Raising the Bar and Setting a Ceiling: The Paradox of Stimulating Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research through Funding

Raising the Bar and Setting a Ceiling: The Paradox of Stimulating Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research through Funding | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Raising the Bar and Setting a Ceiling: The Paradox of Stimulating Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research through Funding Annemarie Horn, Lotte Krabbenborg This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7478548/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract While research funders aim to stimulate inter- and transdisciplinary research (ITDR) through funding policies, little is known about how funding discourses and criteria shape ITDR in practice. Therefore, we set out to understand how funding requirements shape ITDR practices. We selected two funding instruments from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) that target ITDR, analyzed call information, and interviewed different actors involved in project design and execution. We saw that the funding criteria had dual effects on ITDR practices. On the one hand, eligibility criteria spurred applicants to adopt a more ITDR approach, for instance prompting collaboration with academic- and non-academic partners they would otherwise not have work with and placing societal impact more central in their approach. On the other hand, we saw that those same requirements could also be experienced as unsupportive or restrictive for ITDR practices, for instance imposing a linear approach to impact. Moreover, we saw that the impact of quality criteria on ITDR practices was more diffuse and could even be experienced to disincentivize more ITDR approaches. So, funding criteria could stimulate as well as restrict the uptake of more ITDR approaches; raising a bar and setting a ceiling. We consider this an inherent paradox that funders who aim to stimulate ITDR have to navigate by explicitly committing to the range(s) of ITDR practices they aim to support and defining corresponding funding criteria, discourses and procedure. Other Public Policy interdisciplinarity transdisciplinarity research funding research policy societal impact power dynamics Introduction Funding agencies develop and implement funding instruments to stimulate collaborative work across disciplinary boundaries and with actors outside the university (Johnson & Hrynkow 2011 ; Ramos-Vielba et al. 2022 ; Schneider, Kläy, et al. 2019 ). An important rationale for these calls is to make scientific research more responsive to complex societal issues, such as biodiversity loss and ageing populations (Klenk & Meehan 2017 ; Lawrence et al. 2022 ; Polk 2014 ; Schikowitz 2020 ). In order to address such complex societal issues, research is argued to require approaches that also span disciplinary boundaries and include diverse actors and their knowledges (Guimarães et al. 2019 ; Jacobi et al. 2022 ; Klein 2017 ; Lawrence et al. 2022 ). These approaches – inter- and transdisciplinary research (ITDR) – are considered to hold the promise to generate more relevant and actionable knowledge (Jacobi et al. 2022 ; Polk 2015 ). Research funding agencies play a key role in assigning public funding to research projects, acting as an intermediary between (super)national governments and research institutes and researchers (Caswill 2003 ). This puts them in the position to prioritize which research is being funded, a power which many funders wield to aim to stimulate ITDR (Ramos-Vielba et al. 2022 ; Schneider, Kläy, et al. 2019 ). Fritz & Binder ( 2020 ) distinguish between instrumental, structural and discursive power to shape the who, what, and how of participation in transdisciplinary research. Instrumental power refers to the direct influence of one actor over the other, for instance in mobilizing resources and making decisions such as selecting collaboration partners and shaping collaboration practices. Structural power is the influence over material and structural contexts, for instance funding availability, and its eligibility and evaluation criteria. And discursive power is the indirect effect on decisions by affecting the general discourse and the way that things are subsequently seen, framed and understood (Fritz & Binder 2020 ). They showed that funders primarily affect ITDR through structural and discursive power, whereas applicants predominantly wield instrumental power. And Schneider, Buser et al. ( 2019 ) described that funders can influence ITDR in different stages of the research funding process, including program preparation and call description, interaction with applicants, and project selection. Moreover, they can further influence ITDR by accommodating funded projects in networking, synthesis, internal communication and training, and external communication and transformation (Schneider, Buser, et al. 2019 ). However, Pärli ( 2023 ) reported that their literature review as well as their empirical study indicated that funding can both stimulate and hinder ITDR. And in line with reports that ITDR practices are highly heterogeneous (Vienni-Baptista et al. 2022 ), funding not only shapes whether ITDR is being undertaken, but also how it is conducted (Jahn et al. 2022 ). At the same time there are reports that funding schemes are merely able to enable or accommodate ITDR, while the main drivers shaping how ITDR is given meaning lies with the individual applicants (Ramos-Vielba et al. 2024 ). A recent study into funding discourses and project design, also reported a humble influence from funder logics on design for societal impact, as funder requirements were found to make it into ‘stylistic embellishments’ in the proposal and not inspire any more elaborate changes in the actual practices in research projects (Lauronen 2022 ). So, it is established that research funding impacts ITDR, but what defines whether this influence is perceived as supportive or restrictive remains opaque and there is some controversy about whether funding actively drives or merely accommodates ITDR. Therefore, in this study we set out to understand how funding requirements shape ITDR project design and execution. In order to study this, we selected two funding instruments by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) that aim to stimulate ITDR. We analyzed call texts and other public funding information to identify the eligibility and quality criteria they pose in relation to ITDR. In other words, the requirements that applications have to meet to qualify for funding to begin with, and the characteristics that are considered favorable and weighed in selecting projects for funding. Subsequently, we studied eight projects funded through those schemes, by interviewing academic and non-academic representatives of these projects and studying the project proposals. By doing so, we aimed to understand how the funding criteria shaped how the applicants gave meaning to ITDR in designing and running their projects. We complemented those insights with interviews with research support officers who had experience with large numbers of ITDR proposals and could thus share their insights from those. Methodology In order to study the relationship between funding structures and project design, we took a triangulated approach in which we studied projects funded through two funding instruments by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) that are considered important in stimulating ITDR. We studied publicly available information about the funding instruments and calls, and eight awarded project. Study Context The Dutch Research Council (NWO) is the biggest research funding body in the Netherlands, which annually grants approximately €1 billion to research from all disciplines and domains, through different instruments, and ranging from fundamental, curiosity-driven research to projects on grand societal issues. NWO serves as an intermediary to competitively distribute public research funding (mainly from the ministries) among Dutch universities and research institutes. This competitive second money stream complements the first stream, which is direct funding from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to universities. The current attention for and developments concerning ITDR at NWO, make it a relevant context to study how funding discourses and structures that aim to stimulate ITDR translate into research practices. We selected two funding instruments that aim support ITDR: Knowledge and Innovation Convenant (KIC) and Research along Routes by Consortia within the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA-ORC). In line with the recent high and increasing attention for ITDR in the NWO strategy, the KIC instrument was recently (2020) revised to be more supportive of ITDR. NWA-ORC started running in 2018 and was designed to support ITDR from its outset. NWA-ORC is organized around the “National Research Agenda” that covers diverse and broad societally relevant topics and was composed based on a societal consultation. The KIC scheme, on the other hand, is shaped by selected stakeholders from key sectors and historically has a more technology-oriented focus. The details about the schemes are covered in the Results section of this article. Data collection Sampling - In order to select NWA-ORC and KIC projects for our study, we approached all main applicants of awarded projects from call openings between 2018 and 2021 (52 for NWA-ORC for the 2019, 2020 and 2021 calls and 30 for KIC on the 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 calls) based on publicly available information with the request to participate in the study through an interview. We reached academic co-applicants and non-academic partners through a snowball sampling strategy, as we asked the PIs to suggest and bring us into contact with others in their consortium. We also reached research support staff (n = 5) through personal contacts and snowballing. Interviews - In total, we conducted 20 one-on-one interviews between January and March 2023. These comprise eight with PIs, three with academic co-applicants, four with non-academic partners, and five with university support staff. The interviews were semi-structured and covered the following topics: general introduction (background, experience, roles and responsibilities), drivers to engage in ITDR projects, project design choices, and experiences in project execution. For the main applicants, co-applicants, and non-academic partners these questions concerned their own experiences, drivers, and choices. For support staff we gauged their experiences with the drivers and choices of the academic as well as non-academic actors with whom they collaborate. Each interview lasted approximately one hour, either online or in person. We recorded the interviews, made extensive summaries, and each respondent member checked their own summary to improve accuracy (Korstjens & Moser 2018 ). Extraction of Funding Information - For the document analysis of funding information, we downloaded the information that NWO provides about KIC and NWA-ORC, and overarching policies about ITDR and related topics not linked to one particular instrument (e.g. impact plans, and knowledge utilization). The documents we included in the analysis are listed in Table 1 , including the date of access. Table 1 Overview of files included in document analysis, including dates of access KIC documents (all accessed 4-Nov-2022) NWA-ORC documents (all accessed 19-Oct-2022) Non call specific documents Web text about the KIC instrument Web program Web text impact plan (accessed 31-Oct-2022) Web text mission driven research Call text Pamphlet knowledge utilization (4-Nov-2022) Web text interdisciplinarity in KIC Website text about NWA-ORC Slides roadshow KIC & knowledge utilization (4-Nov-2022) Slides roadshow KIC & knowledge utilization FAQ about NWA-ORC NWO webpage on knowledge platform for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, 5-Jan-2025) From the call-specific files, we extracted information inductively to gain insight into the structures and discourses conveyed by NWO that dealt with ITDR. We distinguished between eligibility and quality criteria. From the non-call specific files, we extracted information about societal impact, knowledge utilization, and productive interaction. Data analysis We conducted an inductive analysis of the interview data, funding information and project proposals. We started with an inductive analysis of the funding information to gain an understanding of the funding context and identify sensitizing concepts to inform the topic list for the interviews. Those sensitizing concepts included eligibility and quality criteria influencing ITDR, such as consortium composition, co-funding requirements, and definitions and rationales related to ITDR. We analyzed the project proposals and interview transcripts based on those same themes, and remained open as respondents brought up additional funding characteristics that influenced their design and implementation, that made us return to the funding information. The themes that emerged from this inductive analysis in interaction between funding information and interview data provided the categories along which the findings are organized. Ethics Every respondent provided written, explicit, opt-in informed consent for their participation. Their participation was voluntary and they could discontinue or withdraw their participation at any moment throughout the research process. We stored the interview data on a password protected university domain in accordance with the data policy of the university. The interview summaries were anonymized, with a key saved separately and only accessible to the researcher team. Respondents provided their consent for the use of direct quotes. Findings The NWO is committed to stimulating ITDR shows from their efforts in the context of their ‘Knowledge Platform for Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research’. Their intention with this platform is explicitly to make their funding policies and practices – including programming, evaluation and support for applicants – more supportive to ITDR, as they themselves write on the public webpage of the knowledge platform: “ The knowledge platform will put NWO in a better position to: (1) establish interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research agendas/call programming; (2) bring together researchers from different disciplines to jointly develop an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research programme; (3) assess interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research proposals; and (4) support researchers in designing and conducting interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research .” - NWO webpage on knowledge platform for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research Knowing that they aim to actively support ITDR, we continued to explore why they considered ITDR important, and how they operationalized this to the funding and assessment criteria. In the following subsections, we describe several ITDR project design elements – impact orientation, consortium composition, and collaboration practices –, and for each we first outline the NWO policies, and then how academic main and co-applicants and non-academic actors of funded NWA-ORC and KIC projects shaped their projects in response to the funding criteria. Impact Orientation Discourses of Impact to Solve (Complex) Societal Issues In the reasoning by NWO about the need for ITDR, a recurrent theme is the relationship of ITDR with societal issues and impact. On the webpage of the knowledge platform for ITDR, they for instance write the following: NWO can help take interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research to a higher level, strengthen science, respond more effectively to the social challenges facing society and thus generate more impact . In the NWA-ORC information, specifically, the complexity