IFI EBPM in STI/STIG Policy Platform Seminar: Decision-making on research funding evaluation – a case in the UK

Prof. Cornelia Lawson, Associate Professor, The University of Manchester

The assessing of a pool of competing projects is a challenging task for scientific panels at funding agencies. Using large-scale and rich data from a broad set of panels from the UK’s largest research council, we explore whether scientific panels treat overlapping applications from the same institution in a selection round differently. Building on previous research that suggested that panels may favour institutional diversity in funding outcomes, we find that applications at the margin of the funding decision are less likely to be funded when an application from the same institution is also funded. However, we find little evidence of welfare losses associated with this outcome. The implications of these findings for understanding the role of panels in shaping of scientific funding are also examined.

Cornelia Lawson is Associate Professor in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy and a member of the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIOIR). Her research investigates the performance and career paths of researchers and inventors, as well as inter-organisational and inter-sectoral research collaboration and knowledge transfer. At present she is working on projects that look at open innovation in science, gender biases and diversity in science, research funding decision making, and transformations in science, such as AI.

Cornelia is currently heading the Innovation, Strategy and Sustainability group at AMBS; before that she was Programme Director of the MSc Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (2020-2022). Prior to joining AMBS Cornelia was a lecturer at the University of Bath School of Management and a JSPS post-doctoral fellow at the University of Tokyo. She holds a PhD in Economics from City, University of London.

•Lawson, C., & Salter, A. (2023). Exploring the effect of overlapping institutional applications on panel decision-making. Research Policy, 52(9), 104868. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2023.104868
•Olbrecht, M., & Bornmann, L. (2010). Panel peer review of grant applications: what do we know from research in social psychology on judgment and decision-making in groups? Research Evaluation, 19(4), 293–304. https://doi.org/10.3152/095820210X12809191250762
•Fang, F. C., & Casadevall, A. (2016). Research funding: The case for a modified lottery.MBio, 7(2), 10-1128. https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.00422-16

Secretariat, Institute for Future Initiatives, UTokyo
Technology Governance Policy Research Unit
E-mail: ifi_tg[at]ifi.u-tokyo.ac.jp（replace [at] with @）