Introduction to the Handbook of Public Funding of Research: understanding vertical and horizontal complexities

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVESScientific research requires resources -financial, human, infrastructural, legal, social, and cultural, whose provision is an ever more expensive and complex undertaking. This Handbook explores the financing of scientific research by national governments and the European Union. Since WWII, the increasing importance of knowledge for society and the economy has encouraged governments to adopt research policy and funding as a 'new' core task of the state. Research policy bridges the state and the science system (Guston, 2000) mainly through the distribution of public subsidies (Braun and Gilardi, 2006). According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates, OECD governments spent $497 billion on research and development in 2020, an amount that has doubled over the past 15 years (OECD, 2021). This expanding commitment speaks to governments' hopes that research will support economic growth, create jobs, enhance social welfare, protect the environment, and expand the frontiers of human knowledge.The level of public resources invested in science differs between countries (Larrue et al., 2018) depending on the challenges the country faces, its government's ambitions, and political leaders' beliefs about the function of the state in research and innovation systems -on how much direction should be given by the state and how much funding should be made available for which objectives (and challenges). This Handbook discusses the underlying ideas and rationales for investing public funds in the research activities carried out by universities, public research organizations (PROs), and government labs. It compares the political economy of science funding (e.g. Martin and Nightingale, 2000) and the various coordination roles governments play in research funding systems (Lepori, 2011) to better understand countries' research funding regimes.Government provides research funding to universities, the leading research performers, as recurrent funds, selective, competitive funds, or combinations of the two. Various governmental agencies working at (or in-between) different levels, semi-public organizations, and research councils are involved in deciding on research resources and the purposes and conditions attached (Larrue et al., 2018). This Handbook analyses the types and channels of funding, modalities to distribute funds, eligibility requirements, and other conditions connected to the research funds. The chapters also discuss how resource allocation functions at the level of the research performers -the universities, PROs, research groups, and individual researchers -and what strategies these entities employ in reaction to trends and reforms in their funding environment. Universities and PROs are encouraged to generate and (to different degrees) compete for these financial resources (Krücken, 2021). However, they are increasingly