Competition for funding is tough and researchers need help to make their grant applications stand out. The Web of Science™ Grants Index from Clarivate™ helps researchers seamlessly incorporate valuable awarded grant data from hundreds of funders into their grant proposal development. By exploring what has already been funded, researchers can make informed decisions when applying for new grants.
Funders around the world have been reporting low success rates for research grant applications for many years. While some funding programs have seen spending increase year over year, the competition remains tough: researchers often face just a 10 – 20% chance of winning a grant award. In 2021, data showed that the success rate of applications to Horizon 2020, the EU’s 2014-2020 R&D program, was under 12%. The success rate of research grant applications to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the U.S. in 2022 was 20.7%. Recently, the Australian Research Council announced AU$220 million in grant funding for 2024 Discovery Projects, but the rate of funding came out at 16.3%.
To increase chances of success, experts agree that a solid understanding of a funder’s priorities is essential. This means acquainting yourself with more than just the application guidelines of a single open opportunity. Browsing all available grants is one way to learn more about the types of studies or projects in which a funder is interested. Another way to do your homework on a funding agency is to explore its previously awarded grants to identify trends. Access to standardized, global awarded grant data can help researchers make informed decisions as they seek to finance their research.
Strengthening proposals with awarded grant data
To this end, we are pleased to announce the launch of the Grants Index on the Web of Science platform. This new database presents standardized data sourced from over 400 funders around the globe to help researchers build a more thorough understanding of previous successes in their field by funder. The new Grants Index helps researchers easily identify and analyze previously funded projects in a familiar research discovery environment.
To build the new index, we integrated curated data from Pivot-RP TM with carefully indexed funding data from the Web of Science. Pivot-RP is a solution that combines expert-curated global funding opportunities and awarded grant data with powerful workflow, intelligence and discovery tools to help university administrators get the right funding opportunities to the right researchers. By integrating our products, the Grants Index introduces records for over 5.2 million individual grants to the Web of Science.
Millions of researchers using the Web of Science can now easily understand what has already been funded to better differentiate their proposals going forward. Through a deeper exploration of grant details, including principal and co-principal investigators, grant type, project description and links to published outcomes, researchers can more effectively position their own projects and increase their chances of a successful bid with a funding agency.
For researchers who may not have a specific grant in mind, a quick scan of the global awarded grant landscape can be useful to identify potentially new sources of funding. Integration points between Pivot-RP and the Web of Science are available at many steps along the user journey to easily toggle between robust views of past awards and open grants, streamlining the research process. Mutual subscribers can follow direct links to Pivot-RP to start exploring current opportunities related to a funder, region and/or topic.
When it comes time to apply for funding, researchers must demonstrate a track record of success and establish their expertise. Researchers can build and showcase a multidimensional view of their career with a Web of Science Researcher Profile. Clarivate is actively working to enhance the Grants Index so that researchers can claim awarded grants to their Web of Science Researcher Profiles and present published papers and citations that resulted from a grant in a simple, singular view. Profiles help researchers illustrate their domain expertise and highlight many facets of their research career, which can include awarded grants, peer review activity, journal editorships, publications, preprints and citation impact.
Helping researchers and organizations thrive in today’s research climate
By displaying the details of prior funding activity alongside a wide array of scholarly research outputs, including journal articles, conference papers, dissertations, preprints, patents and more, the Web of Science helps researchers make informed research decisions based on a more holistic view of the research landscape.
The launch of the Grants Index, an integration between Pivot-RP and the Web of Science, is an important step towards building a more universal view of the funding landscape. At Clarivate, we are committed to continuously enhancing existing tools and developing new solutions that help users research confidently and efficiently. We will continue to improve analyses of the grants landscape across products and help leaders advance research excellence with our data, solutions and expertise.
Learn more about the Grants Index in our upcoming webinar.
