New RoRI Working Paper examines the bureaucratic burdens of research funding

The Research on Research Institute (RoRI) has published a new working paper examining the systemic administrative workloads involved in the allocation of scientific grants. The paper provides a critical review of recent metascientific studies that have tracked the time, paperwork, and institutional costs required to prepare and assess grant applications.

The review notes that while high-stakes competition is an inevitable feature of 21st-century science, the administrative workloads demanded by application and peer-review processes have become increasingly onerous for applicants, reviewers, and funders alike. While various funding bodies have experimented with bureaucratic interventions such as shortened application forms, two-stage processes, and expanded program manager autonomy, the paper finds that these efforts have yielded mixed success. Furthermore, the rapid streamlining of grant processes observed during the COVID-19 pandemic has proven temporary, failing to disrupt the bureaucratic status quo in any lasting way.

According to the paper, the primary obstacle to meaningful reform is systemic fragmentation. The vast majority of existing studies focus on a single funding scheme within a single national context, making it difficult to compare data across international borders or to translate lessons learned at one agency into actionable policies at another.

To move past these limitations, the paper outlines three key recommendations for the funding ecosystem: a shift from chasing a single “optimised” process to refining diverse effective practices; a renewed effort to protect and defend spaces for managed risk-taking; and an international collaboration to establish common metadata standards for tracking the actual time and financial costs of allocation.

The paper concludes that while eliminating bureaucracy entirely is impossible as public funds will always require robust mechanisms of accountability, the current administrative load is unsustainable and must be addressed systematically across national boundaries. As an international institute supported by funders who are also research partners, RoRI is already developing data tools and experimental platforms that will assist with this effort. 

Read the full paper