How to Improve Research Funding in Academia? Lessons From the COVID-19 Crisis

Financiering

It is important to distinguish between research conducted in academia and research conducted in industry and to keep in mind that this distinction is not equivalent to the distinction between public and private funding. Companies can also be funded by governments (depending on the political system of the country), while many academic institutions are privately funded. Furthermore, scientists working in academia funded by the public sector sometimes also receive grants from private companies or foundations. Thus, to the argument that privately funded researchers lack academic freedom because they either explicitly or implicitly depend on the interest of the investors (Bekelman et al., ) also applies to researchers working in academia who are funded by private sources. However, this argument will not hold for the researchers working in publicly funded companies.