of societal issues and the inherent societal nature of the topics that went into the research agenda, serve as substantiation of the need for an ITDR approach: “ The NWA concerns complex issues where alignment and collaboration have added value for realising scientific and societal breakthroughs ”. Besides mentioning that they hold complexity synonymous with wickedness, a definition of complexity is not provided. In the KIC scheme, societal issues also feature prominently, but the focus is more on technological innovations. The web text presents the following: “ The Knowledge and Innovation Covenant (KIC) 2020–2023 focuses on more knowledge and groundbreaking innovations aimed at societal and economic impact. ” The complexity of those societal issues is thus not as prominently mentioned here, breakthroughs are specifically labelled as innovations, and economic impact is explicitly included. The reasoning behind the importance of interdisciplinary research is directly related to eliciting creativity, combining technological and societal insights to support the uptake of innovations, and capacity building potential. Operationalizing Impact Orientations: Impact Approaches and Theories of Change In operationalizing the aspired societal impact of project funded through their ITDR schemes, NWO distinguish between three different impact approaches: the Impact Outlook, Impact Plan and Impact Focus approaches. Proposals for the KIC scheme, have to deploy the Impact Plan approach, which means that they need to contribute to making societal impact. Applicants of NWA-ORC proposals can choose to also deploy the Impact Plan approach, or the Impact Outlook approach in which they conduct societally relevant research but do not themselves contribute to societal change. Applicants for the NWA-ORC instrument substantiate their choice for either the Impact Plan or Impact Outlook approach and are assessed on the fittingness of their project plan to this approach. Compared to applicants for KIC they thus have more flexibility in their orientation towards societal impact. But all NWA-ORC and KIC projects do have to explicitly relate to societal impact. This is also operationalized as the mandatory inclusion of a Theory of Change (ToC) in proposals for both instruments. NWO writes in their communications that the ToC “ helps to think critically about the desired societal change” , as to explicitly take the societal impact as a starting point. The ToCs follow a format that NWO defined and follow a causal logic: from outputs, to outcomes, to impact. Impact Orientation in Funded Projects The projects started out from the societal challenges described in the thematic KIC calls or the NWA research agenda. The KIC program is organized along thematic calls in six domain – Climate and Energy; Circular Economy; Agriculture, Water, Food; Health & Care; Safety; Key Technologies; Digitalisation; Social Earning Capacity – each of which has a team of governmental departments, industry and in some cases scientists who develop the calls. The Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) came about through a broad public consultation for research topics, which were in several rounds condensed into 25 thematic routes that proposed projects are to contribute to. All funded KIC and NWA-ORC projects therefore took the societal issues defined by and with non-academic actors as a starting point. All the NWA-ORC projects we included opted for the Impact Plan approach, and for KIC projects this was a requirement, so all projects applied the Impact Plan approach. The scope of their ambitions varies wildly, however. Some projects explicitly described their aim to be to contribute to systemic transitions – “[the project] will follow a systems approach by exploring […] the system […] and developing and investigating novel smart technological tools, communication strategies, and governance arrangements that can support such a transition ” (NWA project proposal). Others, including but not limited to all KIC projects, had a more focused objective and a more predefined outcome, such as developing a particular technology. For instance: “ The […] project is aimed at developing a system for early detection of […]” (public project information of NWA project). For most of the PIs we spoke to, implementing ToCs was new. Several of them expressed that it changed how they approached their project, starting from the aspired societal impact: “At first I thought: ‘help, do we have to do all this?’, but it was actually very interesting. Writing down which outputs and outcomes you have and which impact you make, that really helped us to create a good proposal [...] since then I even also used theories of change in other contexts” (R8, PI of a KIC project) In contrast, there were also several researchers for whom thinking from societal impact and working with ToCs were already more common practice. To them, using the ToC template for their proposals did not serve as an eye-opener. They expressed that the ToC format of the proposal template felt restrictive; they perceived it as linear and not very suitable for more iterative, open-ended, uncertain projects: “On the one hand the Theory of Change approach felt very obvious to me, but on the other I also got confused, because it seemed simplistic. One of the examples on the website was about a technology for organ transplantation, they worked towards a very clear technology. While our project is so clearly about a systemic issue, with many different layers, on the macro, meso and micro level. That is not linearly flowing from output, to outcome, to impact” (R11, co-applicant in an NWA project) So, the KIC themes and NWA research agenda, the impact approaches, and ToCs ensured that projects aimed at societal impact were funded through those two instruments. The level of open-endedness and complexity varied among the projects that were funded, particularly those funded through the NWA-ORC instrument. The KIC projects, but in spite of the complex problems discourse in the call information also some of the NWA-ORC projects, had a more linear problem-solving nature, working towards a concrete product or technology. The applicants involved in projects with less concrete outputs experienced the Impact approaches and ToC format by NWO as restrictive. Consortium Composition Requiring Diverse Disciplinary Representation For both NWA-ORC and KIC, NWO encourage disciplinary diversity. For the KIC instrument, interdisciplinarity is specifically defined as an eligibility criterium of collaboration between scholars working in the natural sciences, exact sciences or engineering on the one hand, and in the social sciences or humanities (SSH) on the other: "a collaboration between the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences […] More specifically, it concerns the integration of at least two of the three research fields, in which the natural sciences are always included." – webpage interdisciplinarity in KIC In contrast, in the NWA-ORC instrument disciplinary representation is left more open, and emphasis is placed on a consortium composition that is fitting of the project goals and topic: “ All scientific disciplines relevant to the research are represented .” (NWA-ORC call text, p.3). No explicit requirements about the disciplinary representation govern the eligibility of consortia for submitting to NWA-ORC. Disciplinary representation in Funded Consortia In the KIC projects, the academic main applicants and co-applicants were predominantly from the natural sciences or engineering, complemented with a few co-applicants from the social sciences, such as management studies or economics. In one KIC project, the main applicant and co-applicants were all affiliated to natural sciences departments and held expertise in natural sciences disciplines. In this project, the social sciences contribution took the form of a postdoctoral researcher who was hired to conduct economic analyses. In the NWA-ORC projects, the disciplinary diversity of the consortia varied more widely, ranging from the collaboration between diverse medical disciplines with behavioral sciences, to a consortium with the expertise in ecology, philosophy, informatics, governance, and communication sciences represented among the main- and co-applicants. This diversity among NWA-ORC consortia is in line with the more open formulation of the eligibility criteria compare to the KIC instrument. Our respondents reported instances at which the funding criteria stimulated them to compose their consortium with more diverse disciplinary representation than they would otherwise have done or than they were used to. This was driven especially by the requirement in the KIC program to include SSH scholars, and the feedback that applicants got in NWA-ORC to expand their disciplinary breadth. One PI said the following: “If it weren’t for the funding requirements, I would not have involved the social sciences perspective and university of applied sciences. One doesn’t actively seek out collaboration with people they don’t know and whose work they don’t understand” (R3, PI of a KIC project) In contrast, other researchers experienced challenges from the funding requirements concerning cross-disciplinary representation. Several natural scientists expressed that they experienced the criterion to include SSH researchers as rigid and artificial. Others went so far as to question the fittingness of involving social sciences (and/or humanities) altogether: “We had to involve the social sciences, but that was totally unfitting for our proposal […] the physics of [our technology] is very complex, if you want to improve that, then you should focus on the technology and science, and if you are very lucky, after five years you may have improved it a tiny bit. In the end it will find its way into production and to the market. That’s when society comes in, because maybe they will say that they don’t want [the technology]. That is about societal implementation and uptake. To me the question is whether that should be part of the KIC-program. Our idea was: it is very small program, with just a few PhDs, who should be solving technological issues and it is very weird to also involve social scientist in this.” (R8, PI of a KIC project) As a consequence to questioning the fit and purposefulness of required collaborations, respondents sometimes perceived wide cross-disciplinarity as a goal in itself rather than a means towards an end. A social scientist (R9, co-applicant in an NWA project) echoed this from their perspective, as they had experienced that funding criteria about disciplinary representation also causes risks of inviting SSH scholars to the join the project merely to meet the funding criteria without getting a substantial say in the project design or gaining much from it themselves. Involving the Knowledge Chain NWO does not explicitly speak of transdisciplinarity in the formal call information in the KIC or NWA-ORC program. They do, however, repeatedly stress the importance of collaboration with non-academic actors, and use terms such as cocreation and effective collaboration and use the term transdisciplinarity in other outlets, such as in the context of the Knowledge Platform. In relation to extra-academic representation, NWO focus on collaboration and stress the importance of involving the whole “ knowledge chain ”. “collaboration is pivotal, both within the entire public knowledge chain and between the entire knowledge chain and societal partners” (NWA-ORC web program) For KIC the focus is explicitly more on industry partners, and structures are put in place to specifically also invite small and medium sized enterprises to participate. For NWA-ORC, industry does not receive specific attention in the funding information, but are welcome to participate. In contrast, citizens are mentioned explicitly as relevant actor for NWA-ORC projects. Again, the NWA-ORC criteria accentuate the appropriateness of the consortium composition for the objectives of the project: “ the composition of the consortium logically matches the intended project and the contribution of each consortium partner is convincingly substantiated” (p.23), but they do seem to consider diversity as a merit. Extra-Academic Representation in Funded Consortia Among the projects analyzed in this study, diverse non-academic actors were involved. Those included, as co-funding- and as cooperation partners: NGOs, industry, governmental organizations, research institutes, and foundations/ associations. In line with the different emphasis in funding criteria and discourses, industry participation was more prominent in the KIC projects than in the NWA projects. We saw that the eligibility criterium of involving non-academic co-funding partners, and quality criteria of collaborating across the knowledge chain and involving all relevant actors, stimulated some of the applicants to involve non-academic partners that they would otherwise not have worked with and were not used to working with. A PI, for instance, expressed that they usually conduct basic research, but that funding pressure motivated them to turn to the NWA-ORC instrument. The topic fit their interest and the funding requirements of the scheme subsequently stimulated them to bring together a consortium of diverse stakeholders. Funding and Co-Funding Criteria Another factor that determines project design and consortium composition, is who and what can be paid from the project budget. The budgets for both schemes can be used by the knowledge institutes (universities and universities of applied sciences) to cover hours of PhD candidates or postdoctoral researchers, non-scientific staff at universities (e.g. project management, administrative support, and communication staff) or researchers are universities of applied sciences. For tenured researchers at universities the budget cannot cover hours, except for up to 5 months fulltime ‘research leave’ that can be used to compensate researchers for educational tasks and thereby free up time for the project. Early career researchers (ECRs), being PhDs and postdoctoral researchers, are therefore likely to make up a substantial part of the academic representation of the consortium and are the people making most hours on the project. In both schemes, extra-academic partners can participate either as a co-funding- or as a cooperation partner. The co-funding partners contribute, in kind, in cash or both, to the project budget. The cooperation partners do play an active role in the project, but without bringing co-funding. In the period that we considered, the NWA-ORC scheme required a minimum of 10% of the entire project budget to be covered by non-academic co-funding (and a maximum of 49%). For the KIC instrument the required co-funding level differed per thematic line, but was typically at least 30% and often required that at least part of the co-funding to be from private parties, and half of the cofounding to be in-cash. The higher co-funding requirement for KIC translates into the need to involve more capital intensive partners Co-funding Partners in Funded Projects Many respondents experienced the co-funding requirements to shape which partners they could involve. Some experienced no challenges in involving partners and securing enough co-funding, because industry or governmental partners weighed the costs and benefits of participating and saw sufficient value and perceived room at their own organization to contribute hours, resources, or cash. In contrast, others expressed that it could be challenging to involve partners, depending on the topics of projects, or the types of partners they aspired to involve: “I’ve seen many project ideas fail as a consequence of the co-funding requirement [...] for private-public collaborations on technological innovations, co-funding by non-academic partners makes sense, but for other projects, for instance focused on prevention and non-technological solutions, it’s much harder. Then lobbying with companies and foundations only takes away time that