Next Generation Science

Before we begin Josine, I would like to give our readers a little background.

Here is how I came to learn about Elsevier’s new product, SciVal Funding. I work on the free grants and scholarship listing service, ScanGrants. One of the ways I find funding opportunities to list on ScanGrants is by entering into Google and other search engines terms such as “research funding” and “funding opportunities.” It was by doing so a few weeks ago that I started to come across blog postings that mentioned SciVal Funding and later came across a very interesting article that you had written for the April/May 2009 issue of the magazine of the National Council of University Research Administrators about the problems that scientists, especially at the junior scientist level, encounter as they try to land the funding they need to conduct research.

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Those who read what I write about search engines, Science 2.0, Medicine 2.0 and Open Science probably sigh deeply each time I sneak in a mention of the grants and scholarship listing service I work on, ScanGrants. But there is more than shameless marketing in my madness.

After all, it is via ScanGrants that I have learned about all of the above movements and about such highly effective and well-run organizations such as National Organization for Rare Disorders and the Genetic Alliance. And I do learn quite a bit as I work on ScanGrants looking for funding opportunities about the use of Web 2.0 by scientific societies, what such societies and disease advocacy groups fund and what the commitment of each is to various aims. Today, I am going to discuss what I have learned so far about locating scholarships in the health sciences.
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One of the most time-consuming, tedious, stressful parts of life in these days of austerity for those in the health sciences is the process of finding research funding. As those who follow what I write about Science 2.0 and Medicine 2.0 (thank you for your patience, tiny audience!) know all too well I tend to mine examples from my work on the free grants and scholarship listing service ScanGrants when discussing such matters. I do this both calculatedly because I want people to use ScanGrants, but also because I think that I can draw fruitfully upon what I encounter as I look for funding opportunities in the sciences to illustrate some points of general interest to those ever on the hunt for money for science and medical research. Today we are going to consider the matter of what I have learned from the ScanGrants category, Scientific Importance/Achievement.

When we first created ScanGrants in late 2007, our goal was simply to list grants and scholarships and to highlights sources of money for proposed projects. I was new to the whole field of research funding so was simply surfing for anything that would endow researchers and health sciences with some money (as opposed to simply kudos in the form of a plaque or certificate or photo and kudos on a Web site for a job well done).

I soon began to notice that there were often sizable monetary awards for what had already been accomplished and so created the category, “Scientific Importance/Achievement.” I have just checked ScanGrants and as of early this morning (which is when I write these articles — such is the 24/7 world of trying to keep up with Science 2.0) I saw the wording, “89 funding opportunities are listed in this category.” Not bad considering that those have to be surfed for and entered by hand lovingly into ScanGrants by yours truly.

Jocularity and smug satisfaction on my part aside, what does an examination of this category tell us and who might use it to leverage their efforts to further research at their institutions and their own research careers?

Let us look at some of the listings and ponder those questions.
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