Getting funding for science or doing science for funding?
Lately, I have been very busy trying to get funding for financing my life, but also for my research ideas. I think this is a fairly normal thing to do after a PhD, although it can be stressful. When looking for funding for my research, I often get to a point where I try to fit my research into a particular topic that is funded, rather than finding money that fits my research. I wonder how normal this is…
Finding money
Finding funding for your research in Germany is not easy. We have a very large funding body (DFG = Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) that basically allows you to do whatever you want. But only if the reviewers agree with your ideas. So if I want to research a certain thing, I can simply write a research proposal and a budget and submit it. The review process takes a long time, sometimes more than a year. But eventually you get the green light, have to improve your proposal or get an outright ‘no’ from the reviewers.
As far as I know, there are not many opportunities where you can choose your topic so freely and just apply for it. Of course you want to apply to as many things as possible. But when you start looking for funding opportunities, you quickly hit a wall. Many funding programmes are topic-based, because they want to focus on a certain thing (e.g. research data management). This is fine, of course, because we need to follow certain directions in research.
Finding reason
I sometimes find myself bending my research idea to fit the focus of specific funding programmes. The task of finding money quickly turns into the task of finding reasons. Reasons for choosing this particular funding scheme, reasons why my research would add to the overall theme, and reasons why I am predestined to do this. I suppose this is normal, but is it a good thing?
By its very nature, research is always something that has never been done before. So it is very specialised and there is a reason for that. The researcher is the specialist in the field and should know best what to do with his research. The amount of money needed shouldn’t determine the outcome of the research. Well, you could argue that if it doesn’t fit the funding scheme, then don’t apply.
Finding income
The problem is that we all need an income to survive and there isn’t really a safety net for scientists, especially if you don’t have a permanent position. So we spend far too much time applying for jobs or funding. This time, of course, is taken away from the time we should be spending on our research. Having only two or three opportunities to apply for your great idea is simply too few, because the chances are small.
I am still in favour of specialised funding schemes. But I also think that we need to increase the freedom of application by offering more open calls for funding. I also think that we should reduce the application conditions and the processing time, but that is another story. By having more open calls, I think more researchers would be able to really do their best instead of bending their idea just to get an income. Especially now that the German government has decided to reduce the post-doc phase to four years (instead of six). But who knows, maybe specialised funding schemes are just what you have been looking for…