IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0272292.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Determining factors of participation and success rates in research funding competitions: Case study

Author

Listed:
  • Valentina Diana Rusu
  • Mihaela Mocanu
  • Anca-Diana Bibiri

Abstract

Research and innovation play a key role in generating smart and sustainable economic growth. By producing new knowledge, the research contributes to the development of new and innovative products, processes, and services, which in turn lead to increased productivity, industrial competitiveness, and, ultimately, the prosperity of the community as a whole. However, all research, development and innovation activities depend on the financial resources made available, as specific financing accelerates the production and dissemination of the best ideas and practices, as well as their role in meeting the challenges our society deals with nowadays. Our study aims to identify the determining factors for the researcher’s participation and success rates in research funding competitions. The goal of the research is to understand how variables such as age, gender, main field, affiliation, and scientific rank can affect the access to funding opportunities available for research and innovation. The study relies on a questionnaire-based survey conducted with 243 early-career and senior researchers from many state universities across Romania. For an in-depth analysis of the factors that influence the success rate in research competitions, in the present approach, we used both graphical and econometric methods. A binary logistic regression modelling was performed in order to explain the relationships between variables. Among other considerations, our findings revealed that in all main research fields, scientific rank and gender are important features for raising the participation and success rate in research funding competitions.

Suggested Citation

  • Valentina Diana Rusu & Mihaela Mocanu & Anca-Diana Bibiri, 2022. "Determining factors of participation and success rates in research funding competitions: Case study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(7), pages 1-17, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0272292
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272292
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0272292
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0272292&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0272292?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Viner, Neil & Powell, Philip & Green, Rod, 2004. "Institutionalized biases in the award of research grants: a preliminary analysis revisiting the principle of accumulative advantage," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 443-454, April.
    2. Ayoubi, Charles & Pezzoni, Michele & Visentin, Fabiana, 2019. "The important thing is not to win, it is to take part: What if scientists benefit from participating in research grant competitions?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 84-97.
    3. Lawson, Cornelia & Geuna, Aldo & Finardi, Ugo, 2021. "The funding-productivity-gender nexus in science, a multistage analysis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(3).
    4. Núria Bautista-Puig & Carlos García-Zorita & Elba Mauleón, 2019. "European Research Council: excellence and leadership over time from a gender perspective," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 28(4), pages 370-382.
    5. Dag W. Aksnes & Liv Langfeldt & Paul Wouters, 2019. "Citations, Citation Indicators, and Research Quality: An Overview of Basic Concepts and Theories," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440198, February.
    6. Marjolijn N. Wijnen & Jorg J. M. Massen & Mariska E. Kret, 2021. "Gender bias in the allocation of student grants," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 5477-5488, July.
    7. Kevin W. Boyack & Caleb Smith & Richard Klavans, 2018. "Toward predicting research proposal success," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(2), pages 449-461, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lawson, Cornelia & Salter, Ammon, 2023. "Exploring the effect of overlapping institutional applications on panel decision-making," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(9).
    2. Marco Cozzi, 2020. "Public Funding of Research and Grant Proposals in the Social Sciences: Empirical Evidence from Canada," Department Discussion Papers 1809, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    3. Melika Mosleh & Saeed Roshani & Mario Coccia, 2022. "Scientific laws of research funding to support citations and diffusion of knowledge in life science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 1931-1951, April.
    4. Lawson, Cornelia & Geuna, Aldo & Finardi, Ugo, 2019. "Nurturing knowledge? The impact of funding and family on scientific performance," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis LEI & BRICK - Laboratory of Economics of Innovation "Franco Momigliano", Bureau of Research in Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge, Collegio 201902, University of Turin.
    5. Stefano Bianchini & Patrick Llerena & Sıla Öcalan-Özel & Emre Özel, 2022. "Gender diversity of research consortia contributes to funding decisions in a multi-stage grant peer-review process," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-10, December.
    6. Katrin Hussinger & João N. Carvalho, 2022. "The long-term effect of research grants on the scientific output of university professors," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(4), pages 463-487, April.
    7. Abbas Abdul, 2023. "Policy seduction and governance resistance? Examining public funding agencies and academic institutions on decarbonisation research," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 50(1), pages 87-101.
    8. Plantec, Quentin & Cabanes, Benjamin & le Masson, Pascal & Weil, Benoit, 2023. "Early-career academic engagement in university–industry collaborative PhDs: Research orientation and project performance," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(9).
    9. Lawson, Cornelia & Geuna, Aldo & Finardi, Ugo, 2021. "The funding-productivity-gender nexus in science, a multistage analysis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(3).
    10. Hren, Darko & Pina, David G. & Norman, Christopher R. & Marušić, Ana, 2022. "What makes or breaks competitive research proposals? A mixed-methods analysis of research grant evaluation reports," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    11. Prodhan Mahbub Ibna Seraj & Blanka Klimova & Rubina Khan, 2024. "Visualizing Research Trends in English Language Teaching (ELT) From 2013 to 2022: A Bibliometric Analysis," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(2), pages 21582440241, May.
    12. Alberto Saracco, 2022. "Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Citations," The Mathematical Intelligencer, Springer, vol. 44(4), pages 326-330, December.
    13. Fuentes, Agustín & Espinoza, Ulises J. & Cobbs, Virginia, 2024. "Follow the citations: Tracing pathways of “race as biology” assumptions in medical algorithms in eGFR and spirometry," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 346(C).
    14. Zhichao Wang & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2021. "Performance Analysis of Hospitals in Australia and its Peers: A Systematic Review," CEPA Working Papers Series WP012021, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    15. Simen G. Enger & Fulvio Castellacci, 2016. "Who gets Horizon 2020 research grants? Propensity to apply and probability to succeed in a two-step analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 1611-1638, December.
    16. Day, Theodore Eugene, 2015. "The big consequences of small biases: A simulation of peer review," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 1266-1270.
    17. Mehdi Rhaiem & Nabil Amara, 2020. "Determinants of research efficiency in Canadian business schools: evidence from scholar-level data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 53-99, October.
    18. Michele Pezzoni & Fabiana Visentin, 2024. "Gender bias in team formation: the case of the European Science Foundation’s grants," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 51(2), pages 247-260.
    19. Norbert L. W. Wilson & Lurleen M. Walters & Tara Wade & Kenesha Reynolds, 2024. "The distribution of competitive research grants from the National Institute for Food and Agriculture: A comparison of 1862 land grant universities, 1890 land grant universities, and other institutions," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(1), pages 76-94, March.
    20. Katarzyna Piwowar‐Sulej, 2021. "Core functions of Sustainable Human Resource Management. A hybrid literature review with the use of H‐Classics methodology," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(4), pages 671-693, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0272292. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.