could otherwise be spent on developing a good project” (S4, support staff at a university) It was also reported that small companies, NGOs, artist collectives and certain governmental bodies could lack the availability and/or flexibility of resources to ensure co-funding. Several academic and non-academic respondents expressed that the inability to of non-academic partners to receive funding for their hours could be a challenge in initiating extra-academic collaborations, and made the collaboration feel unequal. Collaboration Practices Discourses of Interdisciplinarity and Integration Particularly in relation to the KIC scheme, NWO provides elaborate information about interdisciplinary collaboration. They stress that a recipe for interdisciplinary collaboration cannot be provided: “ A single ideal approach or method for interdisciplinary collaboration does not exist. Researchers choose the approach that best suits the content of the research.” . They do emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary research questions and the involvement of diverse academic representatives from the start, as their involvement in the design of the research project are considered pivotal. Integration is stressed as an important requirement for interdisciplinarity in the KIC program: “ researchers from various disciplines integrate their knowledge, expertise and results to arrive at an integrated understanding” . Other mentions include “ integrates at least two of the three research fields” , and “ jointly realize integrated solutions ”. However, the precise operationalization of what integration means is left open, and the formulations include different units that are the subject of integration (fields, knowledge, expertise, results), different integrated outcomes (understandings, solutions) and leave open what defines an integrated outcome. Interdisciplinary Integration in Funded Projects In line with this ambiguity of the definition of integration by NWO, we saw that the interdisciplinary collaboration practices adopted in different project varied widely. One thing that all proposals had in common, is that disciplinary perspectives tended to be clustered in work packages (WPs). This went hand in hand with the development of separable PhD projects: “ This is something we defined straight away: each work package needs to have sufficient scientific depth and needs to have a technical element to it, so it could be developed into a PhD project ” (R3, PI of a KIC project). This focus on PhD projects was given in by the funding structure in which the appointment of ECRs was the main means of funding research activities. Moreover, the supervision of PhDs was also expressed to be important for academic career progression. So, getting relative autonomy to shape a PhD project within a project, was experienced to give researchers an incentive to participate: “ It was important to me to assure a PhD position within the project, to mitigate the risk […] if I get asked to think along and then get half a postdoc position, I simply don’t do it” (R9, co-applicant in an NWA project). This division into WPs and PhDs drove projects to an organization around relatively separated disciplinary clusters of activities and people. Many of the PIs indicated that they implemented structures to stimulate and organize work across WPs and PhD projects. This ranged from 3-monthly meetings among WP leaders to more intensive integration activities such as weekly meetings among all ECRs on the project, close collaboration between several PIs from different fields of expertise, joint supervision of PhD candidates, and the mix of disciplinary perspectives within as well as beyond WPs. Those differences in approaches also represented different takes on interdisciplinary integration, either working relatively separately and bringing insights or components together towards the end of the project, or integration as a continuous process of exchange and co-learning. Several PIs stressed that implementing more extensive structures to stimulate collaboration and integration across disciplines, PhD projects, and WPs required labor intensive activities both for them as senior researchers and for the ECRs working on the project. For the PhDs this could compete with the time and attention given to their individual (disciplinary) research projects. As such, some PIs indicated that they considered it undesirable to involve PhDs (too much) in those activities. Yet the more senior researchers indicated that for them it was also challenging to dedicate their time to those activities, as they received little or no compensation for their hours on the project. Moreover, several respondents expressed that it they lacked expertise to engage in and lead interdisciplinary collaboration processes. Therefore, they argue that they needed dedicated expertise represented in the project or hire someone externally to support them. Extra-Academic Collaboration: ‘Productive Interactions’ In relation to the collaboration among different types of partners NWO deploys ‘productive interactions’ as a central term in the criteria for both schemes. They define productive interactions as the interactions between a researcher and an interested target in which the latter aims at using the (scientific) knowledge to answer a societal need. The concept of productive interactions is put forward as an operationalization of the collaborative practices that are considered desirable in NWA-ORC and KIC projects and the number and quality of interactions to provide a proxy to assessing societal impact. In the KIC information, productive interactions are explicitly linked to the means of collaboration that is expected within projects that apply for funding: “ all partners should be engaged in interaction and learning. They co-create new knowledge in productive interactions” (roadshow slide deck, slide 10). In the NWA-ORC information, a similar message is conveyed and more information is given about how to achieve such productive interactions. It is particularly stressed that this requires collaboration to be intensive, interactive, and throughout all process stages; “ All parties in the consortium are actively involved in formulating the research questions, working out the approach to answer these questions and achieving the desired scientific and societal breakthroughs. ” (NWA-ORC FAQ). Moreover, the cyclical nature of research and innovation is stressed, as is the embedding of research in social practices. Extra-Academic Collaboration in Funded Projects In relation to the collaboration with non-academic actors, respondents expressed that having to include diverse actors – and their explicit support – in the proposal urged them to negotiate the objectives and approaches of the project with partners in this proposal writing stage already. We however saw different forms and extents to which non-academic actors were involved in the proposal preparation phases. Some PIs ran stakeholder workshops to develop the ToC together, whereas others indicated that they invited partners to join their project proposals once they were largely defined. One respondent made very explicit that they themselves write the proposal and focus on having the co-funding partners in time for the deadline: “ the strategy becomes: ‘just say yes, we don’t ask a lot of hours, and once it’s awarded we will see what we will actually do together’ ” (R7, PI of a KIC project). A non-academic partner involved in this same project confirmed that they perceived this approach as fitting and constructive. Although this approach was perceived as productive and efficient by both the academic and the non-academic actor, the cocreation and codesign discourse by NWO advocated more intensive participation of non-academic actors in the project design. Researchers expressed that the more extensive codesign with non-academic actors was a highly labor-intensive, particularly when engaging in continuously co-defining the research: “It is simply a lot of work if you want to develop a project from a truly transdisciplinary perspective, if you really want to engage in joint problem framing, and not just say: ‘hey, I have project, would you like to join?’, but really want to develop it bottom-up together with partners” (R5, PI of an NWA project) Those activities are not covered by the funding schemes because it takes place prior to application. PIs thus had to do this in their own time, funded through other sources, and while it was still very uncertain whether funding would be awarded. The same holds true for the extra-academic actors, multiple of whom indicated that even if the PIs invited them to read and give input to the proposal and thereby shape the project, they did not find the time to deeply engage with the project (plan) and stepped aboard more on personal relationship and trust than based on a codesigned proposal. The quality criteria by NWO also stressed the importance of cocreation through productive interactions once the project had started. We found that the way the projects implemented extra-academic collaboration was very diverse. The contributions that non-academics made centered around providing access to research sites or research subjects, providing advice or practice knowledge and experience, and developing technology. In one KIC project, the collaboration with industry was given meaning by the joint supervision of PhD candidates. This diversity in approaches is in line with the openness of the definitions and instructions in the funding information. Mirroring the interdisciplinary collaboration and co-design, respondents expressed that intensive collaboration in the execution of the project was labor intensive. This also exposed a tension around the question of who is or should be responsible for cocreation processes. One PI put it as follows: “ We need to be equipped to actually engage in codesign and cocreation, and then particularly once the project is running […]and those are all activities that never make it into an academic publication. Therefore we can’t task PhDs with those processes. But I don’t have any dedicated hours on the project myself […] this means that it often simply doesn’t happen well enough. […] This is essential for the project, but can’t be funded through the scheme… ” (R7, PI of a KIC project) So, NWO deploys a discourse that speaks of far-reaching, intensive and ongoing collaboration among academic and extra-academic partners – codesign and cocreation – but the means through which applicants give meaning to those concepts in their project proposals and practices varies widely. Dual Implications: Raising the Bar and Setting a Ceiling Throughout the findings outlined in the previous subsections, we recognize a pattern. We see that the funding criteria could stimulate ITDR. Particularly the eligibility criteria served as potent drivers of more ITDR project design. The requirements to involve non-academic cofunding partners stimulated researchers who were not experienced in, or used to, ITDR to build up a network and develop a collaborative research projects. The requirement to participate across disciplinary domains stimulated researchers to seek collaborations in which they would otherwise not have engaged. And the requirement to include a ToC in the project proposal stimulated researchers for whom this was not common practice to think about, and start from, the societal impact of their research project. So, eligibility criteria can raise the bar of ITDR design for projects they fund, by setting minimum requirements. At the same time, we saw that this stimulating effect was particularly the experienced researchers who would otherwise not have taken up ITDR in their research or were used to implementing lower levels of diversity or intensity of collaboration. For researchers whose practices were already more ITDR, those same requirements could feel restrictive. While the eligibility criteria to work across scientific domains encouraged some to initiate collaboration that they would otherwise not have pursued, it could also be perceived as artificial or not purposeful, and lead to interdisciplinary “window-dressing”, embellishment or check-boxing. A research support officer described observing this duality in their experience with large numbers of project and proposals: “ On the one hand, by defining it so rigidly, you force researchers to think a bit out-of-the-box and to go beyond their comfort zone. But on the other hand, it is restrictive and takes away freedom to judge whether it fits their context” (S4, research support officer at a university) Furthermore, while the requirement to include extra-academic co-funding partners drove the participation for extra-academic partners, it also limited which partners could participate and favored more capital intensive partners. Moreover, the format for the ToC that was prescribed in the proposal template could was perceived too linear for those who held more open-ended and complexity oriented approaches to ITDR. In other words; those same requirements set a ceiling to the ITDR as it also limited the possible range of ITDR design. The funding criteria also predominantly drove ITDR through the eligibility criteria, whereas the implications of the quality criteria remained diffuse. For instance, despite the prominent complexity discourse in the NWA-ORC information did not translate into exclusively funding complexity oriented projects. As the quality criteria did not clearly prescribe hard requirements, they left room for interpretation from applicants as well as reviewers and assessment committees. This gave agency for applicants to shape the research as they saw fit within the frames provided by NWO. Applicants did, however, express that they did not experience incorporating more ITDR approaches than were strictly necessary to improve success rates for receiving funding. A research support officer at a university put it as follows: “ if you are motivated yourself to do transdisciplinary research, that is great, but you don’t get extra credits for it” (S2). Yet they did indicate that those efforts demanded larger investments, when preparing the proposal and when executing the project, most of which could not be covered from the project budget. Consequently, they could even feel disincentivized to design for ITDR beyond the strictly necessary. The discourses on the ideal ITDR that NWO poses thus seem to be more ambitious than the selection of projects for funding plays out in practice. The quality criteria at best encourage and favor more ITDR approaches, but could also be perceived to be indifferent to or to even disfavor more intensive ITDR approaches. Discussion So, we saw that the funding requirements raised the bar, but also set a ceiling for ITDR practices. Let us now zoom in on how those stimulating and restricting influences of funding policies on ITDR practices were exerted. Following the framework by Fritz & Binder ( 2020 ), NWO wielded structural power over the ITDR design through the eligibility criteria. The requirements about consortium composition and topics covered in the funding calls (KIC) and research agenda (NWA-ORC) respectively governed the who and the what of the projects. Conversely, the how of the collaboration and participation was mostly governed through discursive power and quality criteria. How funded projects gave meaning to ITDR collaboration proved more diverse with a less direct relationship between funding criteria and characteristics of funded projects. For example, we saw that the discourses about complexity and codesign/cocreation, did not exclusively lead to the selection of projects that implemented those approaches. So, the funder’s power primarily shaped representation – the who – and topic selection – the what – and much less so the collaboration practices – the how – of ITDR. Yet, exactly these collaboration practices are considered key for realizing the potential of ITDR. Collaboration in diverse teams and consortia is widely echoed as a key success factor for ITDR in literature, but