Largest study of its kind shows that the ‘Matthew effect’ in science funding holds true

A new RoRI study shows that the ‘Matthew effect’ — where researchers who win funding early in their career are more likely to get funded in the future — holds true across multiple funders and countries. The findings also suggest that more could be done to encourage and support talented scientists who narrowly miss out on funding the first time around. 

The Matthew effect (“To those who have, more will be given”) and the idea that “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” (early failure in winning funding makes people try harder and go on to achieve more later down the line) are commonly held paradoxical views about the impact of early success or failure in securing research funding. 

Understanding which of these is true, or whether they are both at play, has significant implications for the effectiveness and fairness of funding allocation and research culture.

The RoRI team collected and analysed data from more than 100,000 applications from 14 different funding programs run by six research funding organisations across four countries, making it the largest study of its kind in the world. This was facilitated by RoRI’s Funder Data Platform, a unique online portal that enables international research funding data to be shared and analysed securely and confidentially.

The research team found evidence of the Matthew effect across all funders and countries, with early grant success being a strong predictor of winning funding later on. The Mathew effect is largely driven by previously funded researchers applying more often for further funding later in their career, rather than by reviewers favouring previously funded people.

To explore the impact of an early career setback, the RoRI team compared the citation rate of researchers before they first applied for funding, in between their first and later funding applications, and then after they had reapplied. Overall, they found little robust evidence to show that “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” holds across different funders.

Researchers who were initially successful in applying for funding tended to have a higher citation rate, which reflects the fact that better quality research is more likely to be funded in the first place. 

Instead of comparing all applicants, the study team compared  those who narrowly missed out on winning funding (‘near misses’) and those who only just met the funding criteria (‘near hits’), which are of comparable quality. 

Their analysis suggested that people whose funding application was initially rejected went on to achieve a higher citation impact when applying again compared with those whose application was accepted first time. However, this is probably the result of a selection bias, as initially unfunded people are more likely to apply again if their research goes well and they achieve a higher citation impact in the meantime.

Study lead Vincent Traag, Senior Research Fellow at RoRI and Senior Researcher at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) of Leiden University in the Netherlands, suggests that funders and institutions could do more to support talented researchers who narrowly miss out on funding early on in their careers. 

This becomes even more important in light of innovations such as partial randomisation, where applications that would be classed as ‘near misses’ and ‘near hits’ are entered into a random draw for funding.

“Funders often only say whether a proposal has been funded or not, but they could do more to communicate how close people were and encourage high-ranked ‘near misses’ to strengthen their application and try again,” Traag says.

“For example, funders and research institutions could offer bridge funding and career support for talented but unlucky scientists to develop their ideas and set them up for future success.”

James Wilsdon, Executive Director of RoRI and Professor of Research Policy at UCL, adds:

These findings highlight the importance of carrying out data-informed metascience research to understand what’s really happening in funding organisations and institutions around the world and how it impacts scientific careers and culture, rather than relying on gut instinct and aphorisms.

The results of the study are published as a RoRI working paper and have been submitted for publication in a scientific journal.

The Matthew effect and early-career setbacks in research funding – a replication study (RoRI Working Paper No. 16)