Fun and less fun funding: the experiential affordances of research grant conditions

TY - JOUR

T1 - Fun and less fun funding

T2 - the experiential affordances of research grant conditions

AU - Stage, Andreas Kjær

AU - Utoft, Ea Høg

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

PY - 2023/12

Y1 - 2023/12

N2 - The conditions of mainstream research funding constrain risky, novel research. However, alternative grants are emerging. We study grantees of a double-blinded funding scheme targeting risky, novel research: The Villum Experiment (VE). Without prompting, scientists juxtaposed the experience of performing research under these conditions with that of performing research funded by mainstream grants: fun and less fun. The conditions of VE felt less intrusive and appealed to their self-perceptions and idealized views of scientific work, which shaped how they conducted the funded research. This paper makes three contributions: (1) it reaffirms that how researchers experience grant conditions affects whether a scheme affords what it intends, (2) it highlights that the affordances of research funding are relative to other concurrent funding options, and (3) it shows that small, more broadly allocatable grants can afford scientists a protected space for autonomous research, usually associated with elusive tenure positions or European Research Council (ERC) grants.

AB - The conditions of mainstream research funding constrain risky, novel research. However, alternative grants are emerging. We study grantees of a double-blinded funding scheme targeting risky, novel research: The Villum Experiment (VE). Without prompting, scientists juxtaposed the experience of performing research under these conditions with that of performing research funded by mainstream grants: fun and less fun. The conditions of VE felt less intrusive and appealed to their self-perceptions and idealized views of scientific work, which shaped how they conducted the funded research. This paper makes three contributions: (1) it reaffirms that how researchers experience grant conditions affects whether a scheme affords what it intends, (2) it highlights that the affordances of research funding are relative to other concurrent funding options, and (3) it shows that small, more broadly allocatable grants can afford scientists a protected space for autonomous research, usually associated with elusive tenure positions or European Research Council (ERC) grants.

KW - academic careers

KW - affordances

KW - anonymous application

KW - double-blinded review

KW - protected space

KW - research funding

KW - research practices

U2 - 10.1093/scipol/scad047

DO - 10.1093/scipol/scad047

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85180339603

SN - 0302-3427

VL - 50

SP - 1091

EP - 1102

JO - Science and Public Policy

JF - Science and Public Policy

IS - 6

ER -