Czech science is based on capable people and high-quality projects, but it is also an environment that is increasingly challenging in terms of financing and long-term stability. The grant system remains the key instrument of research financing, but it brings many challenges ranging from very tough competition and administrative burden all the way to a low success rate of grant applications. These pressures are most acutely felt especially by beginning researchers and those who are still just establishing their own research direction. How do colleagues from NICR view this situation and where do they see space for change? Their experiences show that, aside from functioning instruments of support, it is also important to seek balance between competition, stability, and conditions for conducting actual research.
Lenka Hernychová
Brno node, Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute
RECAMO, Mass spectrometry laboratory
Life is Czech research is nowadays a bit like a marathon run at the pace of a spring. We have smart people, strong areas of science, and internationally respected teams but the system often forces them to spend too much time trying to get money instead of doing actual research. Competition in grant applications is massive and, in this environment of low success rate, research can become a lottery. And that is not good for either science or our society.
The people most affected by this situation are early career researchers, people after parental leave, and those who are still establishing their own direction of research – but these are the very people on whose shoulders the future of Czech science rests. To help such groups is not just kindness or some social sensitivity but clever investment. The state quite rightly supports mobility, returns, and start of careers but the capacity of such programmes is still too small.
If I could change something, I would boost stable financing of research departments, improve the chances of support for high-quality grant applications, and reduce the administrative burden on scientists. Science needs competition, not permanent exhaustion. A well-functioning system should not test who can deal with the most stress, but who is bringing the best ideas, honest work, and courage to look for new ways of doing things. A society that wants future cannot afford to tire out its researchers.
Milan Urban
Olomouc node, Institute of Molecular and Translational Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine of Palacký University and University Hospital Olomouc
Medicinal chemistry and bioactive natural substances
I have excellent experience with grants provided by the Czech Science Foundation and Czech Health Research Council which support smaller research project for 3–4 years. They helped me make progress in developing natural substances with anti-tumour activity and design optimal structures for their further development. Large grants of the Czech Ministry of Health and EU (such as those which enabled the creation of NICR) then helped link many research laboratories and enabled the purchase of many necessary scientific instruments.
As a member of the Czech Science Foundation panel, I appreciate the evaluation process: it is fully fair and transparent. The crucial weakness of the system is its overall underfinancing. As a result, grant finances are sometimes used to support activities that should be financed by institutions. Moreover, not only is inflation not taken into account, but it is very simple for the politicians in power to just take money away from research and use them somewhere else. For instance, the last government took from the science and research chapter hundreds of millions of korunas (in the case of the Czech Science Foundation 160 million korunas) and used them to finance auxiliary personnel in education. Such completely nonsystemic, random, and unforeseeable steps jeopardise continuity and in conjunction with extreme bureaucracy and endless reporting discourage people from scientific work. One sad consequence of negative trends, for instance in the Czech Science Foundation, is a lowering of the success rate from about 30% in 2015–2018, when most outstanding project applications did receive support, to the current just 15%, when most excellent projects end up under the cut-off line, thus frustrating the efforts of applicants who often spend weeks preparing an application.
What would help is an increase in financing and its stability, lowering of the administrative burden and bureaucracy, formalism, and reporting for the sake of reporting. Unfortunately, though, the situation is developing in the opposite direction.
Lenka Kotrchová
Prague node, Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Biomedical polymers
I would approach an evaluation of the system of financing science with a degree of humility. I have been fortunate being part of a successful and established group, so I do not need to deal with existential issues linked to grants on a daily basis. Still, I cannot shake off the feeling that, as scientists, we move in a vicious circle: if you are not a ‘big name’, have years of experience abroad, and if you have not completed at least one big successful project, it is almost impossible to get into the system.
Our scientific pond is small, money scarce, and competition fierce. The whole process of acquiring resources is moreover hugely time-consuming and it often feels that success depends more on ‘panel diplomacy’ than on science as such. In short, if you do not have strong contacts in the evaluation committees, your chances are lower. There is the alternative of European projects, but in that area even your colleagues paradoxically discourage you by claiming that chances of success there are even lower.
Unfortunately, it thus ever more often seems that financing is not primarily about science but about connections and the right networking. If I had the power to change something, I would focus on a radical simplification and acceleration of the entire evaluation process. The system should be set up in such a way that an excellent idea gets a chance even without favouritism or absolute insistence on meeting formal career pigeonholes which need not have anything to do with the quality of research. But I am also aware of the fact that science evaluation is a complex system and finding a just solution that would satisfy everyone is not at all simple.