are complemented with key success factors that go beyond representation, describing how such collaboration are to unfold in order to realize the potential of more societally relevant research findings. Among others, the need for open attitudes and motivation (Podestá et al. 2013 ; Ramos-Vielba et al. 2024 ), trust (Harris & Lyon 2013 ), and ongoing reflective processes and social learning (Lux et al. 2019 ; Roux et al. 2010 ; Schmidt et al. 2020 ) are stressed. Karrash et al. (2022) bundle several attributes of collaboration under the term “ genuine collaboration” which they report to be required to achieve knowledge integration. There are also studies that explicitly link the how of collaboration to the effectiveness of ITDR project to contribute to societal objectives (Belcher et al. 2019 ; Pärli 2023 ). Comparing the influence of different factors on the effects of transdisciplinary projects, process factors are found to have the strongest influence – and thus a stronger influence than representation (Pärli 2023 ). Moreover, through a survey among 178 project leaders of transdisciplinary projects de Jong et al. ( 2016 ) found that informal involvement of non-academic actors and diverse outputs benefited the TDR process, whereas giving these actors a more formal role or influence in the research process played a much less important role. Together, those findings therefore point towards the importance of how ITDR and participation are shaped, while the mere representation of diverse actors does not suffice and is of limited impact. The same holds true when considering disciplinary representation. The eligibility criteria regarding consortium composition potently govern who is represented in the consortium. This meant that every funded project represented some disciplinary diversity, including collaboration between the large academic domains of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In our finding that SSH scholars were outnumbered by the natural scientists among the beneficiaries of NWA-ORC and KIC, among others due to the heavier focus on natural sciences and engineering in the KIC scheme. This does reproduce the an earlier finding that money tends to be unevenly allocated between those academic domains (Overland & Sovacool 2020 ). Even more so, however, the eligibility criteria do not provide tools to also weigh in the quality of those partnerships. Past research has reported that requirements to include social sciences or humanities (SSH) scholars in projects can also lead to their narrow and instrumental involvement (Levidow & Neubauer 2014). This is in line with our findings, in which a SSH reported earlier experiences being included merely to meet the funding criteria, and a project in which the disciplinary representation requirement was met by including a researcher trained in the natural sciences to conduct economical analyses on the financial implementation of a new technology. We therefore reason that in order to stimulate ITDR, it is essential to go beyond representation and also influence how collaboration practices are given meaning. Exerting more power over the how of ITDR can be achieved by formulating eligibility criteria that govern collaboration practices, such as setting requirements to collaborative leadership and governance structures (Gray 2008 ) or dedicating a specific resources for integrative and reflexive activities (Hoffmann, Weber, et al. 2022; Lux et al. 2019 ). But capturing collaboration practices in eligibility criteria is not straight forward. First, it requires defining what desirable ITDR collaboration practices look like, while there is no consensus about this in literature (Vienni-Baptista et al. 2022 ). Second, dictating binary eligibility criteria about how collaboration is to be organized, takes away flexibility and power from applicants to design ITDR to be ‘fit for purpose’ and tailor approaches for their specific contexts or with different goals. Third, it is likely to be difficult to reinforce eligibility criteria for collaboration practices as complying with them can only be truly assessed once projects are running (Johnson & Hrynkow 2011 ; Lauronen 2022 ) and their effectiveness even only after the project has ended (Lux et al. 2019 ). So, although there are some opportunities for eligibility criteria targeting ITDR collaboration practices, and mid term evaluations and ongoing reflexive monitoring may help assess and support actual practices and not only promises in proposals (Lauronen 2022 ; Lux et al. 2019 ), there are limitations to the suitability of eligibility criteria to shape the how of ITDR. Posing concrete eligibility criteria can be a potent means to stimulate ITDR, but it has serious limitations and comes at a price. Eligibility criteria are most suitable to govern the what and who of ITDR, being (largely) blind to the how , while influencing processes and practices seem to be the most promising means of truly stimulating ITDR. Moreover, the more stringent criteria are made and reinforced, the more effectively they stimulate ITDR, but also the more restrictive they are. We consider this to expose an inherent tension in the role that funders can play in stimulating ITDR; the more power they exert on project design, the more they bound the power and agency of applicants. The power of funders and the power of applicants are communicating vessels. Limiting the agency of applicants may pose a risk for ITDR as researcher motivation is reported to be important for effective ITDR (Podestá et al. 2013 ; Ramos-Vielba et al. 2024 ). So, stimulating researchers to engage in ITDR while this is not where their research goals and interests lie, or disincentivizing them to pursue other or more intensive collaboration practices may impair ITDR (Pärli 2023 ). However, at the same time, not setting any restrictions may also harm ITDR, as it as they suffer from direction competition with less labor intensive approaches for the same funding under the same criteria (Lyall et al. 2013 ). We consider the paradoxical relationship between ITDR and eligibility criteria to have two main implications for stimulating ITDR through funding policies: 1) the need for diversification of instruments and the corresponding discourses and criteria; and 2) the importance of quality criteria and evaluation to support ITDR. In line with findings of Vienni-Baptista et al. ( 2022 ) we saw that the practices in projects that were funded through the instruments were more heterogeneous than were the discourses deployed in the call information. For example, integration was univocally adopted as a characteristic of interdisciplinarity in the funding information, but that the meaning and importance that applicants gave to integration in the projects funded through these same instruments varied widely. The diversity of practices implies an openness that gives agency to applicants to design their project as they find appropriate, but it also does not stimulate integrative ITDR, and if more intensive approaches are not rewarded with higher chances and/or more resources, it may even give more integrative approaches a competitive disadvantage. At the same time, establishing more restricting eligibility criteria implies rejecting less integrative forms of cross-disciplinarity, while there is no conclusive evidence that those are fundamentally less effective or less interesting (Mennes 2020 ). Effectively stimulating heterogeneous ITDR practices, we argue, therefore requires different instruments, with each their own set of criteria and discourses and criteria, to raise multiple different bars and set multiple different ceilings. Such diversification of instruments, criteria and discourses, requires also legitimizing less intensive forms of ITDR as valuable in their own right, such as preventing oversimplified concepts of societal value (Smit & Hessels 2021 ), complexity as a one-size-fits-all justification for the need of ITDR, and the integration as a rhetoric device (Madsen 2018 ). In the context of NWO, the separate NWA-ORC and KIC instruments with different profiles hold the potential to raise two different bars and set two different ceilings. But based on our findings, we see opportunity to further differentiate between the two. If, as the discourses NWO deploy suggest, they are committed to actively supporting complexity oriented projects, this requires the development of application and selection procedures that are more fitting for the inherent open-ended nature of complex problems (Derrick & Samuel 2018 ; Hultqvist et al. 2021 ; Huutoniemi et al. 2010 ). This could include more flexibility for adaptive management during the project to cater to the open-ended and uncertain nature of ITDR (Mattor et al. 2014 ; Munaretto et al. 2022 ; Pärli 2023 ; Pohl et al. 2021 ; Woelert & Millar 2013 ), more dedicated funding for labor-intensive knowledge integration activities (Hoffmann, Deutsch, et al. 2022 ), and resources for early project stages (Horcea-Milcu et al. 2022 ; Luthe 2017 ; Roux et al. 2010 ). Quality criteria and evaluation procedures can also play a key role in stimulating ITDR (Ramos-Vielba et al. 2024 ). Whereas eligibility criteria are binary, quality criteria leave room for assigning relative weights and interpretating contextual relevance and fitness for purpose. Moreover, quality criteria and evaluation allow for assessing design elements targeting the how of collaboration – e.g. governance and collaboration structures – that are difficult to capture in eligibility criteria. As such, quality criteria hold the potential to be implemented to fund projects with a wider range of characteristics in a single instrument, while still also assessing ITDR quality. This does, however, make the reinforcement of those criteria dependent on the evaluation process, which has been shown that evaluation of ITDR is challenging, among others because evaluation panels often consist of disciplinary experts and may have limited experience with ITDR (Huutoniemi 2016 ; Pohl et al. 2011 ). It makes guarding a scheme’s objectives – and thus the execution of funders policies – highly dependent on external reviewers and committee members. All in all, we urge funders who aim to actively stimulate ITDR to decide which form or forms of ITDR they aim to stimulate, and define one or more coherent set(s) of discourses, eligibility criteria, quality criteria, and selection procedures accordingly. This echoes the call by Schneider, Buser, et al. ( 2019 ) for funders to explicate, consistently implement, and continuously evaluate their agendas. Making such decisions is an inherently normative and political activity, as targeted stimulation of specific types of research is by design selective, as it means not prioritizing other research activities (Caswill 2003 ). We argue that being explicit about the normative and political nature of policy making and of the research agendas and priorities would support a more plural understanding of ITDR and its funding, diversification of funding instruments for ITDR, and thereby the effective implementation of research funders’ agendas. Conclusion In studying how funding criteria aimed at stimulating ITDR shaped project design and execution, we saw that the funding criteria had dual effects on ITDR practices. 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Res Evaluation 30/3:323–335. 10.1093/reseval/rvab002 Vienni-Baptista B, Fletcher I, Lyall C, Pohl C (2022) Embracing heterogeneity: Why plural understandings strengthen interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. Sci Public Policy 49/6:865–877. 10.1093/scipol/scac034 Woelert P, Millar V (2013) The paradox of interdisciplinarity in Australian research governance. High Educ 66/6:755–767. 10.1007/s10734-013-9634-8 Additional Declarations The authors declare no competing interests. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-7478548","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":506811183,"identity":"180566bd-32ac-4958-a044-0d3e5a5290b7","order_by":0,"name":"Annemarie Horn","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAAhklEQVRIiWNgGAWjYFACHhBhAyIYD5CiJQ3MJEnLYRK08DfwHnxcueN84oYDvAeI0yJxgC/Z8OyZ20AtfAlEOuwAj5lkYxtIC48BcVrkIVrOkaDFAKLlAAlaDA/zGBs2tiUbzzxMrBa54z2GDxvb7GT7gIwHRGlhYMZgjIJRMApGwSigHAAA5bowEbtsJV8AAAAASUVORK5CYII=","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5888-2232","institution":"Utrecht University","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Annemarie","middleName":"","lastName":"Horn","suffix":""},{"id":506811184,"identity":"bd8eb3ef-0315-4c48-a75a-471eb4538d99","order_by":1,"name":"Lotte Krabbenborg","email":"","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4279-6700","institution":"Radboud University Nijmegen","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Lotte","middleName":"","lastName":"Krabbenborg","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-08-28 09:20:34","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":{"humanSubjects":false,"vertebrateSubjects":false,"conflictsOfInterestStatement":false,"humanSubjectEthicalGuidelines":false,"humanSubjectConsent":false,"humanSubjectClinicalTrial":false,"humanSubjectCaseReport":false,"vertebrateSubjectEthicalGuidelines":false},"doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7478548/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7478548/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":90152782,"identity":"e4c2f06c-88c9-4c0a-9569-9365c53c10ab","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-08-29 07:32:35","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":848074,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7478548/v1/603ad493-cd95-4454-b5e2-f9a444f1d1f2.