Funding deadlines act as a zeitgeber for science
- 1Indiana University School of Medicine
Abstract
Funders decide which science is paid for. Whether they also shape when it becomes public has been hard to test. Across 376,542 preprints on bioRxiv and medRxiv, the US share rose by 2.3 to 2.7 percentage points in the four weeks before due dates for the main research grant of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and dropped on the date. About one in eleven US preprints in those weeks was attributable to the deadline, and fields that depend least on NIH rose least. Among 15,906 funded investigators, the share of preprints posted in the four weeks before their own deadline was 9% higher than in other four-month cycles, and these preprints resembled the later grant without being more highly cited. Repeated before every due date, this individual surge matches the national peak's timing within a week. NIH's application calendar, like its funding, shapes when US biomedical science becomes public.
Related
- Climate Change Finance and Carbon Offsets: Addressing Global Climate Challenges through Innovative Funding and Emissions Reduction Mechanisms
- Promoting sustainable fishing: from the perspective of Fisheries Funding Mechanism under the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies
- Editorial: The science of birding in Africa
- Limiter l’expérimentation animale n’est pas une recherche empêchée, mais une science libérée
- digimouth: a Python package for modeling aroma release in food science
BibTeX
@misc{wang2026funding,
title = {{Funding deadlines act as a zeitgeber for science}},
author = {H. Wang and J. Su},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.10.758253},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.10.758253v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Funding deadlines act as a zeitgeber for science
AU - H. Wang
AU - J. Su
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/10
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.10.758253
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.10.758253v1
AB - Funders decide which science is paid for. Whether they also shape when it becomes public has been hard to test. Across 376,542 preprints on bioRxiv and medRxiv, the US share rose by 2.3 to 2.7 percentage points in the four weeks before due dates for the main research grant of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and dropped on the date. About one in eleven US preprints in those weeks was attributable to the deadline, and fields that depend least on NIH rose least. Among 15,906 funded investigators, the share of preprints posted in the four weeks before their own deadline was 9% higher than in other four-month cycles, and these preprints resembled the later grant without being more highly cited. Repeated before every due date, this individual surge matches the national peak's timing within a week. NIH's application calendar, like its funding, shapes when US biomedical science becomes public.
ER -