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Replies

Stephen Royle @steveroyle.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

A colleague said that the reason funding has got more competitive in the UK is due to increased grant costs, meaning less to go around. A quick crunch of the numbers to see if they have a point. 🧪 New Value: increasing cost of UKRI research grants quantixed.org/2026/04/22/n...

A plot from the post showing how the annual cost of grants at BBSRC has increased over time

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Matthias Trost @mtrost.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

I wonder if this is mostly overheads. They have massively increased in recent years. Would be great to see the same for the direct and indirect costs...

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JustRoryDuncan @profroryduncan.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Hi Steve. This is interesting and not really surprising; UKRI strategy pointed to it. The sector risk is that research is becoming structurally more expensive and less economically sustainable…larger awards often recover less and UKRI know that overall cost recovery is declining.

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Ana Viñuela @anavinuela.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Nice analysis! I've been wondering about this for a while, thank you. One silly question, assuming I didn't get it wrong, the total number of awarded grants must have gone down, isn't? Do you know if that number is available?

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