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"The authors declare no competing interests.","formattedTitle":"\u003cp\u003eRaising the Bar and Setting a Ceiling: The Paradox of Stimulating Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research through Funding\u003c/p\u003e","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eFunding agencies develop and implement funding instruments to stimulate collaborative work across disciplinary boundaries and with actors outside the university (Johnson \u0026amp; Hrynkow \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e; Ramos-Vielba et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR39\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Schneider, Kl\u0026auml;y, et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). An important rationale for these calls is to make scientific research more responsive to complex societal issues, such as biodiversity loss and ageing populations (Klenk \u0026amp; Meehan \u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Lawrence et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Polk \u003cspan citationid=\"CR36\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e; Schikowitz \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). In order to address such complex societal issues, research is argued to require approaches that also span disciplinary boundaries and include diverse actors and their knowledges (Guimar\u0026atilde;es et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Jacobi et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Klein \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Lawrence et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR23\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). These approaches \u0026ndash; inter- and transdisciplinary research (ITDR) \u0026ndash; are considered to hold the promise to generate more relevant and actionable knowledge (Jacobi et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Polk \u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eResearch funding agencies play a key role in assigning public funding to research projects, acting as an intermediary between (super)national governments and research institutes and researchers (Caswill \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e). This puts them in the position to prioritize which research is being funded, a power which many funders wield to aim to stimulate ITDR (Ramos-Vielba et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR39\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Schneider, Kl\u0026auml;y, et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). Fritz \u0026amp; Binder (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e) distinguish between instrumental, structural and discursive power to shape the who, what, and how of participation in transdisciplinary research. \u003cem\u003eInstrumental power\u003c/em\u003e refers to the direct influence of one actor over the other, for instance in mobilizing resources and making decisions such as selecting collaboration partners and shaping collaboration practices. \u003cem\u003eStructural power\u003c/em\u003e is the influence over material and structural contexts, for instance funding availability, and its eligibility and evaluation criteria. And \u003cem\u003ediscursive power\u003c/em\u003e is the indirect effect on decisions by affecting the general discourse and the way that things are subsequently seen, framed and understood (Fritz \u0026amp; Binder \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). They showed that funders primarily affect ITDR through structural and discursive power, whereas applicants predominantly wield instrumental power. And Schneider, Buser et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e) described that funders can influence ITDR in different stages of the research funding process, including program preparation and call description, interaction with applicants, and project selection. Moreover, they can further influence ITDR by accommodating funded projects in networking, synthesis, internal communication and training, and external communication and transformation (Schneider, Buser, et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHowever, P\u0026auml;rli (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e) reported that their literature review as well as their empirical study indicated that funding can both stimulate and hinder ITDR. And in line with reports that ITDR practices are highly heterogeneous (Vienni-Baptista et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR46\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e), funding not only shapes whether ITDR is being undertaken, but also how it is conducted (Jahn et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR15\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). At the same time there are reports that funding schemes are merely able to enable or accommodate ITDR, while the main drivers shaping how ITDR is given meaning lies with the individual applicants (Ramos-Vielba et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR38\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). A recent study into funding discourses and project design, also reported a humble influence from funder logics on design for societal impact, as funder requirements were found to make it into \u0026lsquo;stylistic embellishments\u0026rsquo; in the proposal and not inspire any more elaborate changes in the actual practices in research projects (Lauronen \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo, it is established that research funding impacts ITDR, but what defines whether this influence is perceived as supportive or restrictive remains opaque and there is some controversy about whether funding actively drives or merely accommodates ITDR. Therefore, in this study we set out to understand how funding requirements shape ITDR project design and execution. In order to study this, we selected two funding instruments by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) that aim to stimulate ITDR. We analyzed call texts and other public funding information to identify the eligibility and quality criteria they pose in relation to ITDR. In other words, the requirements that applications have to meet to qualify for funding to begin with, and the characteristics that are considered favorable and weighed in selecting projects for funding. Subsequently, we studied eight projects funded through those schemes, by interviewing academic and non-academic representatives of these projects and studying the project proposals. By doing so, we aimed to understand how the funding criteria shaped how the applicants gave meaning to ITDR in designing and running their projects. We complemented those insights with interviews with research support officers who had experience with large numbers of ITDR proposals and could thus share their insights from those.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Methodology","content":"\u003cp\u003eIn order to study the relationship between funding structures and project design, we took a triangulated approach in which we studied projects funded through two funding instruments by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) that are considered important in stimulating ITDR. We studied publicly available information about the funding instruments and calls, and eight awarded project.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec3\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eStudy Context\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Dutch Research Council (NWO) is the biggest research funding body in the Netherlands, which annually grants approximately \u0026euro;1\u0026nbsp;billion to research from all disciplines and domains, through different instruments, and ranging from fundamental, curiosity-driven research to projects on grand societal issues. NWO serves as an intermediary to competitively distribute public research funding (mainly from the ministries) among Dutch universities and research institutes. This competitive second money stream complements the first stream, which is direct funding from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to universities. The current attention for and developments concerning ITDR at NWO, make it a relevant context to study how funding discourses and structures that aim to stimulate ITDR translate into research practices.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe selected two funding instruments that aim support ITDR: Knowledge and Innovation Convenant (KIC) and Research along Routes by Consortia within the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA-ORC). In line with the recent high and increasing attention for ITDR in the NWO strategy, the KIC instrument was recently (2020) revised to be more supportive of ITDR. NWA-ORC started running in 2018 and was designed to support ITDR from its outset. NWA-ORC is organized around the \u0026ldquo;National Research Agenda\u0026rdquo; that covers diverse and broad societally relevant topics and was composed based on a societal consultation. The KIC scheme, on the other hand, is shaped by selected stakeholders from key sectors and historically has a more technology-oriented focus. The details about the schemes are covered in the Results section of this article.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eData collection\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSampling -\u003c/em\u003e In order to select NWA-ORC and KIC projects for our study, we approached all main applicants of awarded projects from call openings between 2018 and 2021 (52 for NWA-ORC for the 2019, 2020 and 2021 calls and 30 for KIC on the 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 calls) based on publicly available information with the request to participate in the study through an interview. We reached academic co-applicants and non-academic partners through a snowball sampling strategy, as we asked the PIs to suggest and bring us into contact with others in their consortium. We also reached research support staff (n\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;5) through personal contacts and snowballing.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eInterviews\u003c/em\u003e - In total, we conducted 20 one-on-one interviews between January and March 2023. These comprise eight with PIs, three with academic co-applicants, four with non-academic partners, and five with university support staff. The interviews were semi-structured and covered the following topics: general introduction (background, experience, roles and responsibilities), drivers to engage in ITDR projects, project design choices, and experiences in project execution. For the main applicants, co-applicants, and non-academic partners these questions concerned their own experiences, drivers, and choices. For support staff we gauged their experiences with the drivers and choices of the academic as well as non-academic actors with whom they collaborate. Each interview lasted approximately one hour, either online or in person. We recorded the interviews, made extensive summaries, and each respondent member checked their own summary to improve accuracy (Korstjens \u0026amp; Moser \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eExtraction of Funding Information -\u003c/em\u003e For the document analysis of funding information, we downloaded the information that NWO provides about KIC and NWA-ORC, and overarching policies about ITDR and related topics not linked to one particular instrument (e.g. impact plans, and knowledge utilization). The documents we included in the analysis are listed in Table \u003cspan refid=\"Tab1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e, including the date of access.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab1\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 1\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eOverview of files included in document analysis, including dates of access\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"3\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eKIC documents (all accessed 4-Nov-2022)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eNWA-ORC documents (all accessed 19-Oct-2022)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eNon call specific documents\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eWeb text about the KIC instrument\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eWeb program\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eWeb text impact plan (accessed 31-Oct-2022)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eWeb text mission driven research\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eCall text\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003ePamphlet knowledge utilization (4-Nov-2022)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eWeb text interdisciplinarity in KIC\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eWebsite text about NWA-ORC\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eSlides roadshow KIC \u0026amp; knowledge utilization (4-Nov-2022)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eSlides roadshow KIC \u0026amp; knowledge utilization\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eFAQ about NWA-ORC\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eNWO webpage on knowledge platform for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, 5-Jan-2025)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the call-specific files, we extracted information inductively to gain insight into the structures and discourses conveyed by NWO that dealt with ITDR. We distinguished between eligibility and quality criteria. From the non-call specific files, we extracted information about societal impact, knowledge utilization, and productive interaction.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec5\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eData analysis\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe conducted an inductive analysis of the interview data, funding information and project proposals. We started with an inductive analysis of the funding information to gain an understanding of the funding context and identify sensitizing concepts to inform the topic list for the interviews. Those sensitizing concepts included eligibility and quality criteria influencing ITDR, such as consortium composition, co-funding requirements, and definitions and rationales related to ITDR. We analyzed the project proposals and interview transcripts based on those same themes, and remained open as respondents brought up additional funding characteristics that influenced their design and implementation, that made us return to the funding information. The themes that emerged from this inductive analysis in interaction between funding information and interview data provided the categories along which the findings are organized.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eEthics\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e Every respondent provided written, explicit, opt-in informed consent for their participation. Their participation was voluntary and they could discontinue or withdraw their participation at any moment throughout the research process. We stored the interview data on a password protected university domain in accordance with the data policy of the university. The interview summaries were anonymized, with a key saved separately and only accessible to the researcher team. Respondents provided their consent for the use of direct quotes.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Findings","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe NWO is committed to stimulating ITDR shows from their efforts in the context of their \u0026lsquo;Knowledge Platform for Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research\u0026rsquo;. Their intention with this platform is explicitly to make their funding policies and practices \u0026ndash; including programming, evaluation and support for applicants \u0026ndash; more supportive to ITDR, as they themselves write on the public webpage of the knowledge platform:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eThe knowledge platform will put NWO in a better position to: (1) establish interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research agendas/call programming; (2) bring together researchers from different disciplines to jointly develop an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research programme; (3) assess interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research proposals; and (4) support researchers in designing and conducting interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research\u003c/em\u003e.\u0026rdquo; - NWO webpage on knowledge platform for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKnowing that they aim to actively support ITDR, we continued to explore why they considered ITDR important, and how they operationalized this to the funding and assessment criteria. In the following subsections, we describe several ITDR project design elements \u0026ndash; impact orientation, consortium composition, and collaboration practices \u0026ndash;, and for each we first outline the NWO policies, and then how academic main and co-applicants and non-academic actors of funded NWA-ORC and KIC projects shaped their projects in response to the funding criteria.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec8\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eImpact Orientation\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec9\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eDiscourses of Impact to Solve (Complex) Societal Issues\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the reasoning by NWO about the need for ITDR, a recurrent theme is the relationship of ITDR with societal issues and impact. On the webpage of the knowledge platform for ITDR, they for instance write the following:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNWO can help take interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research to a higher level, strengthen science, respond more effectively to the social challenges facing society and thus generate more impact\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the NWA-ORC information, specifically, the complexity of societal issues and the inherent societal nature of the topics that went into the research agenda, serve as substantiation of the need for an ITDR approach: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eThe NWA concerns complex issues where alignment and collaboration have added value for realising scientific and societal breakthroughs\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;. Besides mentioning that they hold complexity synonymous with wickedness, a definition of complexity is not provided.