Insights into the relative efficiency of one- and two-stage research funding processes using an Agent Based Modelling approach

All other things being equal, two-stage research funding processes that involve the initial submission of a relatively short proposal containing only minimal information (typically referred to as an outline proposal) followed by a preparation and submission of a full proposal will on average require less effort from their applicants than will single-stage processes. But it is likely that a funder operating a process which begins with a lower-effort outline stage will receive more applications than they might have expected to see had applicants been required initially to prepare a full proposal in a single-stage process. The net effect of these interacting and competing influences on the overall effort required in, and efficiency of, a funding process is not currently known and so is investigated in this work using an Agent-Based Modelling approach. The results of this model suggest that while the number of applications submitted will indeed increase, perhaps by as much as 40%, if two-stage processes are used, the level of applicant effort per unit output (that is, unit of funding awarded or number of awards made) may be reduced by around 15% to 20%. A weaker but more general interpretation, that does not rely so much on the specifics of the model, is that substantial increases in demand arising from use of outline processes might still come with an overall decrease in applicant effort. A reasonable conclusion is that more extensive use of two-stage research funding processes may lead to significant cost savings.