Non-competitive research funding: a story of trust and freedom

At the beginning of the summer break, our university took another step towards more trust and freedom in the field of scientific research. After the career models, non-competitive basic funding has now been approved. Soon, professors will be granted a free to spend amount without having to compete with their colleagues within the university. "The competition has become too intense. We want to give all researchers opportunities to do the research they want to do." Rector Rik Van de Walle explains.

From quantity to quality

"The basic idea is simple: if you are a professor at Ghent University and you have a research assignment, you get basic funding," Rik explains. "You don't have to go through a heavy procedure for it. And above all, you don't have to compete with your colleagues. Moreover, you can spend the money freely, provided you use it for scientific research. Whether the funds are used to finance staff, operations or infrastructure: professors should be able to decide on this autonomously."

It is an election promise by Rik and Mieke that is now taking concrete form. "Giving Ghent University staff as much trust as possible has pretty much become our mantra. In this case, it's about trust in professors and faculties. Recruitment and evaluation of professors essentially come about within the faculties. This is done meticulously. It is rather strange then that until now not all professors received research funds from their own university. We are doing away with that."

Away from the rat race

The context outside Ghent University played a role. "The competitiveness among researchers has increased enormously in recent years," Rik explains. "The success rates for obtaining an FWO or European project are very low. There is a huge imbalance between the number of applications and the number of approved projects. It is no longer justifiable for researchers to spend so much time writing research proposals with no guarantee of success. This leads to frustration, stress and even demotivation."

"There is also a lot of competition internally. We find that there are quite a few people who almost never get funding from the Special Research Fund (BOF). Although they are research-active and perform well according to their evaluations, they apparently get little or no attention in the BOF's own instruments. This is undesirable. With the core funding, we want to provide research resources to all research-active ZAP members."

An important nuance is that a large part of Ghent University research funding will continue to be awarded competitively. "Today, about 5% is awarded non-competitively. We are now raising that to around 15 per cent. So a threefold increase. We hope this can give our professors a bit of mental rest. If you are unlucky and an FWO application or an application for European research funding does not result in anything, or a contract with a company you had hoped for is not finalised, from now on you have the certainty of a minimum amount of research funding. So a big difference from the current situation, where everyone has to fight (against each other) for every euro."

Academic freedom

The words that fall most often during the interview are "trust" and "freedom". "That's what it's all about: academic freedom," Rik stresses firmly. "It is super important that academics are given the opportunity to carry out the research they want to carry out. It’s not op to the rector, the vice-rector, the board of governors or the Research Council to set their research themes. Researchers choose their themes themselves. Scientific research may be marketable in the long run, but it does not have to be. Fundamental scientific research, carried out purely for the intrinsic value of new knowledge, is crucial. This is why no restrictions are placed on the use of core funding.

"The core funding also facilitates cooperation across research domains. The amount is substantial, so that if there are two or more of you and you put the funds together, you can set up interdisciplinary research projects. But again, this is to be said and emphasised: there is nothing at all wrong when a prof decides to spend basic funding in a monodisciplinary way."

And the allocation of core funding provides another interesting opportunity: it allows for scientific risk taking. "Researchers are experts in a certain field, but suppose they get an opportunity to try something in another field or even consider changing fields. With the security of basic funding, they can explore new avenues. Or they can do more risky research: starting without certainty about the results it will or will not produce. In short: basic funding gives researchers breathing space and freedom. That is essentially what it’s all about."

More info

A question about non-competitive research funding? Find the answer in a first Q&A concerning general modalities and in a second Q&A concerning specific allocation modalities.