some initiatives to comprehensively catalogue who funds what in particular domains, such as for UK non-commercial health research (UKCRC, 2020 ). Of course, there are ad-hoc funding statements too, such as in narrative claims of research impact in university websites or as part of evaluations (Grant & Hinrichs, 2015 ), but these may be difficult to harvest systematically. The following list includes a range of common locations.

In a university/employer public/private funding record.

In the academic’s public/private CV.

In the funder’s public/private record.

In a shared public/private research funding system used by the funder (e.g., Researchfish).

In publicity for the grant award (if output mentioned specifically enough).

In publicity for the output (e.g., a theatre programme for a performance output).

Elsewhere outside the output.

Not recorded outside the output.

From the perspective of third parties obtaining information about funding for outputs, if the employer and/or funder databases are private or public but difficult to search then online publicity about the outputs or funding may give an alternative record.

What is the connection between outputs and their declared funders?

Some outputs have a clear identifiable funder or set of funders. For example, a grant may be awarded to write a book and the book would therefore clearly be the primary output of the project. Similarly, a grant to conduct a specified randomised controlled trial seems likely to produce an article reporting the results; this, after passing review, would presumably be the primary research output even though an unpublished statistical summary of the results might suffice in some cases, especially when time is a factor. More loosely, a grant may specify a programme of research and promise several unspecified or vaguely specified outputs. In this case there may be outputs related to the project but not essential to it that might be classed as being part of it. It is also possible that outputs with little connection to a project are recorded as part of it for strategic reasons, such as to satisfy a project quota or gain a higher end-of-project grade. For example, Researchfish (Reddick et al., 2022 ) allows grant holders to select which publications on their CVs associate with each grant. There are also genuine mistakes in declaring funding (e.g., Elmunim et al., 2022 ). The situation may be summarised with the following logical categories.

Direct, clear connection (e.g., the study is a named primary output of a project).

Indirect, clear connection (e.g., the study is a writeup of a named project outcome).

Indirect, likely connection (e.g., the study is an output of someone working on the project and the output is on the project topic).

Tenuous connection (e.g., the study was completed before the project started, by personnel not associated with the project, or by project personnel on an unrelated topic).

No connection at all (such as due to a recording error; presumably rare).

Conclusions

This paper has described dimensions along which research funding differs between projects, with a focus on grant funding. This includes dimensions that are important to consider when analysing the value of research funding quantitatively. This list is incomplete, and not all aspects will be relevant to all future analyses of funding. Most qualitative and rarer dimensions of difference associated with funding are omitted, including the exact nature of any societal impact, support for researcher development, and support for wider social, ethical or scientific issues (e.g., promoting open science).

Organisations that compile funding datasets or otherwise record funding information may also consult the lists above when considering the records that are desirable to collect. Of course, the providers of large datasets, such as the Dimensions for Funders system, may often not be able to find this information for inclusion (not provided by funders) or not be able to adequately process it (e.g., simply too many variations in funding types, and no straightforward way to present this data to users).

When comparing funding sources or evaluating the impact of funding, it is important to consider as many dimensions as practically possible to ensure that comparisons are fair as achievable, whilst acknowledging the remaining sources of variation as limitations. Even at the level of funding schemes, all have unique features but since comparisons must be made for management purposes, it is important to consider differences or to at least be aware of them when making comparisons.

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Pros and Cons of Research Grant Funding

Introduction

A. provides funding for research, b. boosts research productivity, c. encourages collaboration, d. enhances career opportunities, a. highly competitive, b. limited flexibility, c. pressure to produce results, d. short-term funding, a. apply to multiple grants, b. seek alternative funding sources, c. plan for the end of the grant period, d. focus on producing quality research rather than just results, e. collaborate with others to increase your chances of success.

Research grant funding refers to the financial support provided to researchers, academics, and organizations to conduct research projects.

Grants can come from various sources, including government agencies, private foundations, and corporations. Grant applications typically require a detailed research proposal outlining the project’s objectives, methods, and expected outcomes. Once the grant is awarded, the funding can be used to cover expenses such as research materials, equipment, and salaries for research staff.

Research grants are crucial for researchers and organizations as they provide the necessary funding to carry out research projects. Without grant funding, many research projects would not be possible, particularly those that require specialized equipment or extensive data collection. Research grants also allow researchers to focus on their work without having to worry about securing funding. For organizations, research grants can help establish their reputation as leaders in their field and enhance their ability to attract top talent.

While research grant funding is vital, there are both advantages and disadvantages to consider. Some of the pros of research grant funding include providing funding for research, boosting research productivity, encouraging collaboration, and enhancing career opportunities. However, some of the cons of research grant funding include the highly competitive nature of the application process, limited flexibility, pressure to produce results, and short-term funding.

In case you are not familiar with writing research grant proposals, then please visit my post on  Research Grants Uncovered: A Step-by-Step Guide to Funding Your Research Projects . This post will help you in writing powerful research grant proposals in minimal time.

Advantages of Research Grant Funding

Research grant funding is crucial for researchers as it provides the necessary financial support to conduct research projects. This funding can cover expenses such as salaries for research staff, research materials, equipment, and travel costs. With sufficient funding, researchers can carry out more extensive and in-depth research, leading to higher quality research and potentially new discoveries.

Example: A research grant could provide funding for a team of scientists to conduct a clinical trial investigating a new cancer treatment. The funding could cover the costs of recruiting participants, purchasing drugs, and conducting laboratory tests.

Research grants can also increase research productivity by allowing researchers to conduct more research projects simultaneously. With funding, researchers can hire more research staff, purchase necessary equipment, and access more data sources. This leads to higher quality research and potentially more discoveries.

Example: A research grant could provide funding for a team of environmental scientists to study the effects of climate change on a particular ecosystem. The funding could cover the costs of hiring additional staff to collect and analyze data, as well as the purchase of specialized equipment such as remote sensing devices.

