The lessons for research funding from Covid-19

Covid-19 brought exceptional pressures on the whole of the research ecosystem. Funds had to be reprofiled, projects paused, and a creaking array of overworked people, stretched cash settlements, and delicately constructed partnerships were pulled to breaking point.

In stepped UKRI and BEIS with a range of funding mechanisms designed to prop up the sector. These were not funds used to address long-standing problems with the research sector, or address cultural problems, or do much beyond stopping irreparable harm to the sector. The kinds of interventions include replacing key income streams, sustaining UKRI funds, reprofiling QR, extending doctoral funds, and adding flexibility into funding streams.

An evaluation carried out by RAND Europe and VITAE suggests that BEIS and UKRI did a good job at supporting the sector during Covid-19. Their report states:

The evaluation found that the intervention packages provided by the UK government were timely, rapid when compared to business as usual, and much needed to provide breathing room for organisations grappling with wide ranging impacts of the pandemic. While intervention design and delivery provided reflection and learning for the future on processes, its positive impact was nonetheless felt in many organisations’ ability to continue crucial research, protect the workforce from redundancies and protect research deficits to some degree.

It is particularly interesting that while the interventions had very different purposes and designs they shared some principles that made them particularly effective. This included making good use of both available data and institutional expertise. The targeted engagement with intended beneficiaries during programme design. The ability to move at pace despite the involvement of the Treasury and Number 10 in some programmes. The use of timely communications and light-touch monitoring. And agility in being flexible with terms and conditions.

Clearly, it would not be possible or desirable for every research fund to be forged into this diamond standard through the immense pressure of the pandemic. However, it does demonstrate that a more nimble, open, more communicative, less bureaucratic research system is possible.

The recommendations for future interventions flow from this analysis and echo some of the findings we have seen in the recent review of research bureaucracy, the Nurse review, and any time the sector is asked to submit anything relating to workload, research culture, or funding.

Some of the recommendations speak to these longstanding gripes including better targeted input from stakeholders on the design of funds, relaxing financial rules in extenuating circumstances, limited but more clear messaging, fewer but clearer communications, and the development of a future crisis package.

Other recommendations are genuinely novel. Allowing smaller iteratively built up interventions to reduce paperwork and cumulatively build, adapt, and adjust, how programmes develop. Greater stress testing of the adaptability of programmes at design stage. And the reprofiling of sector groups and staff time to respond to emerging need are all interesting and hold lessons for the future.

It is entirely possible that another pandemic the scale of Covid-19 will one day emerge. This review holds lessons for the sector and funders on how it may respond.

However, the fact that funding during the period was broadly maintained, that infrastructure was rapidly upgraded in this period, and that while collaboration activity suffered but equally a lot was maintained, all suggests that there is a future in more flexible, less bureaucratic, targeted funding approaches.