Scientific breakthroughs are unpredictable. Fund them using a market for innovative research.
It’s hard to anticipate the next scientific breakthrough, but it’s easy to recognize one in hindsight.
Instead of evaluating grant proposals, funders could support researchers and institutions based on the value of their completed work.
In the research equity funding model, researchers and institutions receive “shares” in their completed research. Funders purchase those shares once the value of the research is clear, creating a market for innovative research.
Research equity in a nutshell
1. Researchers and institutions receive “shares” in completed research.
2. Funders—such as philanthropies and governments—bid on shares as the value of the completed research becomes clear over time. They buy shares to support scientific progress, not for intellectual property rights.
3. Researchers and institutions sell their shares for personal gain and to fund future research.
Benefits of the research equity model
Payment based on research value could bring multiple benefits.
- Reward quality over volume. The research equity system would ease the pressure for continuous publication, as a single high-impact paper could be more valuable than many low-impact ones.
- More time doing research, less time seeking funding. Research equity funding could reduce the amount of time researchers spend writing grant proposals. Institutions would want their researchers to spend their time doing valuable research, not financing it.
- Pivot to pursue new ideas. Payment based on research value rewards innovative work, supporting researchers who pivot mid-project or mid-career.
- Help the best work rise to the top quickly. Institutions could increase the value of their research portfolios by supporting follow-up studies or highlighting overlooked findings. This could speed up the recognition of important research results, which often takes years or even decades.
- Fund more high-risk research. Research institutions would serve as incubators, motivated to produce diverse portfolios that balance high-risk, innovative approaches alongside more mainstream research.
- Establish a decentralized market for innovation. Funders would support a continuous system of progress rather than one-off projects. Decentralizing research direction would tap into a diverse network of experts to produce unexpected discoveries. Paying for impactful research would enable successful researchers and institutions to reinvest capital into future breakthroughs.
Compared to other funding methods
Grants
Grant funding tries to predict the future value of research proposals, but breakthroughs are notoriously difficult to foresee.
By funding completed research, the research equity model embraces uncertainty and encourages unexpected discoveries.
Research equity funding can coexist side-by-side with grant funding.
Funding individuals (“people not projects”)
Funding individuals (“people, not projects”) refers to funding models that provide researchers with flexible resources for their work. However, funders must predict future performance, which is challenging, and traditional metrics may overlook emerging talent.
In contrast, the research equity model rewards contributions from researchers at any stage of their career and from any institution, encouraging diverse participation and motivating institutions to invest in promising but unproven talent. This approach fosters the discovery of new researchers.
The research equity model can coexist with funding individuals, as institutions can choose to support researchers in this manner.
Prizes
Prizes reward breakthrough results, but researchers cannot rely on winning prize money, even if they produce exceptional work. Additionally, prizes often do not pay the institutions that supported the research.
In the research equity model, funders provide reliable returns for valuable work, allowing researchers and institutions to count on future funding for significant discoveries. This system incentivizes institutions to support promising research, even if it doesn’t secure traditional grant funding.
A day in the life
Follow a researcher, a buyer, and an investor through a day in the research equity system.
Comparative peer review (CoPR)
The valuation of completed research is determined by funders, who may use metrics such as citation performance. To assist in this process, we propose a “comparative peer review” (CoPR) system. In this system, reviewers are presented with pairs of papers and asked to determine which one is more valuable. Each paper would undergo multiple reviews. Similar to the chess rating system, this would generate a numerical rating reflecting the scientific community’s current assessment of its value. These ratings would be continually updated to reflect evolving perspectives within the research community.
Media coverage
Research Equity 