Metascience, research funding and policy priorities

Context: Funders, researchers and governments want the R&D system to deliver maximum value for decision-makers, and ultimately the UK population. To support this goal, metascientists often compare research outputs with funding allocation patterns, or support funders by studying internal review and allocation processes. The Areas of Research Interest (ARIs) offer scope for additional metascience enquiries. Published by government departments, ARIs are regularly-updated statements of research need. The team (including Government Office for Science, Overton) have worked with ARIs since 2019, supporting optimisation of their production and use. We have studied how academics engage with the ARIs (refs), and produced a searchable, indexed database of all ARIs, and linked this with UKRI grant award datasets. Preliminary work shows ARIs can inform strategic priority-setting by funders. Funders already draw on stakeholder priorities and landscape analyses to identify gaps, but often in an ad hoc or informal way. ARIs offer a mechanism for more rigorous, granular analysis identifying gaps, trends, and cross-cutting themes. This requires careful facilitation to ensure independence and rigour. Our pilot process to support strategic priority-setting working involved triaging ARIs by comparing ARIs with funding allocations to identify evidence gaps; searching for relevant research outputs to further refine these gaps, and co-creating strategic priorities with funders, experts and officials in facilitated workshops. Aims and objectives: This project will generate robust evidence about this transparent, rigorous mechanism for funders to take engage with national research priorities articulated by government departments by: Creating and sharing a dataset which brings together the ARIs, funding awards and research outputs: the ARI Research Dataset. To optimise the identification of evidence gaps, a research dataset drawing on the ARI database will be created for sharing with metascience researchers. It will include ARI equivalents from other governments at multiple levels, and awards and outputs from other funders. Large language models used to automate matching will be refined. Analysing patterns, overlaps, and gaps between ARIs, research profiles and outputs, and funding allocation patterns. Our previous work shows than 87% of ARIs can be matched with a relevant UKRI grant. This analysis allows us to accurately and transparently identify evidence gaps, and overlaps where clusters of awards address topics of importance to government. Identification of relevant research profiles and outputs allows us to refine these gaps and measure research impact on policy, by identifying cases where ARIs have been cited in outputs. Scaling up collaborative co-creation workshops with funders to explore how ARIs can be most usefully incorporated into priority-setting. Independence of funding and policy is crucial. We will test and refine our triaging process with national (UKRI, NIHR) and international (Horizon, MHFS) funders. Developing and testing our pilot process to support strategic priority-setting will help funders respond to government priorities and guide useful research activity. Universities and researchers will be able to identify areas for policy-relevant research, synthesis and knowledge exchange. Identification of cross-cutting themes and existing evidence will allow government to support internal learning, improve efficiency of internal research and analysis, guide engagement and commissioning more strategically. We will improve connectivity within the metascience research community and demonstrate the ARIs utility for improved scrutiny and analysis of funding and policy priorities. Ultimately, this project will maximise the value of existing investments in research and provide a rigorous and transparent approach to identifying research gaps.