Marini, Giulio; Meschitti, Viviana; (2022) The advantage of being grant recipients for academic promotions. The case of ERC and FIRB in the Italian system. Presented at: VI Convegno SISEC 2022, Bologna, Italy.

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Abstract

This paper aims at shedding light on the grant acquisition as a predictor of academic careers – a topic well known in international literature. The main hypothesis is that those becoming grant recipients at a relatively early stage in one’s career can progress in a more steeped way in comparison to those who don’t, keeping other indicators of performance constant. We challenge the idea that excellence signalled by getting a relevant and prestigious grant may represent a form of inequality (i.e., the notorious “Matthew effect”). Indicators of performance other than getting a grant are publications and indicators measured out of this research component academic achievement. We propose multiple indicators of performance in order to account for multiple interpretation of what “merit” ought to be. Some individual funding schemes aim at recognize excellence of early and/or mid-career researchers in order to allow them boost their potential. Some schemes are munificent endowments, assuring autonomy and security. This is the case of one of the European flagship schemes – the European Research Council (ERC). In Italy, a very similar scheme called FIRB had a similar rationale. Both schemes are supposed to make excellence thrive. We build a quasi-experimental research design getting identities of both ERC and FIRB recipients. For both recipients we collect only those affiliated in Italy. We extract randomly from Cineca repository (https://cercauniversita.cineca.it/php5/docenti/cerca.php) a control group of Italian academics of same rank (therefore approximating also age) and discipline (defined by SC, “settori concorsuali”) who did not win such individual grants. For all persons of both groups we download respective individual Scopus publications (matching name, surname, and affiliation). This original dataset is available upon request (STATA format). The paper checks whether such ERC and FIRB recipients are, after moment of grant acquisition, more productive in terms of quality and influence. Using difference-in-difference tests, results show that ERC recipients ameliorate research performance more than FIRB recipients did, although differences with control group don’t show always a particular additional effect in research outputs when comparing with pre-awarding performances. On the other hand, we find a strong Matthew effect in promotions, being the credential of having recipient of an ERC or a FIRB per se the strongest predictor of promotion, other achievements being equal. Our findings about the pay-off of receiving a major grant are similar to those in literature that discuss a tiny marginal advantage for those who receive a main research grant, either in terms of productivity as number of outputs, or measured as citations attraction. Overall, in our study, effects (getting a grant improves one’s performance in research) are marginal, if present at all. Findings offer to describe a nuanced situation. Not all excellent schemes produce similar effect according to different measure of performativity. Yet, not all excellent academics are the same by type of grant (ERC or FIRB). More in details, the effect of receiving an ERC is substantial in terms of publishing in top journals, whilst this is much less prominent for FIRB recipients. In the case of citations, the effect of receiving these grants is even comparatively negative. A possible interpretation is that ERC and FIRB recipients were already performing well before getting those grants, which is something difference-in-difference tests account. Our fundings are clearer when it comes to talk about promotions. Promotions happened following different magnitude of prediction, distinguishing scholars with an ERC or a FIRB in one’s curriculum vitae. ERC recipients apparently benefitted largely from a credentialism effect. It is not only a matter of checking ERC binary variable, but also if not foremost checking at parity of other observed predictors of post-treatment performance. In fact, other merits in research that can be attained by non-recipients of these schemes do not play the same relevant role grant recipients play for. This result is particularly relevant because non-recipients who might have performed a “come-back” in terms of publications and respective quality do not seem to counterbalance recipients’ better conditions, although tempering evidence might be that having published with international co-authors is to some extent a positive predictor of promotions. Overall, this study exposes how the Matthew effect favours promotions in such a way that one may define surreptitious, especially if the effect of being awardee is accounted as a “denominator” for one’s performances. Policy recommendations speculate whether an egalitarian non-stratified higher education system like the Italian one is ideal home for these schemes, and whether the Italian system would benefit or not from investing extra financial resources in excellence programs.

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