Changing Funding Arrangements and the Production of Scientific Knowledge
Guest co-editors:
Jochen Gläser, TU Berlin
Kathia Serrano Velarde, Heidelberg University
Why Funding Practices Matter
Research has undoubtedly become a central asset in modern capitalist societies. It lays the groundwork
for global economic competition, informs policy-making, and gives people hope that the big questions
of our century will one day be solved by scientific discoveries. The dramatic expansion of scientific
activities within and outside the university has been accompanied by an increasing scarcity of public
funds, a decreasing rate of growth for many science systems, and severe funding cuts in the wake of
the economic crisis. Other global trends include the transition from recurrent funding to a split funding
model that combines block grants for research organizations with project-based funding, the
increasing incorporation of public policy goals in funding policies, and the transition to a performancebased allocation of block grants to universities.
As funding is one of the main channels by which authority is exercised over research, these changes
can be expected to have significant effects on the production of scientific knowledge. Despite this
assessment, the consequences of these shifts in funding arrangements on knowledge production are
still poorly understood. Science studies have documented and partially theorized three major trends.
The first of these trends is the transition to a split funding model, which means that research in many
fields has become dependent on project-based funding. This development has been investigated from
a variety of perspectives, many of which focus on the emergence and rise to power of funding councils.
These have been studied as “intermediary organizations” (Braun 1993, 1998) and from a principalagent perspective (Guston 1996; van der Meulen 1998; Braun and Guston 2003). In their role as
intermediaries, it is argued, funding councils effectively influence and regulate micro behavior (Morris
2000) while decoupling the state from scientists (Musselin 2014). Scholars have become interested in
the effects of these funding arrangements on individual performance and careers (Auranen and
Nieminen 2010; Bloch et al. 2014; Zoller et al. 2014); yet understanding of their impact on researchers’
choice of problems and approaches is much more limited, and a coherent explanatory framework for
the multilevel dynamic at play is still missing.
The second long-standing interest of science studies targets the impact of industry funding on
academic science. Academic-industrial collaborations that are funded by industry often place strong
constraints on the academic research—biasing studies, suppressing scientific findings that violate
commercial interests, imposing secrecy, and creating other effects considered detrimental to research
(Campbell et al. 2000; Sismondo 2009). Recent studies thus raise the question of how much public
investment is needed in order to limit the counterproductive tendencies of the commercialization of
science (Goldfarb 2008; Glenna et al. 2011). This literature has furthered our understanding of the
differential impact of institutionalized funding models on research practices by considering the
relationship between private and public funding for research (Beaudry and Allaoui 2012).
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The third trend concerns the direct relationship between higher education reforms in many OECD
countries and changes in funding practices. With the transition to performance-based block funding
(Hicks 2012; Hicks & Katz 2011), universities have had to come to terms with an allocation strategy
that encourages strategic selectivity. In combination with a surge of managerial authority, universities
are now able to implement new forms of internal resource allocation, thereby strongly increasing the
authority of management over research funding (Paradeise et al. 2009). By altering the relationship
between researcher and research organization (Edler et al. 2014; Musselin 2014), this trend has shed
light on the importance of organizational structures in mediating and intervening in the acquisition,
organization and allocation of external research money.
These three trends interact and are overlaid by further changes, such as the increasing importance of
charities, supra-national funding agencies and the emergence of new funding schemes (e.g., risk loans
and crowd funding). In sum, the emergence of new funding practices has a complex and partly
contradictory effect on scientific communities, research organizations and researchers. We observe a
diversification of actors attempting to use funding instruments to achieve their goals, increasingly
complex funding environments and dramatic levels of competition for research funding. How these
changes impact the researcher’s opportunities to conduct independent research is a question that
merits closer attention. Although changes in research funding have attracted substantial scientific
interest, they have mainly been studied in isolation from one another. We argue that scholarship
would benefit from (1) a dialogue between the different research traditions, with their insights into
the social mechanisms underlying research funding; (2) a systematic search for causal explanations
that account for the multilevel nature of research funding and knowledge production; and (3) more
comparative and/or longitudinal work that allows for generalization.
Aims and Scope of the Special Issue
The aim of this special issue is to contribute to our theoretical understanding of the changing nature
of research funding and its impact on the production of scientific knowledge. More specifically, we are
interested in the interplay between funding and research practices: What is the impact of
institutionalized funding arrangements on the production of scientific knowledge, i.e., on research
practices and the knowledge produced by these practices?
Papers should consider a range of issues including (but not limited to):
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The emergence, diffusion and implications of funding practices at supra-national, national, and
organizational levels, and their consequences for the production of scientific knowledge. This
includes the historical materialization of funding arrangements as well as the introduction of
novel funding instruments such as risk loans, crowdfunding or the funding of
interdisciplinary/international megaprojects. Papers should focus on the social mechanisms
underlying the emergence and institutionalization of funding practices and provide theoretical
explanations of their impact.
The responses of organizations to their increasing dependency on external funders and thus
on researchers who partly control the access to funds. How do research organizations relate
to an increasingly diversifying funding landscape for scientific research? How do their attempts
to simultaneously increase external funding and control relationships between researchers
and funding organizations affect the independence of researchers and thus their production
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of scientific knowledge? How can theoretical perspectives from organizational sociology and
science studies be integrated to explain the changing role of organizations in the production
of scientific knowledge?
The impact of changing funding arrangements on the content of scientific knowledge. The
contractual relationship that seems characteristic of most contemporary funding schemes
influences the way researchers relate to their research, their peer community and their
funders. These relationships also overlay funding arrangements targeting specific research
content and the funding arrangements researchers have with their organizations, thereby
contributing to the increasing complexity of funding landscapes. We invite papers that explain
the ways in which researchers process the influences of funding arrangements on their
research and the consequences of this mediation on the conduct and content of research.
The call is open to theoretical contributions based on empirical data (qualitative and quantitative) as
well as to high-quality theoretical papers. In order to enhance opportunities to establish causal
relations and generalizations, we suggest that authors take a comparative stance in their analysis and
account for variation between research fields, among researchers and research organizations in the
same field or across different countries. We welcome submissions from a range of relevant social
science disciplines (such as sociology, STS, political science, higher education research, economics,
management studies and public administration), from scholars in all regions of the worlds and at any
stage of their career.
Editorial proceedings
Interested authors will send their initial expression of interest as well as a 500-700 word abstract to
the guest co-editors by 15 October 2015: [email protected] or
[email protected]
Authors will be informed of their submission’s status by 30 October 2015.
The authors with accepted abstracts will then be invited to realize a full draft by June 2016. Papers
are to be written in English and should include an abstract of 150 words, with a suggested target of
max. 8,000 words (including notes and references).
An international paper workshop will be held at the University of Heidelberg in July 2016. In the
framework of this conference, authors will comment on each other’s papers. Papers will also be
reviewed by the guest editors, who will make a first selection and provide suggestions for authors’
work on their drafts.
The final selection of papers will be submitted to Minerva by September 2016, where they will
undergo an external peer review.
The guest editors are currently applying for external funding to cover travel expenses.
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