ArticlePLoS biology2019
Contest models highlight inherent inefficiencies of scientific funding competitions.
Article in PLoS biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 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
29 citing papers in PubMed.
- Applicants as reviewers: a mixed methods evaluation of the risks, benefits, and potential of distributed peer review for grant funding allocations.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Modeling the impacts of budget reductions at the U.S. NIH on research and innovation.npj health systems · 2026Article
- Comparing the outputs of intramural and extramural grants funded by National Institutes of Health.eLife · 2026Article
- What breaks when federal commitments break: comment on Beccia et al.SSM. Mental health · 2026Article
- Decentralized Science Supported by Decentralized Finance to Support Pain Research: A Merger of Giants.Current pain and headache reports · 2026Review
- Pluralising Scholarship: Repositioning Doctor of Nursing Practice Faculty Through Boyer's Framework: A Discursive Paper.Journal of advanced nursing · 2026Review
- Reforming competitive global public health funding: Bridging equity and practice gaps.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Perceived barriers for accessing international research funding among Latin American researchers.PloS one · 2026Article
- Article
- Lottery before peer review is associated with increased female representation and reduced estimated economic cost in a German funding line.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Alternative models of funding curiosity-driven research.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Evolving funding strategies for research software: Insights from an international survey of research funders.PloS one · 2025Article
- Shifting the Level of Selection in Science.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024Article
- Perspectives on scientific error.Royal Society open science · 2023Review
- Rethink funding by putting the lottery first.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
- Rethinking academia in a time of climate crisis.eLife · 2023Article
- The credibility crisis and democratic governance: how to reform university governance to be compatible with the nature of science.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Can't We Do Better? A cost-benefit analysis of proposal writing in a competitive funding environment.PloS one · 2023Article
- What senior academics can do to support reproducible and open research: a short, three-step guide.BMC research notes · 2022Article
- What works for peer review and decision-making in research funding: a realist synthesis.Research integrity and peer review · 2022Article
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.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Scientific research funding is allocated largely through a system of soliciting and ranking competitive grant proposals. In these competitions, the proposals themselves are not the deliverables that the funder seeks, but instead are used by the funder to screen for the most promising research ideas. Consequently, some of the funding program's impact on science is squandered because applying researchers must spend time writing proposals instead of doing science. To what extent does the community's aggregate investment in proposal preparation negate the scientific impact of the funding program? Are there alternative mechanisms for awarding funds that advance science more efficiently? We use the economic theory of contests to analyze how efficiently grant proposal competitions advance science, and compare them with recently proposed, partially randomized alternatives such as lotteries. We find that the effort researchers waste in writing proposals may be comparable to the total scientific value of the research that the funding supports, especially when only a few proposals can be funded. Moreover, when professional pressures motivate investigators to seek funding for reasons that extend beyond the value of the proposed science (e.g., promotion, prestige), the entire program can actually hamper scientific progress when the number of awards is small. We suggest that lost efficiency may be restored either by partial lotteries for funding or by funding researchers based on past scientific success instead of proposals for future work.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.