Why researchers change direction – and what funders should do about it

Drawing on 21 interviews with biomedical scientists, RoRI Research Fellow in Metascience Josie Coburn examines what prompts researchers to pivot their research

Following years of research policy predominantly focused on scientific productivity and excellence, there has been increasing interest in the direction of research and a shift towards targeting research towards addressing societal needs.

In biomedicine, the shift towards targeted research has predominantly meant targeting diseases with research, and this has led to misalignments between biomedical research and societal needs, with some diseases receiving more research funding than others relative to their global burden of disease.

However, we also know that scientific research is inherently uncertain, and recent studies have shown that research in one scientific area leads to advances in another area more than half of the time (Aslan et al., 2024; Coburn et al., 2024; Yaqub et al., 2024).

Less is known about the nature of these changes, why they happen and what the implications might be for research funders.

In my recent paper, based on 21 interviews with biomedical researchers working across different institutions and countries, I find that changes in research direction between grant funding and publication are common, systemic, and take many different forms.

Serendipity, failure, and curiosity

At the individual level, research may change direction unexpectedly in response to serendipitous events or failures.

Almost all the researchers interviewed highlighted the role of serendipity. They noted that it may be especially common in curiosity-driven or discovery-oriented research; that it can be intentionally designed into projects, particularly those with a strong design component; and that it can be found upstream of lab-based research in funding conditions or collaborations. Several researchers also pointed to failure as an important source of serendipity.

Pressures, freedoms, and how institutions shape research

At the context level, features of the research environment also influence aspects of mid-project changes.

For instance, research institutions may demand sudden changes in focus requiring a rapid response, such as the redeployment of malaria researchers into COVID research mentioned by several researchers.

Conversely, many of the researchers who had changed the direction of their research were able to do so because of some sort of ‘protected space’ afforded by their research funding.

Researchers reported that changes in research direction during projects were not only influenced by the availability and ‘projectification’ of funding, but also by the attitude of the funder towards change and the flexibility of the type of grant. One researcher used an analogy of trains versus jeeps to describe research funders, with trains only able to reach the desired destination, and jeeps able to explore the landscape and reach different locations.

The role of collaboration and networks

Research collaborations and interpersonal networks also have a strong influence on changes in research direction. One researcher described collaborations as “where a lot of the magic happens,” encompassing chance encounters and the novel insights that emerge when researchers share expertise, data, or other resources.

 Additionally, networking occurs at different levels in research systems, from professional societies and conferences to cooperation between laboratories. There are lines of communication, external to projects, which are continuously at play in the research decisions taken by individual scientists and research teams.

How disease context shapes research paths

Disease-related variations, particularly associated with diseases that are more prevalent in low-income countries, such as capacity issues and the availability of reagents, may limit opportunities for researchers to change the direction of their research.

Conversely, capacity-building grants with inbuilt flexibility may allow researchers to change research direction to pursue promising new directions. Public health priorities may also draw researchers towards particular disease areas (and away from others). These influences operate in addition to the range of other factors already discussed.

What this means for funders

For research funders, one implication of these findings on the nature of changes in research directions is to consider having at least some funding calls in their portfolio that actively encourage these sorts of shifts / more exploratory research.

Another implication is that if funders want to set or alter research directions, they are likely to need to do more than just target research funding towards solving a particular problem. They may need to also make adjustments to some of the factors which influence changes in research directions during projects, for example, consider ways to foster serendipity and tolerate failures in science; offer flexible types of funding including funder attitude towards mid-project changes; and support collaboration.

In relation to research careers, research funders could aim to provide researchers with longer term stability for their research endeavours to reduce the likelihood of their social security considerations taking precedence over the desire to follow new research avenues or address societal needs.

In general, there is a need for a strengthened awareness of the pivotal role played by changes in research direction in relation to research priority setting and evaluation, and a need to find ways to encourage and value unexpected outputs and outcomes, and nonlinear research careers, as well as predicted outputs and linear careers.

To generate more evidence, funders could consider taking part in an experiment, comparing research funded by traditional processes with research funded in a more flexible way with researchers encouraged to ‘follow the story’ of where their research leads, so that we can evaluate the value of providing more flexible funding.

Read the full paper here.

References / Further reading

Aslan, Y., Yaqub, O., Sampat, B.N., Rotolo, D., 2024. Unexpectedness in medical research. Res. Policy 53, 105075. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2024.105075

Azoulay, P., Graff Zivin, J.S., Manso, G., 2011. Incentives and creativity: Evidence from the academic life sciences. RAND J. Econ. 42, 527–554. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-2171.2011.00140.x

Clinton, C., Sridhar, D., 2017. Governing Global Health: Who runs the world and why? Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Coburn, J., 2025. Why do researchers change their research directions? Evidence from biomedical scientists. Sci. Public Policy scaf063. https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scaf063

Coburn, J., Yaqub, O., Ràfols, I., Chataway, J., 2024. Cross-disease spillover from research funding: Evidence from four diseases. Soc. Sci. Med. 349, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116883

Firestein, S., 2015. Failure: Why science is so successful. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Franssen, T., Scholten, W., Hessels, L.K., de Rijcke, S., 2018. The Drawbacks of Project Funding for Epistemic Innovation: Comparing Institutional Affordances and Constraints of Different Types of Research Funding. Minerva 56, 11–33. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-017-9338-9

Gläser, J., Aljets, E., Lettkemann, E., Laudel, G., 2014. Where to Go for a Change: The Impact of Authority Structures in Universities and Public Research Institutes on Changes of Research Practices, in: Whitley, R., Gläser, J. (Eds.), Organizational Transformation and Scientific Change: The Impact of Institutional Restructuring on Universities and Intellectual Innovation. Emerald Group Publishing, Bingley, UK, pp. 297–329.

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Kuhlmann, S., Rip, A., 2019. Next generation science policy and Grand Challenges, in: Simon, D., Kuhlmann, S., Stamm, J., Canzler, W. (Eds.), Handbook on Science and Public Policy. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. 12–25.

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Ubfal, D., Maffioli, A., 2011. The impact of funding on research collaboration: Evidence from a developing country. Res. Policy 40, 1269–1279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2011.05.023

Whitley, R., Gläser, J., Laudel, G., 2018. The Impact of Changing Funding and Authority Relationships on Scientific Innovations. Minerva 56, 109–134. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-018-9343-7

Yaqub, O., 2018. Serendipity: Towards a taxonomy and a theory. Res. Policy 47, 169–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2017.10.007

Yaqub, O., Coburn, J., Moore, D.A.Q., 2024. Research-targeting, spillovers, and the direction of science: Evidence from HIV research-funding. Res. Policy 53, 105076. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2024.105076

Yegros, A., van de Klippe, W., Abad-Garcia, M.F., Ràfols, I., 2020. Exploring why global health needs are unmet by research efforts: the potential influences of geography, industry and publication incentives. Health Res. Policy Syst. 18, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3459230

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