Many research grants require collaboration among researchers and institutions, leading to more significant breakthroughs and interdisciplinary research. Collaborative research projects also provide researchers with the opportunity to exchange knowledge and expertise, leading to new insights and innovative solutions.

Example: A research grant could provide funding for a team of researchers from different disciplines such as chemistry, engineering, and physics to develop a new battery technology. The funding could cover the costs of collaborations such as travel expenses, meetings, and conferences.

Successful grant applications can enhance the researcher’s reputation and career prospects, making it easier to secure future funding and career advancement. Grant funding also provides researchers with the opportunity to work on high-profile research projects that can attract attention and recognition from the scientific community and the public.

Example: A young researcher who receives a grant to study a rare disease may be able to publish groundbreaking research findings, which could enhance their reputation in the field and lead to future career opportunities such as securing a faculty position or receiving tenure.

Disadvantages of Research Grant Funding

Research grant funding is highly competitive, with a large number of researchers and organizations vying for limited funding opportunities. This makes it challenging for researchers to secure funding, particularly for those who are early in their careers or are working on novel research topics.

Example: A researcher who has spent years studying an uncommon disease may struggle to secure funding because their research topic is not well-known or popular among grant reviewers.

Research grant funding often comes with specific guidelines and restrictions on how the funds can be used, limiting the researcher’s flexibility to adjust their research plan or respond to unexpected results. This can be particularly challenging for long-term research projects, where the research plan may need to be adjusted based on emerging data.

Example: A researcher may receive a grant to study a particular cancer treatment, but if they discover during the course of their research that a different approach may be more effective, they may not be able to redirect the funds to support the new approach.

Research grants come with the expectation that the researcher will produce significant results within a set timeframe. This pressure to produce results can be particularly challenging for early-career researchers or those working on complex and uncertain research topics.

Example: A researcher may receive a grant to develop a new drug, but if the drug proves to be ineffective, they may feel pressure to report positive results to meet the expectations of the funding organization.

Research grant funding is often short-term, typically lasting between one to three years. This limited funding period can be particularly challenging for long-term research projects that require ongoing funding and may not produce significant results within the funding period.

Example: A researcher may receive a grant to study the long-term effects of a new treatment, but the funding period may only be one year. This limited funding may not allow the researcher to collect sufficient data to draw meaningful conclusions.

In summary, research grant funding has its challenges, including fierce competition, limited flexibility, pressure to produce results, and short-term funding. Researchers need to be aware of these challenges and plan accordingly to ensure the success of their research projects.

How to Overcome the Challenges of Research Grant Funding

Given the highly competitive nature of research grant funding, it is essential to apply to multiple grants to increase the chances of success. Applying to multiple grants also allows researchers to explore different funding opportunities, increasing the likelihood of finding a suitable grant for their research topic.

Example: A researcher studying the effects of air pollution on children’s health could apply for grants from multiple organizations, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Read my article on Can I Submit the Same Research Grant Proposal to Multiple Funding Agencies? . This article will help you in applying for multiple grants.

Researchers can also seek alternative funding sources, such as private foundations, industry partnerships, and crowdfunding campaigns, to supplement their grant funding. These alternative funding sources can provide additional financial support for research projects, allowing researchers to conduct more in-depth and extensive research.

Example: A researcher studying the effects of a new drug could seek funding from a pharmaceutical company to supplement their grant funding.

To overcome the challenges of short-term funding, researchers should plan for the end of the grant period from the outset. This involves developing a realistic timeline for the research project and identifying additional funding opportunities to ensure the project’s continuity beyond the grant period.

Example: A researcher studying the long-term effects of a new treatment could plan for additional funding opportunities, such as applying for grants from private foundations or seeking funding from industry partnerships.

To overcome the pressure to produce results, researchers should focus on producing high-quality research that is scientifically rigorous and transparent. This involves developing a research plan that is robust and comprehensive, incorporating rigorous data analysis and statistical methods, and adhering to scientific best practices.

Example: A researcher studying the effects of a new drug could focus on producing high-quality research, incorporating randomized controlled trials and blinding to ensure unbiased results.

To overcome the challenges of limited funding and competitiveness, researchers should collaborate with others to increase their chances of success. Collaborations allow researchers to leverage the expertise and resources of others, increasing the likelihood of securing funding and producing high-quality research.

Example: A researcher studying the effects of air pollution on children’s health could collaborate with researchers from other institutions, such as environmental scientists and pediatricians, to develop a comprehensive research plan and secure funding from multiple sources.

In summary, to overcome the challenges of research grant funding, researchers should apply to multiple grants, seek alternative funding sources, plan for the end of the grant period, focus on producing quality research, and collaborate with others. By doing so, researchers can increase their chances of success, produce high-quality research, and advance their careers.

Research grant funding has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it provides funding for research, boosts research productivity, encourages collaboration, and enhances career opportunities. On the other hand, it is highly competitive, limited in flexibility, comes with pressure to produce results, and is often short-term in nature.

Understanding the challenges of research grant funding is essential for researchers to successfully navigate the grant application process and secure funding for their research projects. By being aware of the challenges and developing strategies to overcome them, researchers can increase their chances of success and produce high-quality research.

Despite the challenges, pursuing grant funding is still a valuable and necessary aspect of conducting research. By securing grant funding, researchers can support their research projects, advance their careers, and contribute to scientific advancements that can benefit society as a whole. It is important for researchers to continue to pursue grant funding opportunities and to develop the skills necessary to succeed in the grant application process.

In conclusion, while research grant funding has its challenges, it is a crucial aspect of research that can provide numerous benefits for researchers and society. By understanding the pros and cons of research grant funding and developing strategies to overcome the challenges, researchers can successfully secure funding for their research projects and contribute to scientific advancements.

