Skip to main content

Table 2 Examples of funding opportunities supporting or rewarding open research, with accompanying text lifted directly from funders’ websites

From: What senior academics can do to support reproducible and open research: a short, three-step guide

Funder

Scope

Centre for Open Science

In 2015, the Incubator and Integration Grants provided funding for advancing openness, integrity, and reproducibility in science. Incubator grants supported the development of new open tools and services. Integration grants supported integrating tools and services that are useful to scientists through the Open Science Framework, a free, open-source infrastructure (total budget $300,000) [101]

Up to 2019, as part of the Preregistration Challenge, prizes were awarded to researchers who published the results of a preregistered study ($1,000) [102]

The Dutch Research Council (NWO)

Open Science Fund: Grant offering funding to develop, test, and implement novel ways to make science more open, accessible, transparent, and reusable. (up to €50,000)

Up until 2019. Replication Studies Grants were offered for replication of existing data (reproducibility), replication with new data, and replication of research questions (total budget €3 million) [103]

The Einstein Foundation Award

The Einstein Foundation Award for Promoting Quality in Research aims to provide recognition and publicity for outstanding efforts that enhance the rigor, reliability, robustness, and transparency of research in the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, and stimulate awareness and activities fostering research quality among scientists, institutions, funders, and politicians (up to €200,000) [104]

Fostering Responsible Research Practices

Up until 2020, ‘research on research’ funds were awarded to address the need for greater quality, integrity and efficiency in academic research (€75,000 Euro each) [105]

Horizon Europe

Several grant opportunities funded by the European Commission (EU Budget for the Future) for research performed with open science practices and published open access (total budget €95.5 billion) [106]

Learned Societies

Learned societies have also started to reward open research practices. A few notable examples include the British Neuroscience Association Credibility Prize to reward efforts to ensure neuroscience research is as robust, reliable, replicable, and reproducible as possible (£500), and the Organisation for Human Brain Mapping Open Science Award to recognise sustained and impactful efforts in the area of open science ($2500) [107, 108]

Leamer-Rosenthal Prizes

Up until 2017, this prize rewarded social scientists for open research practices (up to $60,000) [109]

Mozilla

Up until 2019. Open Science Mini-Grants provided funding for researchers who are making science more accessible, transparent, and reproducible ($3000–$10,000) [110]

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

A series funding opportunities for creating rigor and reproducibility across several disciplines. Supports open access publication and requires the use of a data management and sharing plan for all grant submissions [111]

National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant for Ethical and Responsible Research to produce knowledge about what constitutes or promotes responsible or irresponsible conduct of research and why, as well as how to best instil this knowledge into researchers, practitioners, and educators at all career stages (up to $700,000) [112]

QUEST

The QUEST Null Results and Replication Study Award is offering a research bonus to researchers who publish a null result, perform a replication study, preregister a study protocol for a preclinical study, reuse data, or include public engagement in their study (€1,000) [113]

Shuttleworth Foundation Fellowship Programme

Funding for researchers working openly on diverse problems (up to $250,000) [114]

Universities

Universities have started to reward open research practices through Open Research Awards. A few notable examples include the Finnish Open Science Awards, University of Bristol, University of Reading, University of Surrey, University of Groningen. Senior academics can follow this guide to run awards at their own institutions (https://osf.io/kqgez/)

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)

Provides open-access block grants to enable grant-holders to publish open access [115]

Wellcome Trust

Research Enrichment Fund to support grantholders to use public insights to develop their research (£10,000–250,000) [116]

Wellcome Data Re-use prizes to stimulate and celebrate the innovative re-use of research data (£5,000–£15,000) [117]

Up until 2021, The Open Research Fund supported individuals and teams anywhere in the world to carry out groundbreaking experiments in open research (£50,000)