As I submit yet another low-probability grant bid that took up too much of my time, once again thoughts that “there must be a better way” come to mind. It seems that many colleagues feel the same way. Some interesting reading:
- Is grant writing taking over science?
- Australia’s grant system wastes time (paywalled)
- Cost of the NSERC Science Grant Peer Review System exceeds the cost of giving every qualified researcher a baseline grant
- Modelling academic research funding as a resource allocation problem
- Big Science vs. Little Science: How Scientific Impact Scales with Funding
I have always felt that adding a random component to the grant award system, so as not to waste so much time trying to distinguish between very similar proposals, and giving out more, but smaller, grants, would be improvements. Reading comments on the above articles shows that several others agree. Perhaps it is time to try out some more modelling!