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Topic no. 421, Scholarships, fellowship grants, and other grants

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A scholarship is generally an amount paid or allowed to a student at an educational institution for the purpose of study. A fellowship grant is generally an amount paid or allowed to an individual for the purpose of study or research. Other types of grants include need-based grants (such as Pell Grants) and Fulbright grants .

If you receive a scholarship, a fellowship grant, or other grant, all or part of the amounts you receive may be tax-free. Scholarships, fellowship grants, and other grants are tax-free if you meet the following conditions:

• You're a candidate for a degree at an educational institution that maintains a regular faculty and curriculum and normally has a regularly enrolled body of students in attendance at the place where it carries on its educational activities; and
• The amounts you receive are used to pay for tuition and fees required for enrollment or attendance at the educational institution, or for fees, books, supplies, and equipment required for courses at the educational institution.

You must include in gross income:

• Amounts used for incidental expenses, such as room and board, travel, and optional equipment.
• Amounts received as payments for teaching, research, or other services required as a condition for receiving the scholarship or fellowship grant. However, you don't need to include in gross income any amounts you receive for services that are required by the National Health Service Corps Scholarship Program, the Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship and Financial Assistance Program, or a comprehensive student work-learning-service program (as defined in section 448(e) of the Higher Education Act of 1965) operated by a work college.

How to report

Generally, you report any portion of a scholarship, a fellowship grant, or other grant that you must include in gross income as follows:

• If filing Form 1040 or Form 1040-SR , include the taxable portion in the total amount reported on Line 1a of your tax return. If the taxable amount wasn't reported on Form W-2, enter it on Line 8 (attach Schedule 1 (Form 1040) PDF ).
• If filing Form 1040-NR , report the taxable amount on Line 8 (attach Schedule 1 (Form 1040)).

Estimated tax payments

If any part of your scholarship or fellowship grant is taxable, you may have to make estimated tax payments on the additional income. For additional information on estimated tax, refer to Publication 505, Tax Withholding and Estimated Tax and Am I required to make estimated tax payments?

Additional information

For more information, refer to Publication 970, Tax Benefits for Education and Do I include my scholarship, fellowship, or education grant as income on my tax return?

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Are scholarships taxable? Are grants taxable?

Receiving a college scholarship or grant can making paying for college a lot easier and help with your overall budget. But what about your taxes? OK, we know it’s probably not the first thing on your mind. But as tax time rolls around, you may be asking yourself, “Are scholarships taxable? Are grants taxable?”

The good news is that your scholarship and grant are not taxable if the money was for study or research for a degree-seeking student who spent the funds to pay qualified expenses at an eligible educational organization.

Let’s dig into exactly what that means with a few definitions:

A degree-seeking student is one:

• Pursuing studies for an associate, bachelor’s, or higher degree at an eligible educational institute,
• Enrolled in a program accepted for full credit toward a bachelor’s or higher degree,
• Pursuing studies or conducting research to meet the requirements for a professional certification in a recognized occupation, OR
• Enrolled in a program accredited by a national recognized accreditation agency and authorized under federal or state law.

An eligible educational organization is one:

• Whose primary function is the presentation of formal instruction,
• That maintains a regular faculty and curriculum, and
• Has a regularly enrolled body of students

Qualified education expenses include:

• Tuition and fees required to enroll at or attend an eligible educational institution
• Course-related expenses required of all students in your course of instruction. Expenses include fees, books, supplies and equipment (e.g. computers).

Have other student tax filing questions?   Be sure to visit our Tax Guide for College Students and find out about student forms that can be filed for free.

Are scholarships taxable income?

If all the above describes your situation, you won’t need to report your grant or scholarship as taxable income on your return.

If that’s not you exactly, then you may find that some or all your award is taxable. Here are a few scenarios where that might apply.

Scholarship or grant income is taxable in the following situations.:

• Amounts received for incidental expenses such as room and board, travel, and optional equipment
• Amounts for payments for services including teaching, researching, or other services required as a condition of receiving the scholarship

However, National Health Services Corps Scholarships and Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship and Financial Assistance Program payments, or certain student work-learning service programs aren’t taxable.

Do you have to pay taxes on grants?

Some grants are treated the same as a tax-free scholarship, and the amounts you use to pay for qualified education expenses are tax free.

These include:

• Fulbright Grants
• Pell Grants
• Other Title IV need-based education grants

If you’ve received one of the grants mentioned above and used the money appropriately, the grant money is not taxable.

What about student loans? Any loans you take out to pay for education expenses are tax free, too. Since its money you’ll need to pay back, the amount isn’t included in income. If you’re currently paying back your student loans, you may qualify for the student loan interest deduction .

Get help with your taxable scholarships and grants

If it turns out your scholarships and grants are taxable, don’t worry about getting your taxes done right. At H&R Block, you can find the expertise you need. Whether you file on your own with H&R Block Online or with a tax pro . We’ll be there with you every step of the way.

Free tax filing for students – Did you know some students can file for free with H&R Block? It’s true! Learn more who can file for free with H&R Block Free Online .

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At the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, interns from Cal State LA are learning key skills studying the origins of life.

What does wastewater management in Los Angeles have to do with the search for life on Mars? Eduardo Martinez certainly didn’t make the connection when he was pursuing a master’s in civil engineering. Not at first. Then his professor pointed him toward an internship opportunity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for astrobiology, the study of life’s origins and the possibility of life beyond Earth.

That professor, Arezoo Khodayari of California State University, Los Angeles, helped Martinez understand the chemistry common to both fields. Soon, Martinez saw that just as phosphorous, nitrogen, and other chemicals in wastewater can fuel algal blooms in the ocean, they can potentially provide energy for microbial life on other planets.

