How an international research funder’s forum developed guiding principles to ensure value and reduce waste in research

Abstract

Background: When health-related research funding agencies choose to fund research, they balance a number of competing issues: costs, stakeholder views and potential benefits. The REWARD Alliance, and the related Lancet-REWARD Campaign, question whether those decisions are yielding all the value they could. Methods: A group of health-related research funding agencies, organisations that represent health-related research funding agencies and those that inform and set health-related-research funding policy from around the world have come together since 2016 to share, learn, collaborate and influence emerging practice. This group meets under the name of the Ensuring Value in Research Funders’ Forum (EViR Funders’ Forum). The EViR Funders’ Forum worked together to develop a set of ten Guiding Principles, that if funders adhered to would reduce research waste and ensure value in research. Results: The EViR Funders’ Forum has previously agreed and published a Consensus Statement. The Forum has agreed on a set of ten Guiding Principles to help health-research funders to maximise the value of research by ensuring that: research priorities are justifiable; the design, conduct and analysis of research minimise bias; regulation and management are proportionate to risks; methods and findings are accessible in full; and findings are appropriately and effectively disseminated and used. Conclusions: When setting research funding policy, we must balance multiple stakeholders’ needs and expectations. When funders do this well, they maximise the probability of benefits to society from the research they support - when funders do this badly, they passively allow or actively contribute to research waste. These challenges must be resolved by funders either working together or in conjunction with other actors in the research ecosystem.