Established science academics at small universities in Canada are 42 per cent less likely to secure federal research funding than their counterparts at large institutions, according to a paper that highlights the ¡°systemic bias¡± against small universities.

The , ¡°Bias in research grant evaluation has dire consequences for small universities¡±, published in Plos One, found that funding success was also 20 per cent lower for established researchers at medium-sized institutions.

The research was based on an analysis of funding levels and success rates for individual applications submitted to Canada¡¯s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) from 2011 to 2014.

It predicts that individual funding support will decline at all institutions during the next decade, because of a bias towards established researchers that already hold a Discovery Grant ¨C an individual research grant from NSERC ¨C but especially at small universities; it estimates that the number of funded researchers will decline by two-thirds at small institutions and one-third at large and medium-sized institutions, if ¡°skews are left uncorrected¡±.

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Dennis Murray, Canada research chair in terrestrial ecology and co-author of the study, said that the research used NSERC¡¯s definitions of the size of a university, which is based on the amount of funding that the institution typically receives but strongly correlates to the number of students.

He suggested that the ¡°systemic bias¡± arising during grant proposal evaluations is caused by the opportunity for ¡°human prejudices¡± based on the applicant¡¯s name, institution and background, but that this could be mitigated by introducing blind review policies and qualitative metrics based on applicants¡¯ publication output.

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¡°One might think, given this person is at a small institution, they don¡¯t have the resources necessary to conduct the work or they may not be able to do it because they have too much teaching to do,¡± he told Times Higher Education. ¡°It¡¯s human nature to have difficulty disassociating those kinds of prejudices when we¡¯re evaluating proposals even when we have the best interests at heart.¡±

He added that ¡°some of the onus¡± is on small universities to ¡°become more competitive¡±, strongly support their most productive researchers and become more ¡°vocal¡± in convincing the government of their scientific contributions.

ellie.bothwell@tesglobal.com