Study shows the positive impact of ERC funds on researchers’ career

The chances to publish scientific papers and the size of collaboration networks increase after having received an ERC grant, in particular for junior researchers. This is one of the conclusions of a study published yesterday in PLOS ONE.

The study focuses on the effects of seniority, gender and geography on the European Research Council (ERC) grantees research performance. For that purpose, the authors analysed a cohort of 355 grantees from the Life Sciences domain from the years 2007-09, using an innovative combination of indicators.

The difference between starting and advanced fellows produced interesting results when comparing their outcomes before and after receiving their grants.

While senior grantees had overall greater publication output, junior grantees had a significantly greater increase in their overall number of publications after their ERC grant.

The collaboration networks size increased for all grantees, “although more pronounced for juniors, as they departed from smaller and more compact pre-award co-authorship networks.”

The paper also suggests that the environment has a larger influence on post-grant award publications than gender, especially for junior grantees. According to the study, those “located in lower research-performing countries published less and had less diverse collaboration networks than their peers located in higher research-performing countries.”

Another interesting observation is that only 18% of the cohort taken as a basis for the study were women. However, female grantees had performances generally similar to their male counterparts. The study does not address the reasons why fewer women than men apply for research funding.

The study focused on ERC funds as it represents “an excellent study model to assess the impact of grants awarded to top researchers.”

The ERC supports through funding researchers in Europe across all fields of science, scholarship and engineering. It is a flagship component of Horizon 2020, the European Union's Research Framework Programme for 2014 to 2020.