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the KIC scheme, societal issues also feature prominently, but the focus is more on technological innovations. The web text presents the following: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eThe Knowledge and Innovation Covenant (KIC) 2020\u0026ndash;2023 focuses on more knowledge and groundbreaking innovations aimed at societal and economic impact.\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; The complexity of those societal issues is thus not as prominently mentioned here, breakthroughs are specifically labelled as innovations, and economic impact is explicitly included. The reasoning behind the importance of interdisciplinary research is directly related to eliciting creativity, combining technological and societal insights to support the uptake of innovations, and capacity building potential.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eOperationalizing Impact Orientations: Impact Approaches and Theories of Change\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn operationalizing the aspired societal impact of project funded through their ITDR schemes, NWO distinguish between three different impact approaches: the Impact Outlook, Impact Plan and Impact Focus approaches. Proposals for the KIC scheme, have to deploy the Impact Plan approach, which means that they need to contribute to making societal impact. Applicants of NWA-ORC proposals can choose to also deploy the Impact Plan approach, or the Impact Outlook approach in which they conduct societally relevant research but do not themselves contribute to societal change. Applicants for the NWA-ORC instrument substantiate their choice for either the Impact Plan or Impact Outlook approach and are assessed on the fittingness of their project plan to this approach. Compared to applicants for KIC they thus have more flexibility in their orientation towards societal impact. But all NWA-ORC and KIC projects do have to explicitly relate to societal impact. This is also operationalized as the mandatory inclusion of a Theory of Change (ToC) in proposals for both instruments. NWO writes in their communications that the ToC \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ehelps to think critically about the desired societal change\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e, as to explicitly take the societal impact as a starting point. The ToCs follow a format that NWO defined and follow a causal logic: from outputs, to outcomes, to impact.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec11\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eImpact Orientation in Funded Projects\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe projects started out from the societal challenges described in the thematic KIC calls or the NWA research agenda. The KIC program is organized along thematic calls in six domain \u0026ndash; Climate and Energy; Circular Economy; Agriculture, Water, Food; Health \u0026amp; Care; Safety; Key Technologies; Digitalisation; Social Earning Capacity \u0026ndash; each of which has a team of governmental departments, industry and in some cases scientists who develop the calls. The Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) came about through a broad public consultation for research topics, which were in several rounds condensed into 25 thematic routes that proposed projects are to contribute to. All funded KIC and NWA-ORC projects therefore took the societal issues defined by and with non-academic actors as a starting point.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAll the NWA-ORC projects we included opted for the Impact Plan approach, and for KIC projects this was a requirement, so all projects applied the Impact Plan approach. The scope of their ambitions varies wildly, however. Some projects explicitly described their aim to be to contribute to systemic transitions \u0026ndash;\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;[the project] will follow a systems approach by exploring [\u0026hellip;] the system [\u0026hellip;] and developing and investigating novel smart technological tools, communication strategies, and governance arrangements that can support such a transition\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; (NWA project proposal). Others, including but not limited to all KIC projects, had a more focused objective and a more predefined outcome, such as developing a particular technology. For instance: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eThe [\u0026hellip;] project is aimed at developing a system for early detection of [\u0026hellip;]\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (public project information of NWA project).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor most of the PIs we spoke to, implementing ToCs was new. Several of them expressed that it changed how they approached their project, starting from the aspired societal impact:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;At first I thought: \u0026lsquo;help, do we have to do all this?\u0026rsquo;, but it was actually very interesting. Writing down which outputs and outcomes you have and which impact you make, that really helped us to create a good proposal [...] since then I even also used theories of change in other contexts\u0026rdquo; (R8, PI of a KIC project)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn contrast, there were also several researchers for whom thinking from societal impact and working with ToCs were already more common practice. To them, using the ToC template for their proposals did not serve as an eye-opener. They expressed that the ToC format of the proposal template felt restrictive; they perceived it as linear and not very suitable for more iterative, open-ended, uncertain projects:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;On the one hand the Theory of Change approach felt very obvious to me, but on the other I also got confused, because it seemed simplistic. One of the examples on the website was about a technology for organ transplantation, they worked towards a very clear technology. While our project is so clearly about a systemic issue, with many different layers, on the macro, meso and micro level. That is not linearly flowing from output, to outcome, to impact\u0026rdquo; (R11, co-applicant in an NWA project)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo, the KIC themes and NWA research agenda, the impact approaches, and ToCs ensured that projects aimed at societal impact were funded through those two instruments. The level of open-endedness and complexity varied among the projects that were funded, particularly those funded through the NWA-ORC instrument. The KIC projects, but in spite of the complex problems discourse in the call information also some of the NWA-ORC projects, had a more linear problem-solving nature, working towards a concrete product or technology. The applicants involved in projects with less concrete outputs experienced the Impact approaches and ToC format by NWO as restrictive.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec12\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eConsortium Composition\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec13\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eRequiring Diverse Disciplinary Representation\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor both NWA-ORC and KIC, NWO encourage disciplinary diversity. For the KIC instrument, interdisciplinarity is specifically defined as an eligibility criterium of collaboration between scholars working in the natural sciences, exact sciences or engineering on the one hand, and in the social sciences or humanities (SSH) on the other:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\"a collaboration between the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences [\u0026hellip;] More specifically, it concerns the integration of at least two of the three research fields, in which the natural sciences are always included.\"\u003c/em\u003e \u0026ndash; webpage interdisciplinarity in KIC\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn contrast, in the NWA-ORC instrument disciplinary representation is left more open, and emphasis is placed on a consortium composition that is fitting of the project goals and topic: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eAll scientific disciplines relevant to the research are represented\u003c/em\u003e.\u0026rdquo; (NWA-ORC call text, p.3). No explicit requirements about the disciplinary representation govern the eligibility of consortia for submitting to NWA-ORC.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec14\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eDisciplinary representation in Funded Consortia\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the KIC projects, the academic main applicants and co-applicants were predominantly from the natural sciences or engineering, complemented with a few co-applicants from the social sciences, such as management studies or economics. In one KIC project, the main applicant and co-applicants were all affiliated to natural sciences departments and held expertise in natural sciences disciplines. In this project, the social sciences contribution took the form of a postdoctoral researcher who was hired to conduct economic analyses. In the NWA-ORC projects, the disciplinary diversity of the consortia varied more widely, ranging from the collaboration between diverse medical disciplines with behavioral sciences, to a consortium with the expertise in ecology, philosophy, informatics, governance, and communication sciences represented among the main- and co-applicants. This diversity among NWA-ORC consortia is in line with the more open formulation of the eligibility criteria compare to the KIC instrument.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOur respondents reported instances at which the funding criteria stimulated them to compose their consortium with more diverse disciplinary representation than they would otherwise have done or than they were used to. This was driven especially by the requirement in the KIC program to include SSH scholars, and the feedback that applicants got in NWA-ORC to expand their disciplinary breadth. One PI said the following:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;If it weren\u0026rsquo;t for the funding requirements, I would not have involved the social sciences perspective and university of applied sciences. One doesn\u0026rsquo;t actively seek out collaboration with people they don\u0026rsquo;t know and whose work they don\u0026rsquo;t understand\u0026rdquo; (R3, PI of a KIC project)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn contrast, other researchers experienced challenges from the funding requirements concerning cross-disciplinary representation. Several natural scientists expressed that they experienced the criterion to include SSH researchers as rigid and artificial. Others went so far as to question the fittingness of involving social sciences (and/or humanities) altogether:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;We had to involve the social sciences, but that was totally unfitting for our proposal [\u0026hellip;] the physics of [our technology] is very complex, if you want to improve that, then you should focus on the technology and science, and if you are very lucky, after five years you may have improved it a tiny bit. In the end it will find its way into production and to the market. That\u0026rsquo;s when society comes in, because maybe they will say that they don\u0026rsquo;t want [the technology]. That is about societal implementation and uptake. To me the question is whether that should be part of the KIC-program. Our idea was: it is very small program, with just a few PhDs, who should be solving technological issues and it is very weird to also involve social scientist in this.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (R8, PI of a KIC project)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs a consequence to questioning the fit and purposefulness of required collaborations, respondents sometimes perceived wide cross-disciplinarity as a goal in itself rather than a means towards an end. A social scientist (R9, co-applicant in an NWA project) echoed this from their perspective, as they had experienced that funding criteria about disciplinary representation also causes risks of inviting SSH scholars to the join the project merely to meet the funding criteria without getting a substantial say in the project design or gaining much from it themselves.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec15\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eInvolving the Knowledge Chain\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eNWO does not explicitly speak of transdisciplinarity in the formal call information in the KIC or NWA-ORC program. They do, however, repeatedly stress the importance of collaboration with non-academic actors, and use terms such as cocreation and effective collaboration and use the term transdisciplinarity in other outlets, such as in the context of the Knowledge Platform. In relation to extra-academic representation, NWO focus on collaboration and stress the importance of involving the whole \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eknowledge chain\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;.\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;collaboration is pivotal, both within the entire public knowledge chain and between the entire knowledge chain and societal partners\u0026rdquo; (NWA-ORC web program)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor KIC the focus is explicitly more on industry partners, and structures are put in place to specifically also invite small and medium sized enterprises to participate. For NWA-ORC, industry does not receive specific attention in the funding information, but are welcome to participate. In contrast, citizens are mentioned explicitly as relevant actor for NWA-ORC projects. Again, the NWA-ORC criteria accentuate the appropriateness of the consortium composition for the objectives of the project: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ethe composition of the consortium logically matches the intended project and the contribution of each consortium partner is convincingly substantiated\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (p.23), but they do seem to consider diversity as a merit.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec16\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eExtra-Academic Representation in Funded Consortia\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eAmong the projects analyzed in this study, diverse non-academic actors were involved. Those included, as co-funding- and as cooperation partners: NGOs, industry, governmental organizations, research institutes, and foundations/ associations. In line with the different emphasis in funding criteria and discourses, industry participation was more prominent in the KIC projects than in the NWA projects.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe saw that the eligibility criterium of involving non-academic co-funding partners, and quality criteria of collaborating across the knowledge chain and involving all relevant actors, stimulated some of the applicants to involve non-academic partners that they would otherwise not have worked with and were not used to working with. A PI, for instance, expressed that they usually conduct basic research, but that funding pressure motivated them to turn to the NWA-ORC instrument. The topic fit their interest and the funding requirements of the scheme subsequently stimulated them to bring together a consortium of diverse stakeholders.