Promoting the societal impact of research funding

An increasing focus on societal goals poses a number of challenges for research funding policy and scholarly studies. Drawing on insights from the PROSECON project, this paper examines key issues in the design and practice of societally targeted funding from both the perspective of research funders and participants in funded research projects. From the funder side, there is a need to coordinate the implementation of societally targeted funding with other funding and policy instruments, and to better understand the role of different targeting approaches that can focus on themes, societal impacts or on forms of research collaboration. From the researcher side, it is important to take into account the great complexity in funding and cross-grant interactions. Prior researchers’ experience and collaborative relations play a large role in how societally targeted funding shapes research activities. Societally targeted funding is in many cases viewed as an enabler of research that is societally oriented, where key factors are flexibility, shared and aligned goals and the active involvement of non-academic participants.