Early career funding improves scientific influence and citations for women

Early career funding has a bigger impact on women than men when it comes to their careers in science, according to a new study from City St George’s, University of London.

While the study found that successful applicants in both groups secure more future research funding than unsuccessful ones, it was also seen that successful female applicants receive more citations and are better cited in their field than female applicants who did not receive funding. There was no statistically significant difference in scientific productivity or influence between successful and unsuccessful male applicants.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, the results are significant in light of recent evidence that shows that women are credited less in science than men, and they highlight that receiving early research funding can help women stand out in their research field.

Securing funding in the early stages of a research career is crucial. This is because it can determine whether a researcher can develop their own project and build their team, and it can also define whether they secure a permanent academic job at the university or leave academia.

To investigate the impact of early career funding, the researchers – Professor Charitini Stavropoulou from City St George’s and Ian Viney from UK Research and Innovation – used a rich dataset including both successful and unsuccessful candidates who had applied for an early career scheme from the Medical Research Council (MRC) in the UK between 2006 and 2016.

The full sample included 2,030 people who applied for an early career scheme. Of the full sample, 1,171 applicants were declined at triage and 859 arrived at the board. From those arriving at the board, 451 were unsuccessful and 408 received an award.

Focusing only on those applicants who reached the board, the researchers found no statistically significant difference between female and male candidates in receiving an award or fellowship, but they found clear evidence that women who win an award go on to improve their citations, citation outreach and influence in their field more than those women who did not win an award.

The findings on publications were consistent with previous evidence that showed that securing a research grant does not necessarily improve scientific productivity as captured by the number of academic publications, and there was no statistically significant difference in scientific productivity or influence between successful and unsuccessful male applicants.

However, this study is the first analysis on early career researchers that includes publication metrics that go beyond productivity, i.e. number of publications and citations, but also variables that reflect the candidate’s relative performance in comparison to others in the field. This is important as new research suggests that moving towards scientific influence may be more important than scientific productivity, and this is particularly important for early career researchers who are trying to establish a reputation as an independent researcher in their field.

Work-life balance was a topic mentioned by both male and female researchers in the study, and the qualitative analysis revealed significant differences, with 14 out of 24 female interviewees having taken maternity leave during their award, while no male interviewee mentioned a career break for family reasons.

Women also talked about the challenges they face in academia, but participants highlighted the importance of the protected time that the MRC early career schemes offered to them and praised the maternity policies that were in place. They also referred to leadership schemes tailored specifically to women in academia and the mentorship support they received as part of their fellowships and awards. This additional support that is offered to women may partly explain why they benefit more than the men receiving these fellowships, and the findings suggest that policy interventions post-award are beneficial to female early career researchers.

Professor Charitini Stavropoulou, lead author of the study and co-director of the Centre for Healthcare Innovation Research (CHIR) at City St George’s, University of London, said:

“Jobs for early career researchers are often precarious, and finding ways to retain talent is a concern shared among research institutions, policy officials and funders. Our study has shown that early career funding leads to female applicants receiving more citations and influence in their field. The findings have significant implications for female researchers and show the benefit of the funding and associated support. This is particularly important given that other studies have shown that women often face more challenges in terms of academic progression, and there is evidence that women are credited less in science than men too.”

Dr Ian Viney MBE, UKRI Chief Data Officer, said:

“UKRI’s data is a powerful resource for understanding how research funding shapes careers and maximises the potential for discovery, innovation and economic growth. It was particularly valuable to be able to use these data to carefully compare how MRC funding, provided at a critical transition to research independence, impacts on long term career outcomes. I’m delighted that MRC could support this study, which provides robust evidence that early career funding for biomedical researchers has lasting benefits, especially for female researchers.  UKRI will be able to use these results to inform how it designs funding opportunities to retain talent and build the strongest possible research base.”

Dr Glenn Wells, Deputy Executive Chair, Medical Research Council, said:

“MRC is committed to supporting scientists from the earliest stages of their careers.  We are delighted to see that our approach to providing this critical funding has been shown to generate long term benefit, supporting high quality researchers in delivering world leading science.”