“Once I got a taste of planetary science, I knew I needed more,” said Martinez, who did the internship while finishing his degree at Cal State LA, where more than 70% of students are Latino and few have historically participated in NASA research. “If not for JPL, I would have stopped with my master’s.” Now he’s pursuing a doctorate in geosciences at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The inspiration that connects both fields lies at the core of a new NASA grant. Khodayari and Laurie Barge, who runs JPL’s Origins and Habitability Laboratory , have received funding for up to six paid JPL internships over two years. The intent is to help develop the next generation of space-minded scientists from the students at Cal State LA.

The grant — one of 11 recently awarded to emerging research universities by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Bridge Program — helps underrepresented students learn more about astrobiology and perform NASA-sponsored research.

“As a large employer in Southern California, we have a duty to invest in our local communities,” Barge said of JPL’s role in the effort. “It makes NASA and its science more accessible to everyone.”

Barge and Khodayari have been informally collaborating for 10 years, designing experiments to try to answer questions in their respective fields. Of the four Cal State LA interns Barge has hosted so far, two — including Martinez — have been lead authors on published research papers.

“It is a great accomplishment to publish in a prestigious, peer-reviewed journal, especially as the first author,” Khodayari said. “It’s inspiring to see students from Cal State LA, which is primarily a teaching institution, provided research opportunities that result in these kinds of journal publications.”

She notes that many of her students work multiple jobs, so a paid internship means they can focus entirely on their studies without sacrificing essential income. And, Khodayari added, “they get exposure to a field far from their reality.”

In Barge’s lab, dark, fingerlike mineral structures grow in beakers of cloudy liquid meant to simulate oceans on early Earth — and possibly on other planets. By studying how these structures form in the lab, scientists like Barge hope to learn more about the potential life-creating chemical reactions that take place around similar structures, called chimneys, that develop on the ocean floor around hydrothermal vents .

“We learned so much in Laurie’s lab,” said Erika Flores, Barge’s first Cal State LA intern. “Not only are you working independently on your own projects, you’re collaborating with other interns and even other divisions at JPL.”

The middle of five children, Flores was the first in her family to graduate from high school. She initially attended University of California, Berkeley but felt isolated. After returning home, she earned her bachelor’s degree and began studying with Khodayari at Cal State LA.

Although she decided not to become a planetary scientist – “I considered it, but I didn’t want to spend another five years on a Ph.D.; I was ready to get a job” – Flores credits the JPL internship with helping her overcome a case of impostor syndrome. Equipped with a master’s that she completed during her internship, she now works for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, overseeing 13 pumping plants that route wastewater to treatment plants.

Like Flores, current Cal State LA intern Cathy Trejo wants to improve the world through clean water. She’s studying to be an environmental engineer, with a focus beyond wastewater.

But she was excited to see the parallels between Earth-bound science and planetary science during her internship. Learning to use mass spectrometers has even inspired her. NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has a mass spectrometer, the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, that measures the composition of different gases.

“Understanding the instruments we use on Mars has helped me better understand how we study chemistry here on Earth,” Trejo said.

She is fascinated that cumbersome lab instruments can be miniaturized to be taken to other planets, and that scientists are beginning to miniaturize similar instruments that could identify pollutants at Superfund sites.

Barge isn’t giving up hope that Trejo will stick with planetary science, but she’s just happy to help a budding scientist develop. “I hope these student research opportunities offer an appreciation for planetary exploration and how our work at NASA relates to important questions in other fields,” she said.

Andrew Good Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-393-2433 [email protected]

Karen Fox / Alise Fisher NASA Headquarters, Washington 301-286-6284 / 202 358-2546 [email protected] / [email protected]

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Grain science doctoral student at K-State receives Phi Kappa Phi Graduate Research Grant

Monday, April 29, 2024

MANHATTAN — Kansas State University graduate student Rania Marie Espeso Buenavista is one of only 20 students to receive a Graduate Research Grant from the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. The grants of up to $1,500 are designed to support graduate students who are active Phi Kappa Phi members seeking funding for research in support of career development opportunities. Buenavista, doctoral student in grain science, San Pedro, Philippines , will use funds from the award to present at the 2024 Institute of Food Technologists First Conference in Chicago, Illinois. "Attending the IFT First Conference and Food Expo will enable me to stay informed about current trends and challenges in sustainable protein production, which is of particular interest to me," Buenavista said. "I am looking forward to this exciting opportunity and eager to make the most out of it." Buenavista is a graduate research assistant and graduate teaching assistant for the Processing Calculations in Food Systems course in the department of grain science and industry, and her major professor is Kaliramesh Siliveru , associate professor of grain science and industry. She is in the inaugural cohort of Food Security Scholars at K-State. Her research is focused on the development and modification of alternative protein ingredients derived from pulses through dry fractionation, air classification and cold plasma technology. She aims to use these pulse proteins to formulate protein-enriched baked products. This research is especially significant with the increasing demand for plant-based diets, which require diverse food options and improved functional protein ingredients. Her leadership roles on campus include Honor Council representative, Graduate Student Council; social chair, Philippines Student Association; and event chair, Grain Science Graduate Student Organization. She is also a member of the Graduate Student Ambassadors and the Global Engagement Committee of the Young Professionals Community in the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. "Personally, receiving recognition and support from this prestigious honor society has been a great boost to my morale," Buenavista said. "I am honored to be a member of Phi Kappa Phi and grateful for the opportunities it presents for my academic and professional growth." In addition to Phi Kappa Phi, Buenavista is a member of several honor societies, including Phi Tau Sigma, the honor society of food science and technology, Alpha Mu, K-State's honorary grain science society; and Gamma Sigma Delta, an international honorary society of agriculture. Buenavista is the incoming College Bowl Chair of the Institute of Food Technologists Student Association and the incoming student liaison of the Kansas City section of the institute for the 2024-2025 term. Her many accolades include the Extraordinary Student Award from K-State's Division of Academic Success and Student Affairs, the Outstanding Graduate Student Scholarship in the Ph.D. category from the Kansas City Section of IFT, the Mortar Board Outstanding Student Award from the XIX Chapter of Mortar Board and the Love of Learning Award from Phi Kappa Phi. Buenavista earned a bachelor's degree in agricultural and biosystems engineering from University of the Philippines Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines, and a master's in grain science from Kansas State University. "K-State's Phi Kappa Phi chapter is very proud of Rania's achievements and pleased that she is receiving this national recognition for her work," said Shawna Jordan, president of the K-State Phi Kappa Phi chapter. "She is joining a long legacy of K-State students winning awards from Phi Kappa Phi." Kansas State University students interested in applying for nationally competitive scholarships should contact Beth Powers, director of Scholar Development and Undergraduate Research and the Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships , at [email protected] .

