Value For Money, the Overlooked Aspect in Research Funding Decisions

Abstract

Objectives: Governments and research organisations allocate considerable resources to fund medical research; however, research budgets are limited and decisions have to be made about the best way to prioritise research projects competing for funding. This is often done by assessing submitted proposals against predefined criteria. We aimed to review the criteria considered by major Australian funding organisations to select research projects for funding. Methods: We reviewed all grant schemes listed on the Australian Competitive Grants Register. Schemes included were health related, active in 2017 and with publicly available selection criteria on the funders’ websites. Fellowship, scholarship and training schemes were excluded. Data extracted included scheme name, funding organisation, selection criteria and the relative weight assigned to each criterion. Selection criteria were grouped, based on a modified Essential National Health Research approach, into five categories: relevance, appropriateness, significance, feasibility and value for money (i.e., research benefits compared to research costs). Results: Thirty-eight schemes were included from 158 identified. Almost one half of the schemes (47%) were under the National Health and Medical Research Council. All schemes considered feasibility criteria (research environment, team quality and/or research plan), 95% considered significance (innovation, implementation, translation and/or impact), 92% considered appropriateness (ethics, proposal’s quality and/or scientific rigour), 63% considered relevance (disease burden, national/organisational goals, equity and/or knowledge gap), and only 21% considered value for money. When reported, the relative weights for the selection criteria varied across schemes with 20-75% for feasibility, 20-60% for each significance and appropriateness, 5-30% for relevance and 15-33% for value for money. Conclusions: In selecting research projects for funding, research organisations in Australia focus mainly on research quality, significance and feasibility; nevertheless, value for money is often overlooked. Research funding decisions should be guided, along other considerations, by value for money of competing research proposals to maximise return on research investment.