ArticlePloS one2017
How much would each researcher receive if competitive government research funding were distributed equally among researchers?
Article in PloS one, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 63 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Perspectives on scientific error.Royal Society open science · 2023Review
- Can't We Do Better? A cost-benefit analysis of proposal writing in a competitive funding environment.PloS one · 2023Article
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- How large of a grant size is appropriate? Evidence from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.PloS one · 2022Article
- Grant writing and grant peer review as questionable research practices.F1000Research · 2021Article
- Automation in the Life Science Research Laboratory.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2020Review
- The troubles with peer review for allocating research funding: Funders need to experiment with versions of peer review and decision-making.EMBO reports · 2019Article
- Recommendations for Reviewers of Biomedical Imaging Grant Applications.Molecular imaging and biology · 2019Article
- Science policies: How should science funding be allocated? An evolutionary biologists' perspective.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2019Article
- Perceived publication pressure in Amsterdam: Survey of all disciplinary fields and academic ranks.PloS one · 2019Article
- Contest models highlight inherent inefficiencies of scientific funding competitions.PLoS biology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Scientists are increasingly dissatisfied with funding systems that rely on peer assessment and, accordingly, have suggested several proposals for reform. One of these proposals is to distribute available funds equally among all qualified researchers, with no interference from peer review. Despite its numerous benefits, such egalitarian sharing faces the objection, among others, that it would lead to an unacceptable dilution of resources. The aim of the present paper is to assess this particular objection. We estimate (for the Netherlands, the U.S. and the U.K.) how much researchers would receive were they to get an equal share of the government budgets that are currently allocated through competitive peer assessment. For the Netherlands, we furthermore estimate what researchers would receive were we to differentiate between researchers working in low-cost, intermediate-cost and high-cost disciplines. Given these estimates, we then determine what researchers could afford in terms of PhD students, Postdocs, travel and equipment. According to our results, researchers could, on average, maintain current PhD student and Postdoc employment levels, and still have at their disposal a moderate (the U.K.) to considerable (the Netherlands, U.S.) budget for travel and equipment. This suggests that the worry that egalitarian sharing leads to unacceptable dilution of resources is unjustified. Indeed, our results strongly suggest that there is room for far more egalitarian distribution of funds than happens in the highly competitive funding schemes so prevalent today.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.