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Coding Careers and Accelerating Research

Discover how Open Source with SLU , a grant-funded initiative in Saint Louis University’s Department of Computer Science , is enhancing research efforts across the University and preparing students to enter today’s workforce with professional software development experience.

We can all recall a time when we brought an assignment home from school. Sometimes, it would take us hours, and other times, only minutes to complete before moving on to the next thing on our to-do list. This whole mentality — checking assignments off a to-do list like a routine — was something that bothered Kate Holdener, Ph.D. , and assistant professor of computer science, when she considered her courses at Saint Louis University. 

“What bothered me about [course] projects is that they were kind of toy projects or throw-away work,” Holdener said. “Students did the work, but it was not going to be used by anyone seriously or be maintained afterward. This felt like a waste because we have so many talented students that could be building something more useful.”

Holdener is a professional software engineer specializing in software engineering, software development, and evolutionary algorithms. In early 2022, she received a two-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to create a center that would engage graduate and undergraduate students in open-source software development for SLU research projects. She founded the program called Open Source with SLU.

“I wanted to give students a more realistic environment for software development and also support the faculty that are doing research at SLU,” Holdener said.

“This grant opportunity was looking to support various initiatives that help train a better workforce in open source because it is one of the reasons we have such rapid technological advancement [today]," she said.

Software in the Open

For every piece of technology or automation, a piece of source code is needed to make it function. Once it is ready for release, the creator of the code must answer an essential question: Will the code be closed or open to the public?

The difference between closed and open-source code is in the name itself: It’s either open or closed to public visibility and modification. Open source allows anyone to adjust the code and collaborate to improve performance. It’s a critical learning opportunity for students interested in computer science.

Holdener explained that using open source has an added benefit on university campuses where students' availability and involvement may change from semester to semester.

“We don’t have to reinvent,” she said. “Instead of writing the code from scratch [each semester], we’ll use a library, put code together, and write our own code from there.”

Open Source with SLU gives participating students practical software development experience and helps researchers with their custom software needs. Holdener structured the program to allow SLU researchers to submit a formal request for a software project, and then graduate students lead a team of undergraduate students to execute the work. Graduate students are hired to take on the role of a senior developer, overseeing all stages of the project and checking in with undergraduate developers along the way.

The program has a collaborative atmosphere. Students must develop an actionable plan that includes designing, prototyping, testing and showcasing their work to their clients — much like a corporate software development team. Yet, the greatest takeaway for students is that their capstone project can now be used as professional experience in a job interview.

“Students make contributions to these projects, and all those contributions are visible to anybody,” Holdener said. “As a potential employer, I can go and look at your profile and see these are the things you have worked on and these are the lines of code you wrote. It gives [students] a concrete foundation and proof of what they worked on."

Purpose-Driven Projects

In its first year of operation, Open Source with SLU has contributed to research projects on campus and in the St. Louis community. While each project is research-driven, they are also purpose-driven, developing software that will benefit humanity in the long term. This supports the program’s three learning outcomes that guide student work on their projects — experience, service and promotion.

Daniel Shown, program director for Open Source with SLU, explained that students are able to achieve these goals and gain professional experience as they support research that is interesting or valuable to them.     “First, we are trying to give students real-world software development experience,” he said. “Something more like what they will experience when they are out in the world and less like a class assignment. Second, we are building software that supports research, so we pick clients from across the University who are doing research. The third thing we are trying to do is promote and be a center of gravity for open-source software development and broader conversations about open scholarship on campus.”

At the time of this publication, the program is working on over 13 capstone projects that contribute to research in fields such as mathematics, statistics, chemistry, theology, history and community improvement. One community improvement project includes their recent work with an application that simplifies the process of volunteering at local homeless shelters. This project is in partnership with House Everyone STL.

“This project is a website, where volunteers can easily sign up for shifts at homeless shelters,” said Logan Wyas, SLU graduate student and developer on the project. “It has the ability to make a big impact on our world.”

The application will allow volunteers to sign up, view which shelters have open volunteer shifts, and give shelters the ability to see who is on their schedule. For students, it is the opportunity to address real-world problems in research or the local community that most excites them. When they see the skills they’ve learned in the classroom give them the power to improve the world around them, it makes the work all the more meaningful.

Another mission-driven project is called the Lived Religion Project, which wanted a digital platform that would share media and notes about people’s respective encounters with religion in their everyday life.

“Dr. Adam Parks does research in ethnography, which is how people live, and he is specifically focused on religion and the different ways people experience or engage in religion or religious artifacts,” Holdener said. “He needed a platform that would allow ethnographers to go out in the world, make notes on various religious artifacts, and come home to make more detailed notes after.”

This need developed into the idea for “Where’s Religion?” an application for both desktop and mobile that hosts a platform for collecting, organizing and sharing images, videos and sounds, along with textural notations sourced from a wide range of users. This collection of materials will not only give value to research stemming from history and religion, but also will provide a unique look at several viewpoints of American life.

Undergraduate student Massimo Evelti works on multiple projects within the program to further develop his skills, expand his knowledge of open source, and connect with classmates in a working environment. He said their roles as computer scientists and engineers within Open Source with SLU have an inherent capability to better the world now and into the future.

