Impact of the HRB/MRCG Joint Funding Scheme 2014/2015
- The MRCG Co-fund scheme had 4% of the funding allocation, and accounted for 4% of total publications. The average number of papers per grant was 2.6 (similar to Project Grants and Fellowship Awards), with 14 papers per €1 million spent, at a cost per paper of €71k.
- Presentations (both oral and poster) at scientific meetings were the most common scientific dissemination type reported. Recipients of the MRCG Co-fund and Infrastructure awards were the most active in this regard.
- Of all grant types, the MRCG Co-fund scheme produced the highest number of oral and poster presentations (national and international) per €1 million spend.
- The MRCG Co-fund scheme created 17 posts at a cost of €130k each, with 8 posts created on average per €1 million spent.
- The MRCG Co-fund awards were almost exclusively categorised as Applied Biomedical Research (one was combined Applied Biomedical and Clinical Research), and attracted primarily biomedical scientists, as well as one technician and two medical doctors.
- The MRCG Co-fund award, while accounting for only 10% of total reports of prizes, awards and recognition, yielded an average of 16.3 awards, prizes or recognition outputs per €1 million spend, by far the most productive of all the grant types.
- The most productive grant type was the MRCG Co-fund, which produced 12 collaborations per €1 million spend. 22 of the 27 MRCG collaborations were with academic partners, both national and international, while the majority of the remaining seven collaborations were with international health service providers.
- Holders of MRCG Co-fund awards reported securing 19 additional awards, valued at 3.8% of the total value of leveraged awards. This represented a good return on investment of €721K for every €1 million spend on this grant type.
- Finally, the MRCG Co-fund scheme was the most productive in terms of policy and practice outputs (3.2 per €1 million spend) even though the majority (96%) of MRCG Co-fund awards were categorised as Applied Biomedical Research, and might not be expected to have a focus on this metric.
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