Research policy: How to share the funding pie?

In this joint event by Thomas König (IHS), Jürgen Janger (WIFO) and Gerald Schweiger (Graz University of Technology), an exchange on research funding was organised:

• VENUE: IHS, Josefstädter Str. 39, 1080 Vienna (Salon)
• TIME: 18.9., 13-17

Competition has become much more important in research funding in recent decades – this is true not only in quantitative terms (in many countries, for example, funds for project-based research funding have increased both proportionally and in absolute terms), but also in terms of control and selection (e.g. the acquisition of third-party funding is often an (implicit) prerequisite for a scientific career, the number of competitively acquired grants is taken as an indicator of the scientific success of an institution).
But what are the criteria by which the distribution of funding for research can be said to be efficient and fair? Under what conditions does competition in research funding make sense? What is the experience with research funding instruments? And what actually is “excellence”?
In this workshop, the community addressed these questions from different perspectives. The starting point was a media report on a paper by Gerald Schweiger, which in turn was controversially discussed in the social medium Twitter (seehttps://twitter.com/th_koenig/status/1656906431734460417).

Presentation slides [PDF]

Research and science funding

Programme