“Engineering is about creating things to help people, and many of these projects are for the betterment of society and its people,” Evelti said. “If one puts helping others as a priority, there will be plenty of moments to flourish in this field.”

Embracing a Collaborative Environment

Open Source with SLU requires a team effort, which is an expectation that not many of the students face in their other courses. Shown explained that the way scientists work across disciplines is more collaborative than ever, and  putting the open-source work out into the community benefits all.

Holdener built the program to foster a collaborative approach when working on open-source projects. Graduate and undergraduate students come together with their unique interests, varying experience levels, and personal skills to gain the experience they need to move into their careers beyond SLU.

Graduate student Yash Bhatia received his undergraduate degree in computer engineering in 2019 from Mumbai University in India before coming to SLU to obtain his master’s in computer science. He works at Open Source with SLU as a graduate assistant and tech lead for open-source projects, including the “Where’s Religion?” desktop and mobile applications.

Bhatia believes the program helps students gain valuable experience working in a team environment that will prepare students for a career after graduation.

“There are many students who come to the United States with no experience working on real projects or real-time group efforts, where a group leader shapes the team and helps them to become better developers,” Bhatia said. “Open Source with SLU is an excellent initiative that builds skills and makes students learn about different technologies.”

Holdener explained that the program gives students an edge in their resumes. She said most entry-level computer science positions require one to two years of experience, which makes it more challenging for a student entering the job market. This program presents a solution for students — helping them gain relevant and provable experience before entering an interview.

“Whether it's these projects or some other projects, [students] can claim some experience through it,” she said. “Also, it's not just the claim — it's something [they] can demonstrate. I tell my students to list and link their projects on their resume because it’s their development. We run this program in a professional manner just like any software development organization.”

Toward the Discovery of the New

Open Source with SLU is making an immediate impact with computer science students across campus, inviting them to dive into their chosen craft with vigor, innovation and creativity. However, it's not just for students who work in coding and engineering software, but also for students who may have an interest in learning about open-source software.

“A long-term goal for me is to involve students at different levels in the program, and not necessarily from just the computer science department,” Holdener said. “There’s many aspects to these projects that are less technical, and it could be a playground where all students can come, jump in and participate in projects.”

Current students encourage others to reach out and become involved in what projects pique their interest.

“This program is an amazing initiative,” Evelti said. “I highly recommend students to look through the projects, and if there is one that catches your eye, dive in and start with the easiest problem. From there, you will start to understand what you are good at and what you need to work on. The important thing is don’t be timid to ask for help and to finish a problem you have started!”

As Open Source with SLU continues to grow, Holdener is optimistic that this initiative is just the start of an impactful, flourishing open-source community at SLU.

“Students hear about this, and they’ll reach out to say ‘Hey, how do I get involved in this? I want to build up my skills and participate,” she said. “We’re seeing more of this now, and it is exciting to me.”

To learn more about the current projects or to submit a project request to Open Source with SLU, visit their website at https://oss-slu.github.io/ .

Story by Mary Pogue, senior copywriter, Paradigm .

This piece was written for the 2023 SLU Research Institute Annual Impact Report. The Impact Report is printed each spring to celebrate the successes of our researchers from the previous year and share the story of SLU's rise as a preeminent Jesuit research university. Design, photography, and some writing contributions are made by Paradigm . More information can be found here .

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How to Thrive as You Age

A cheap drug may slow down aging. a study will determine if it works.

Allison Aubrey

A drug taken by millions of people to control diabetes may do more than lower blood sugar.

Research suggests metformin has anti-inflammatory effects that could help protect against common age-related diseases including heart disease, cancer, and cognitive decline.

Scientists who study the biology of aging have designed a clinical study, known as The TAME Trial, to test whether metformin can help prevent these diseases and promote a longer healthspan in healthy, older adults.

Michael Cantor, an attorney, and his wife Shari Cantor , the mayor of West Hartford, Connecticut both take metformin. "I tell all my friends about it," Michael Cantor says. "We all want to live a little longer, high-quality life if we can," he says.

Michael Cantor started on metformin about a decade ago when his weight and blood sugar were creeping up. Shari Cantor began taking metformin during the pandemic after she read that it may help protect against serious infections.

Shari and Michael Cantor both take metformin. They are both in their mid-60s and say they feel healthy and full of energy. Theresa Oberst/Michael Cantor hide caption

Shari and Michael Cantor both take metformin. They are both in their mid-60s and say they feel healthy and full of energy.

The Cantors are in their mid-60s and both say they feel healthy and have lots of energy. Both noticed improvements in their digestive systems – feeling more "regular" after they started on the drug,

Metformin costs less than a dollar a day, and depending on insurance, many people pay no out-of-pocket costs for the drug.

"I don't know if metformin increases lifespan in people, but the evidence that exists suggests that it very well might," says Steven Austad , a senior scientific advisor at the American Federation for Aging Research who studies the biology of aging.

An old drug with surprising benefits

Metformin was first used to treat diabetes in the 1950s in France. The drug is a derivative of guanidine , a compound found in Goat's Rue, an herbal medicine long used in Europe.

The FDA approved metformin for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in the U.S. in the 1990s. Since then, researchers have documented several surprises, including a reduced risk of cancer. "That was a bit of a shock," Austad says. A meta-analysis that included data from dozens of studies, found people who took metformin had a lower risk of several types of cancers , including gastrointestinal, urologic and blood cancers.

Austad also points to a British study that found a lower risk of dementia and mild cognitive decline among people with type 2 diabetes taking metformin. In addition, there's research pointing to improved cardiovascular outcomes in people who take metformin including a reduced risk of cardiovascular death .

As promising as this sounds, Austad says most of the evidence is observational, pointing only to an association between metformin and the reduced risk. The evidence stops short of proving cause and effect. Also, it's unknown if the benefits documented in people with diabetes will also reduce the risk of age-related diseases in healthy, older adults.

