Individual excellence funding: effects on research autonomy and the creation of protected spaces

Over recent decades, academic research funding has shifted toward competitive, performance-based mechanisms, with more direct priority setting. While many studies assess how funding affects performance and research content, fewer link researcher behavior to specific funding instruments. This paper examines the Swedish Distinguished Professor Grant (DPG), a highly generous individual excellence scheme (10 years, minimal content/organizational constraints), to investigate how autonomy afforded by such "no-strings-attached" funding influences research practices. The study asks: how do researchers leverage the autonomy granted by individual excellence funding to structure their research agendas and environments?

Excellence funding initiatives concentrate substantial resources over longer periods to promote groundbreaking research, addressing concerns that standard project grants privilege mainstream, low-risk work and short time horizons. Prior work shows that stability and flexibility in funding (e.g., centres of excellence, ERC grants) enable risk-taking and long-term projects. The concept of "protected space" frames the analysis of research autonomy across nested levels (micro to macro) and emphasizes material, socio-cultural, and institutional aspects. Protected space is often defined as the autonomous planning horizon with control over time and resources; additional dimensions include range of topics and distribution of protected space. Researchers actively construct such spaces through strategies to gain time and resources. Protected spaces entail tensions between fostering diversity (innovation) and maintaining closure (discipline). Studies of field emergence (e.g., evo-devo) show how varying sizes of protected space enable different research strategies, from theoretical and bioinformatics work (small) to multi-species experimental research (large).

Design: Qualitative, interview-based case study of the Swedish Research Council’s Distinguished Professor Grant (DPG). Case background: DPG launched in 2013 to enable long-term, innovative, and risky research. Funding: 500,000 euros per year for 10 years (total 5 million euros), up to 10 grantees per biennial call across all fields; 20% of programme funding allocated to Social Sciences and Humanities (no SSH call since 2019). Minimal organizational/content requirements; five-page proposal; mid-term report only; emphasis on field impact and developing a research environment. Data collection: (1) Analysis of call texts and applications; (2) Scouting interview with a VR programme officer; (3) Semi-structured interviews with DPG recipients. Sampling: All 29 recipients from 2013, 2015, 2017 cohorts contacted; 17 participated (12 non-respondents). Interviews conducted Spring–Fall 2019, 45–60 minutes, in-person or via Zoom, recorded and transcribed verbatim, with respondent transcript checks. Interviews focused on effects of the DPG on research practices and organization (problem choice, methods, collaborations, resource use). Analysis: Template analysis guided by the research question; inductive coding of statements about choices in using the DPG and conditions/factors affecting those choices. Codes were grouped into clusters and sub-themes, yielding categories presented as framing conditions (autonomy and duty) and focus areas (maintenance and care, momentum building, epistemic venturing).

• Autonomy dimensions: Grantees reported expanded autonomy in three areas: (1) Epistemic autonomy—freedom to define and revise research agendas without co-applicant negotiations or prescriptive definitions of excellence; (2) Strategic autonomy—flexibility to pivot, initiate new lines of inquiry, address unexpected challenges, and allocate resources as needed; (3) Temporal autonomy—reduced grant-chasing and looser timelines for producing results, enabling focus on research. • Duty constraints: Autonomy was moderated by responsibilities toward team members (especially PhD students and postdocs), the need to safeguard career development, and perceived obligations to the funder to deliver productive, reportable outcomes. Grantees balanced novelty with feasibility and managed risk portfolios. • Focus areas for using the DPG: 1) Maintenance and care: Keeping groups at manageable sizes for adequate supervision; maintaining a senior–junior balance; supporting less established colleagues; building resilience and agility; covering essential running costs (e.g., equipment, rent) not easily financed by other grants. 2) Momentum building: Growing organizational capacity to achieve a critical mass of talent; recruiting top candidates; hiring senior researchers long-term to provide continuity and undertake deep theoretical/technical work; adding specialist competences as needed; investing in large-scale data infrastructures and in method/technology development that can take years. 3) Epistemic venturing: Tackling more complex problems by broadening scope, scaling data collection, or shifting to more complex empirical objects; crossing disciplinary boundaries and forming new collaborations; outsourcing specialized methodological components despite oversight challenges; piloting high-risk, exploratory studies. • Overall: The DPG’s size, duration, and flexibility enabled risk-taking, complexity, and long-term investments, but grantees actively balanced care/maintenance, momentum building, and venturing to enact and sustain their protected space.

The DPG’s generous, low-constraint design provided substantial epistemic, strategic, and temporal autonomy, consistent with prior evidence that stable and flexible funding enables ambitious, risky research. However, autonomy was not unconditional: grantees self-imposed constraints rooted in community norms and research ethos (duty to team members and funders). Protected space emerged as something enacted through continuous balancing among: (a) maintenance and care (ensuring group well-being, supervision quality, financial basics), (b) momentum building (organizational and epistemic capacity for future breakthroughs), and (c) epistemic venturing (risk-taking and exploration). Interdependencies included maintenance enabling momentum, momentum enabling venturing, and tensions between the security of maintenance and the uncertainty of venturing. Strategies such as hiring senior researchers simultaneously supported group care and capacity for ambitious research. Thus, protected space is dynamic and constructed through ongoing adjustments rather than being passively received from the grant’s conditions.

The DPG appears to achieve its aim of enabling research that is difficult under standard project funding by affording extensive autonomy and flexibility that researchers use to undertake riskier, more complex, and time-consuming endeavors. Crucially, protected space is not a static endowment but an actively maintained balance among care/maintenance, momentum building, and epistemic venturing. Context matters: researchers’ environments and responsibilities shape how autonomy is used, cautioning against simple generalization to other systems or straightforward scaling. Future research should: (1) follow the same cohorts closer to the end of their 10-year period to assess longitudinal dynamics and outcomes; (2) examine the broader system-level effects and transferability to different national contexts; and (3) consider equity and diversity implications of concentrating large funds among a few recipients.

Findings derive from a qualitative case study with 17 interviews out of 29 eligible grantees from the 2013, 2015, and 2017 cohorts in Sweden; none had completed the 10-year grant period at the time of data collection (2019). The small population and context dependency limit generalizability, and the study cannot determine the broader policy effects or implications of scaling the DPG. Social Sciences and Humanities calls were discontinued after 2019, further constraining cross-field comparability over time.