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFunding and Co-Funding Criteria\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnother factor that determines project design and consortium composition, is who and what can be paid from the project budget. The budgets for both schemes can be used by the knowledge institutes (universities and universities of applied sciences) to cover hours of PhD candidates or postdoctoral researchers, non-scientific staff at universities (e.g. project management, administrative support, and communication staff) or researchers are universities of applied sciences. For tenured researchers at universities the budget cannot cover hours, except for up to 5 months fulltime \u0026lsquo;research leave\u0026rsquo; that can be used to compensate researchers for educational tasks and thereby free up time for the project. Early career researchers (ECRs), being PhDs and postdoctoral researchers, are therefore likely to make up a substantial part of the academic representation of the consortium and are the people making most hours on the project.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn both schemes, extra-academic partners can participate either as a co-funding- or as a cooperation partner. The co-funding partners contribute, in kind, in cash or both, to the project budget. The cooperation partners do play an active role in the project, but without bringing co-funding. In the period that we considered, the NWA-ORC scheme required a minimum of 10% of the entire project budget to be covered by non-academic co-funding (and a maximum of 49%). For the KIC instrument the required co-funding level differed per thematic line, but was typically at least 30% and often required that at least part of the co-funding to be from private parties, and half of the cofounding to be in-cash. The higher co-funding requirement for KIC translates into the need to involve more capital intensive partners\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec17\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eCo-funding Partners in Funded Projects\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eMany respondents experienced the co-funding requirements to shape which partners they could involve. Some experienced no challenges in involving partners and securing enough co-funding, because industry or governmental partners weighed the costs and benefits of participating and saw sufficient value and perceived room at their own organization to contribute hours, resources, or cash. In contrast, others expressed that it could be challenging to involve partners, depending on the topics of projects, or the types of partners they aspired to involve:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ve seen many project ideas fail as a consequence of the co-funding requirement [...] for private-public collaborations on technological innovations, co-funding by non-academic partners makes sense, but for other projects, for instance focused on prevention and non-technological solutions, it\u0026rsquo;s much harder. Then lobbying with companies and foundations only takes away time that could otherwise be spent on developing a good project\u0026rdquo; (S4, support staff at a university)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was also reported that small companies, NGOs, artist collectives and certain governmental bodies could lack the availability and/or flexibility of resources to ensure co-funding. Several academic and non-academic respondents expressed that the inability to of non-academic partners to receive funding for their hours could be a challenge in initiating extra-academic collaborations, and made the collaboration feel unequal.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec18\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eCollaboration Practices\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec19\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eDiscourses of Interdisciplinarity and Integration\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eParticularly in relation to the KIC scheme, NWO provides elaborate information about interdisciplinary collaboration. They stress that a recipe for interdisciplinary collaboration cannot be provided: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eA single ideal approach or method for interdisciplinary collaboration does not exist. Researchers choose the approach that best suits the content of the research.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e. They do emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary research questions and the involvement of diverse academic representatives from the start, as their involvement in the design of the research project are considered pivotal.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntegration is stressed as an important requirement for interdisciplinarity in the KIC program: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eresearchers from various disciplines integrate their knowledge, expertise and results to arrive at an integrated understanding\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e. Other mentions include \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eintegrates at least two of the three research fields\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e, and \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ejointly realize integrated solutions\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;. However, the precise operationalization of what integration means is left open, and the formulations include different units that are the subject of integration (fields, knowledge, expertise, results), different integrated outcomes (understandings, solutions) and leave open what defines an integrated outcome.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec20\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eInterdisciplinary Integration in Funded Projects\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn line with this ambiguity of the definition of integration by NWO, we saw that the interdisciplinary collaboration practices adopted in different project varied widely. One thing that all proposals had in common, is that disciplinary perspectives tended to be clustered in work packages (WPs). This went hand in hand with the development of separable PhD projects: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eThis is something we defined straight away: each work package needs to have sufficient scientific depth and needs to have a technical element to it, so it could be developed into a PhD project\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; (R3, PI of a KIC project). This focus on PhD projects was given in by the funding structure in which the appointment of ECRs was the main means of funding research activities. Moreover, the supervision of PhDs was also expressed to be important for academic career progression. So, getting relative autonomy to shape a PhD project within a project, was experienced to give researchers an incentive to participate: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eIt was important to me to assure a PhD position within the project, to mitigate the risk [\u0026hellip;] if I get asked to think along and then get half a postdoc position, I simply don\u0026rsquo;t do it\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (R9, co-applicant in an NWA project).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e This division into WPs and PhDs drove projects to an organization around relatively separated disciplinary clusters of activities and people. Many of the PIs indicated that they implemented structures to stimulate and organize work across WPs and PhD projects. This ranged from 3-monthly meetings among WP leaders to more intensive integration activities such as weekly meetings among all ECRs on the project, close collaboration between several PIs from different fields of expertise, joint supervision of PhD candidates, and the mix of disciplinary perspectives within as well as beyond WPs. Those differences in approaches also represented different takes on interdisciplinary integration, either working relatively separately and bringing insights or components together towards the end of the project, or integration as a continuous process of exchange and co-learning.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSeveral PIs stressed that implementing more extensive structures to stimulate collaboration and integration across disciplines, PhD projects, and WPs required labor intensive activities both for them as senior researchers and for the ECRs working on the project. For the PhDs this could compete with the time and attention given to their individual (disciplinary) research projects. As such, some PIs indicated that they considered it undesirable to involve PhDs (too much) in those activities. Yet the more senior researchers indicated that for them it was also challenging to dedicate their time to those activities, as they received little or no compensation for their hours on the project. Moreover, several respondents expressed that it they lacked expertise to engage in and lead interdisciplinary collaboration processes. Therefore, they argue that they needed dedicated expertise represented in the project or hire someone externally to support them.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec21\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eExtra-Academic Collaboration: \u0026lsquo;Productive Interactions\u0026rsquo;\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn relation to the collaboration among different types of partners NWO deploys \u0026lsquo;productive interactions\u0026rsquo; as a central term in the criteria for both schemes. They define productive interactions as the interactions between a researcher and an interested target in which the latter aims at using the (scientific) knowledge to answer a societal need. The concept of productive interactions is put forward as an operationalization of the collaborative practices that are considered desirable in NWA-ORC and KIC projects and the number and quality of interactions to provide a proxy to assessing societal impact.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the KIC information, productive interactions are explicitly linked to the means of collaboration that is expected within projects that apply for funding: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eall partners should be engaged in interaction and learning. They co-create new knowledge in productive interactions\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (roadshow slide deck, slide 10). In the NWA-ORC information, a similar message is conveyed and more information is given about how to achieve such productive interactions. It is particularly stressed that this requires collaboration to be intensive, interactive, and throughout all process stages; \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eAll parties in the consortium are actively involved in formulating the research questions, working out the approach to answer these questions and achieving the desired scientific and societal breakthroughs.\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; (NWA-ORC FAQ). Moreover, the cyclical nature of research and innovation is stressed, as is the embedding of research in social practices.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec22\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eExtra-Academic Collaboration in Funded Projects\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn relation to the collaboration with non-academic actors, respondents expressed that having to include diverse actors \u0026ndash; and their explicit support \u0026ndash; in the proposal urged them to negotiate the objectives and approaches of the project with partners in this proposal writing stage already. We however saw different forms and extents to which non-academic actors were involved in the proposal preparation phases. Some PIs ran stakeholder workshops to develop the ToC together, whereas others indicated that they invited partners to join their project proposals once they were largely defined. One respondent made very explicit that they themselves write the proposal and focus on having the co-funding partners in time for the deadline: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ethe strategy becomes: \u0026lsquo;just say yes, we don\u0026rsquo;t ask a lot of hours, and once it\u0026rsquo;s awarded we will see what we will actually do together\u0026rsquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; (R7, PI of a KIC project). A non-academic partner involved in this same project confirmed that they perceived this approach as fitting and constructive. Although this approach was perceived as productive and efficient by both the academic and the non-academic actor, the cocreation and codesign discourse by NWO advocated more intensive participation of non-academic actors in the project design. Researchers expressed that the more extensive codesign with non-academic actors was a highly labor-intensive, particularly when engaging in continuously co-defining the research:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;It is simply a lot of work if you want to develop a project from a truly transdisciplinary perspective, if you really want to engage in joint problem framing, and not just say: \u0026lsquo;hey, I have project, would you like to join?\u0026rsquo;, but really want to develop it bottom-up together with partners\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (R5, PI of an NWA project)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThose activities are not covered by the funding schemes because it takes place prior to application. PIs thus had to do this in their own time, funded through other sources, and while it was still very uncertain whether funding would be awarded. The same holds true for the extra-academic actors, multiple of whom indicated that even if the PIs invited them to read and give input to the proposal and thereby shape the project, they did not find the time to deeply engage with the project (plan) and stepped aboard more on personal relationship and trust than based on a codesigned proposal.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe quality criteria by NWO also stressed the importance of cocreation through productive interactions once the project had started. We found that the way the projects implemented extra-academic collaboration was very diverse. The contributions that non-academics made centered around providing access to research sites or research subjects, providing advice or practice knowledge and experience, and developing technology. In one KIC project, the collaboration with industry was given meaning by the joint supervision of PhD candidates. This diversity in approaches is in line with the openness of the definitions and instructions in the funding information.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMirroring the interdisciplinary collaboration and co-design, respondents expressed that intensive collaboration in the execution of the project was labor intensive. This also exposed a tension around the question of who is or should be responsible for cocreation processes. One PI put it as follows:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eWe need to be equipped to actually engage in codesign and cocreation, and then particularly once the project is running [\u0026hellip;]and those are all activities that never make it into an academic publication. Therefore we can\u0026rsquo;t task PhDs with those processes. But I don\u0026rsquo;t have any dedicated hours on the project myself [\u0026hellip;] this means that it often simply doesn\u0026rsquo;t happen well enough. [\u0026hellip;] This is essential for the project, but can\u0026rsquo;t be funded through the scheme\u0026hellip;\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; (R7, PI of a KIC project)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo, NWO deploys a discourse that speaks of far-reaching, intensive and ongoing collaboration among academic and extra-academic partners \u0026ndash; codesign and cocreation \u0026ndash; but the means through which applicants give meaning to those concepts in their project proposals and practices varies widely.