"That's what we need to figure out," says Steve Kritchevsky , a professor of gerontology at Wake Forest School of Medicine, who is a lead investigator for the Tame Trial.

The goal is to better understand the mechanisms and pathways by which metformin works in the body. For instance, researchers are looking at how the drug may help improve energy in the cells by stimulating autophagy, which is the process of clearing out or recycling damaged bits inside cells.

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Researchers also want to know more about how metformin can help reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, which may slow biological aging.

"When there's an excess of oxidative stress, it will damage the cell. And that accumulation of damage is essentially what aging is," Kritchevsky explains.

When the forces that are damaging cells are running faster than the forces that are repairing or replacing cells, that's aging, Kritchevsky says. And it's possible that drugs like metformin could slow this process down.

By targeting the biology of aging, the hope is to prevent or delay multiple diseases, says Dr. Nir Barzilai of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who leads the effort to get the trial started.

The ultimate in preventative medicine

Back in 2015, Austad and a bunch of aging researchers began pushing for a clinical trial.

"A bunch of us went to the FDA to ask them to approve a trial for metformin,' Austad recalls, and the agency was receptive. "If you could help prevent multiple problems at the same time, like we think metformin may do, then that's almost the ultimate in preventative medicine," Austad says.

The aim is to enroll 3,000 people between the ages of 65 and 79 for a six-year trial. But Dr. Barzilai says it's been slow going to get it funded. "The main obstacle with funding this study is that metformin is a generic drug, so no pharmaceutical company is standing to make money," he says.

Barzilai has turned to philanthropists and foundations, and has some pledges. The National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, set aside about $5 million for the research, but that's not enough to pay for the study which is estimated to cost between $45 and $70 million.

The frustration over the lack of funding is that if the trial points to protective effects, millions of people could benefit. "It's something that everybody will be able to afford," Barzilai says.

Currently the FDA doesn't recognize aging as a disease to treat, but the researchers hope this would usher in a paradigm shift — from treating each age-related medical condition separately, to treating these conditions together, by targeting aging itself.

For now, metformin is only approved to treat type 2 diabetes in the U.S., but doctors can prescribe it off-label for conditions other than its approved use .

Michael and Shari Cantor's doctors were comfortable prescribing it to them, given the drug's long history of safety and the possible benefits in delaying age-related disease.

"I walk a lot, I hike, and at 65 I have a lot of energy," Michael Cantor says. I feel like the metformin helps," he says. He and Shari say they have not experienced any negative side effects.

Research shows a small percentage of people who take metformin experience GI distress that makes the drug intolerable. And, some people develop a b12 vitamin deficiency. One study found people over the age of 65 who take metformin may have a harder time building new muscle.

Millions of women are 'under-muscled.' These foods help build strength

"There's some evidence that people who exercise who are on metformin have less gain in muscle mass, says Dr. Eric Verdin , President of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. That could be a concern for people who are under-muscled .

But Verdin says it may be possible to repurpose metformin in other ways "There are a number of companies that are exploring metformin in combination with other drugs," he says. He points to research underway to combine metformin with a drug called galantamine for the treatment of sarcopenia , which is the medical term for age-related muscle loss. Sarcopenia affects millions of older people, especially women .

The science of testing drugs to target aging is rapidly advancing, and metformin isn't the only medicine that may treat the underlying biology.

"Nobody thinks this is the be all and end all of drugs that target aging," Austad says. He says data from the clinical trial could stimulate investment by the big pharmaceutical companies in this area. "They may come up with much better drugs," he says.

Michael Cantor knows there's no guarantee with metformin. "Maybe it doesn't do what we think it does in terms of longevity, but it's certainly not going to do me any harm," he says.

Cantor's father had his first heart attack at 51. He says he wants to do all he can to prevent disease and live a healthy life, and he thinks Metformin is one tool that may help.

For now, Dr. Barzilai says the metformin clinical trial can get underway when the money comes in.

7 habits to live a healthier life, inspired by the world's longest-lived communities

This story was edited by Jane Greenhalgh

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Dear Colleague Letter: Planning Grants to Broaden Participation in the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation Program

December 15, 2023

Dear Colleagues:

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Engineering (ENG) continually seeks to advance engineering and scientific progress in research and innovation while broadening participation and inclusion of the full spectrum of diverse talents in engineering and science fields. This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) seeks to inform the community about an opportunity to pursue both goals through Planning Grants for the development of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) proposals. These Planning Grants will support costs associated with the development EFRI research projects and the formation of teams that are responsive to the current EFRI solicitation and that significantly address the goal of broadening the participation and inclusion of researchers and institutions supported by the EFRI program. Funding opportunities are available in FY 2024 to provide support to teams that plan to submit an EFRI proposal to the FY 2025 cycle of the current EFRI solicitation described on the EFRI website .

The National Science Foundation’s strategic goals include expanding knowledge in science and engineering and building capacity for a diverse and inclusive science and engineering workforce. The primary goal of this DCL is to broaden the diversity of institutions, faculty, and trainees participating in the EFRI program by enabling the engineering and science community to develop potentially transformative ideas that challenge current understanding or provides pathways to new frontiers in science and engineering, recruit the personnel needed to form topic-responsive teams, and build capacity and preparedness prior to submitting to the EFRI solicitation. As described in the 2020 National Science Board’s (NSB) Vision 2030 report, “progress in creating a diverse and inclusive [Science and Engineering] S&E enterprise has not kept pace with demographic trends or with the increasing centrality of S&E to our economy, national security, and jobs of the future. America’s diversity is a great strength. Leveraging that strength by broadening participation in the U.S. S&E enterprise will be crucial to fostering individual opportunity and a thriving economy.” Importantly, progress in engineering and science is accelerated when research teams are comprised of diverse individuals who are equitably integrated into the team environment. 1 The array of perspectives and talent that comes from a diverse team and leadership can heighten the likelihood of transformative research and outcomes. 2

The EFRI program is working in conjunction with the NSF Directorate for Engineering’s Broadening Participation in Engineering (BPE) program solicitation ( NSF 22-514 ) to coordinate EFRI Planning grants. The BPE program seeks to strengthen the future U.S. Engineering workforce and catalyze research innovation by enabling the participation of all citizens in STEM, thus reflecting the diversity and true intellectual capacity of the Nation's population. In line with the goals of Track 1 of the BPE program solicitation, the EFRI program will offer planning grants that aim to catalyze the inclusion of the full spectrum of diverse talents in engineering.

