There’s a growing concern worldwide that the traditional method of allocating research funding through competitive review of grant proposals is too risk-averse. Faced with several times more applications than they are able to support, funders tilt towards safe bets—short-term, incremental studies with clear applications. The evidence suggests that this low-risk approach chills the risky, unorthodox work that tends to be the most transformative.

Groundbreaking research is, of course, much easier to recognise in retrospect than in advance. So what if, instead of judging grant proposals, funders could support researchers based on the quality and value of their completed work?

In a recent paper, we suggest a mechanism to allow just this: channelling funds to completed research based on its demonstrated value. We believe this would help the best work rise to the top more quickly, reward genuine impact and excellence over volume and predictability, and allow researchers to spend more time on research and less on writing grant proposals and self-promotion.

We call this method of funding ‘research equity’. The research equity system consists of two elements—one to allocate resources and one to reveal research value.

Read the full article about research equity by Clifford Ellgen and Dominique Kang at Research Professional News.