The EFRI program seeks proposals with potentially transformative ideas that represent an opportunity for a significant shift in fundamental engineering knowledge with a strong potential for long term impact on national needs or a grand challenge. Thus, research teams that draw on and fully integrate engineering and science research talent, ideas, and perspectives from non-research-intensive institutions, Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs), as well as institutions in EPSCoR states have the capability to undertake research that significantly addresses the societal needs and grand challenges presented in the EFRI solicitation. Through this DCL, the EFRI program offers planning grants that support the engineering and science community to form and enhance multi- and interdisciplinary research collaborations that are responsive to the goal of supporting the full spectrum of diverse talents in engineering and science expressed in this DCL.

Description of the Opportunity

Planning grants funded through this DCL are expected to cultivate potential EFRI research teams that actively address broadening participation and inclusion goals expressed in this DCL and to develop a competitive EFRI proposal for the FY 2025 cycle of the current EFRI solicitation. As a result of planning grant activities, potential EFRI teams should be better equipped to carry out potentially transformative research that addresses the Biocomputing through EnGINeering Organoid Intelligence (BEGIN OI) EFRI topic. Proposers supported through this mechanism may use the funding to organize activities that help stimulate the formation of EFRI teams (in terms of PI, Co-PI, Senior Personnel, and organization type) and crystalize the ideas and research plans to be presented in a potential EFRI proposal.

Examples of planning grant activities can include, but are not limited to:

• Lead PIs from MSIs, PUIs, and institutions in EPSCoR states,
• Lead PIs from underrepresented in the field of engineering,
• Co-PIs and senior personnel from MSIs, PUIs, and institutions in EPSCoR states
• Development of research goals
• Leadership and management of mid-size projects
• Development of a research plan that is responsive to the EFRI BEGIN OI solicitation
• Geographical distance: The physical distance between researchers at collaborating institutions
• Cognitive distance: The degree of overlapping specialized knowledge between members of an inter- or multidisciplinary team
• Social distance: The “trust and friendship” (at the micro-level) among members of the team
• Organizational distance: The methods or networks used to exchange information, knowledge, and make decisions; The level of autonomy afforded to each member of the team
• Institutional distance: The level of shared values, norms, and language present among collaborating team members and institutions
• Assessment of planning grant goals

Given the complexity of an EFRI proposal, NSF recognizes that many teams will identify important research priorities but may not have the full complement of skills needed to effectively address the challenge. The planning grant can be used to support team formation activities that create opportunities for the development of partnerships between researchers and institutions that are bi-directional and mutually beneficial, thus engaging a wide array of perspectives and scientific talent to address the national needs and grand challenges presented in the EFRI solicitation. The National Institutes of Health Collaboration Team Science Field Guide can provide a starting point for team formation activities.

Award size and Duration

The budget for a planning proposal may be up to $100,000. The proposal may request funding for up to 12 months.

Preparation and Submission Information

To be considered for an EFRI Planning Grant, planning proposals must be submitted by 5:00pm, submitter’s local time, on February 23, 2024.

PIs must contact Alias Smith at [email protected] prior to submission of a planning proposal to aid in determining the appropriateness of the work for consideration under this opportunity.

This activity is being conducted under the auspices of the Broadening Participation in Engineering (BPE) solicitation ( NSF 22-514 ), Track 1. Planning grant proposals should be prepared in accordance with the guidance in Chapter II.E.1 of the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) and as described in the BPE solicitation. Planning proposals must be submitted to the BPE program solicitation ( NSF 22-514 ) via Research.gov and the “Planning” type of proposal should be selected. The system will automatically insert the prepended title “Planning” and that should be followed by “Track 1 EFRI DCL”. Please note that although the BPE solicitation accepts Track 1 proposals at anytime, planning proposals submitted in response to this DCL must be submitted by 5:00pm, submitter’s local time on February 23, 2024. When selecting the due date in Research.gov, proposers should select the target date available in the system.

Submission or receipt of a planning grant is not a requirement for participating in forthcoming EFRI competitions. Planning grant proposals do not constitute any commitment on behalf of the PI/co-PI(s) or their organizations to submit a future proposal. Award of a planning grant does not constitute any commitment on behalf of NSF to fund an EFRI proposal subsequently submitted by the Planning Grant team. Prospective PIs are encouraged to read this DCL and the PAPPG carefully for planning proposal preparation and submission requirements and to review the current EFRI solicitation for EFRI program priorities.

EFRI planning proposals may be reviewed internally by NSF staff, reviewed in a panel, by ad hoc reviewers, or any combination of these methods.

For further information, please contact

• Alias Smith, ENG/EFMA, [email protected]
• Sohi Rastegar, ENG/EFMA, [email protected]

Susan Margulies, PhD Assistant Director Directorate for Engineering National Science Foundation

• Smith-Doerr L., Alegria S., and Sacco T. (2017). How Diversity Matters in the US Science and Engineering Workforce: A Critical Review Considering Integration in Teams, Fields, and Organizational Contexts. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 3 (2017), 139-153.
• Dai Y., Byun G., and Ding F. (2019). The Direct and Indirect Impact of Gender Diversity in New Venture Teams on Innovation Performance. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 43(3) 505–528
• Boschma R. (2005). Proximity and Innovation: A Critical Assessment. Regional Studies, 39(1): 61–74