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec23\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003eDual Implications: Raising the Bar and Setting a Ceiling\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThroughout the findings outlined in the previous subsections, we recognize a pattern. We see that the funding criteria could stimulate ITDR. Particularly the eligibility criteria served as potent drivers of more ITDR project design. The requirements to involve non-academic cofunding partners stimulated researchers who were not experienced in, or used to, ITDR to build up a network and develop a collaborative research projects. The requirement to participate across disciplinary domains stimulated researchers to seek collaborations in which they would otherwise not have engaged. And the requirement to include a ToC in the project proposal stimulated researchers for whom this was not common practice to think about, and start from, the societal impact of their research project. So, eligibility criteria can raise the bar of ITDR design for projects they fund, by setting minimum requirements.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the same time, we saw that this stimulating effect was particularly the experienced researchers who would otherwise not have taken up ITDR in their research or were used to implementing lower levels of diversity or intensity of collaboration. For researchers whose practices were already more ITDR, those same requirements could feel restrictive. While the eligibility criteria to work across scientific domains encouraged some to initiate collaboration that they would otherwise not have pursued, it could also be perceived as artificial or not purposeful, and lead to interdisciplinary \u0026ldquo;window-dressing\u0026rdquo;, embellishment or check-boxing. A research support officer described observing this duality in their experience with large numbers of project and proposals:\u003cdiv class=\"BlockQuote\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eOn the one hand, by defining it so rigidly, you force researchers to think a bit out-of-the-box and to go beyond their comfort zone. But on the other hand, it is restrictive and takes away freedom to judge whether it fits their context\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (S4, research support officer at a university)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFurthermore, while the requirement to include extra-academic co-funding partners drove the participation for extra-academic partners, it also limited which partners could participate and favored more capital intensive partners. Moreover, the format for the ToC that was prescribed in the proposal template could was perceived too linear for those who held more open-ended and complexity oriented approaches to ITDR. In other words; those same requirements set a ceiling to the ITDR as it also limited the possible range of ITDR design.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe funding criteria also predominantly drove ITDR through the eligibility criteria, whereas the implications of the quality criteria remained diffuse. For instance, despite the prominent complexity discourse in the NWA-ORC information did not translate into exclusively funding complexity oriented projects. As the quality criteria did not clearly prescribe hard requirements, they left room for interpretation from applicants as well as reviewers and assessment committees. This gave agency for applicants to shape the research as they saw fit within the frames provided by NWO. Applicants did, however, express that they did not experience incorporating more ITDR approaches than were strictly necessary to improve success rates for receiving funding. A research support officer at a university put it as follows: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eif you are motivated yourself to do transdisciplinary research, that is great, but you don\u0026rsquo;t get extra credits for it\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (S2). Yet they did indicate that those efforts demanded larger investments, when preparing the proposal and when executing the project, most of which could not be covered from the project budget. Consequently, they could even feel disincentivized to design for ITDR beyond the strictly necessary. The discourses on the ideal ITDR that NWO poses thus seem to be more ambitious than the selection of projects for funding plays out in practice. The quality criteria at best encourage and favor more ITDR approaches, but could also be perceived to be indifferent to or to even disfavor more intensive ITDR approaches.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eSo, we saw that the funding requirements raised the bar, but also set a ceiling for ITDR practices. Let us now zoom in on how those stimulating and restricting influences of funding policies on ITDR practices were exerted. Following the framework by Fritz \u0026amp; Binder (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e), NWO wielded structural power over the ITDR design through the eligibility criteria. The requirements about consortium composition and topics covered in the funding calls (KIC) and research agenda (NWA-ORC) respectively governed the \u003cem\u003ewho\u003c/em\u003e and the \u003cem\u003ewhat\u003c/em\u003e of the projects. Conversely, the \u003cem\u003ehow\u003c/em\u003e of the collaboration and participation was mostly governed through discursive power and quality criteria. How funded projects gave meaning to ITDR collaboration proved more diverse with a less direct relationship between funding criteria and characteristics of funded projects. For example, we saw that the discourses about complexity and codesign/cocreation, did not exclusively lead to the selection of projects that implemented those approaches. So, the funder\u0026rsquo;s power primarily shaped representation \u0026ndash; the \u003cem\u003ewho\u003c/em\u003e \u0026ndash; and topic selection \u0026ndash; the \u003cem\u003ewhat\u003c/em\u003e \u0026ndash; and much less so the collaboration practices \u0026ndash; the \u003cem\u003ehow\u003c/em\u003e \u0026ndash; of ITDR.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYet, exactly these collaboration practices are considered key for realizing the potential of ITDR. Collaboration in diverse teams and consortia is widely echoed as a key success factor for ITDR in literature, but are complemented with key success factors that go beyond representation, describing \u003cem\u003ehow\u003c/em\u003e such collaboration are to unfold in order to realize the potential of more societally relevant research findings. Among others, the need for open attitudes and motivation (Podest\u0026aacute; et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR33\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e; Ramos-Vielba et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR38\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e), trust (Harris \u0026amp; Lyon \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e), and ongoing reflective processes and social learning (Lux et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; Roux et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e; Schmidt et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e) are stressed. Karrash et al. (2022) bundle several attributes of collaboration under the term \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003egenuine collaboration\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e which they report to be required to achieve knowledge integration. There are also studies that explicitly link the \u003cem\u003ehow\u003c/em\u003e of collaboration to the effectiveness of ITDR project to contribute to societal objectives (Belcher et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e; P\u0026auml;rli \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). Comparing the influence of different factors on the effects of transdisciplinary projects, process factors are found to have the strongest influence \u0026ndash; and thus a stronger influence than representation (P\u0026auml;rli \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). Moreover, through a survey among 178 project leaders of transdisciplinary projects de Jong et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) found that informal involvement of non-academic actors and diverse outputs benefited the TDR process, whereas giving these actors a more formal role or influence in the research process played a much less important role. Together, those findings therefore point towards the importance of how ITDR and participation are shaped, while the mere representation of diverse actors does not suffice and is of limited impact.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe same holds true when considering disciplinary representation. The eligibility criteria regarding consortium composition potently govern \u003cem\u003ewho\u003c/em\u003e is represented in the consortium. This meant that every funded project represented some disciplinary diversity, including collaboration between the large academic domains of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In our finding that SSH scholars were outnumbered by the natural scientists among the beneficiaries of NWA-ORC and KIC, among others due to the heavier focus on natural sciences and engineering in the KIC scheme. This does reproduce the an earlier finding that money tends to be unevenly allocated between those academic domains (Overland \u0026amp; Sovacool \u003cspan citationid=\"CR31\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). Even more so, however, the eligibility criteria do not provide tools to also weigh in the quality of those partnerships. Past research has reported that requirements to include social sciences or humanities (SSH) scholars in projects can also lead to their narrow and instrumental involvement (Levidow \u0026amp; Neubauer 2014). This is in line with our findings, in which a SSH reported earlier experiences being included merely to meet the funding criteria, and a project in which the disciplinary representation requirement was met by including a researcher trained in the natural sciences to conduct economical analyses on the financial implementation of a new technology.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe therefore reason that in order to stimulate ITDR, it is essential to go beyond representation and also influence \u003cem\u003ehow\u003c/em\u003e collaboration practices are given meaning. Exerting more power over the how of ITDR can be achieved by formulating eligibility criteria that govern collaboration practices, such as setting requirements to collaborative leadership and governance structures (Gray \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2008\u003c/span\u003e) or dedicating a specific resources for integrative and reflexive activities (Hoffmann, Weber, et al. 2022; Lux et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). But capturing collaboration practices in eligibility criteria is not straight forward. First, it requires defining what desirable ITDR collaboration practices look like, while there is no consensus about this in literature (Vienni-Baptista et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR46\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e). Second, dictating binary eligibility criteria about how collaboration is to be organized, takes away flexibility and power from applicants to design ITDR to be \u0026lsquo;fit for purpose\u0026rsquo; and tailor approaches for their specific contexts or with different goals. Third, it is likely to be difficult to reinforce eligibility criteria for collaboration practices as complying with them can only be truly assessed once projects are running (Johnson \u0026amp; Hrynkow \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e; Lauronen \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e) and their effectiveness even only after the project has ended (Lux et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e). So, although there are some opportunities for eligibility criteria targeting ITDR collaboration practices, and mid term evaluations and ongoing reflexive monitoring may help assess and support actual practices and not only promises in proposals (Lauronen \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Lux et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e), there are limitations to the suitability of eligibility criteria to shape the how of ITDR.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePosing concrete eligibility criteria can be a potent means to stimulate ITDR, but it has serious limitations and comes at a price. Eligibility criteria are most suitable to govern the \u003cem\u003ewhat\u003c/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003ewho\u003c/em\u003e of ITDR, being (largely) blind to the \u003cem\u003ehow\u003c/em\u003e, while influencing processes and practices seem to be the most promising means of truly stimulating ITDR. Moreover, the more stringent criteria are made and reinforced, the more effectively they stimulate ITDR, but also the more restrictive they are. We consider this to expose an inherent tension in the role that funders can play in stimulating ITDR; the more power they exert on project design, the more they bound the power and agency of applicants. The power of funders and the power of applicants are communicating vessels. Limiting the agency of applicants may pose a risk for ITDR as researcher motivation is reported to be important for effective ITDR (Podest\u0026aacute; et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR33\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e; Ramos-Vielba et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR38\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). So, stimulating researchers to engage in ITDR while this is not where their research goals and interests lie, or disincentivizing them to pursue other or more intensive collaboration practices may impair ITDR (P\u0026auml;rli \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e). However, at the same time, not setting any restrictions may also harm ITDR, as it as they suffer from direction competition with less labor intensive approaches for the same funding under the same criteria (Lyall et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe consider the paradoxical relationship between ITDR and eligibility criteria to have two main implications for stimulating ITDR through funding policies: 1) the need for diversification of instruments and the corresponding discourses and criteria; and 2) the importance of quality criteria and evaluation to support ITDR. In line with findings of Vienni-Baptista et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR46\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e) we saw that the practices in projects that were funded through the instruments were more heterogeneous than were the discourses deployed in the call information. For example, integration was univocally adopted as a characteristic of interdisciplinarity in the funding information, but that the meaning and importance that applicants gave to integration in the projects funded through these same instruments varied widely. The diversity of practices implies an openness that gives agency to applicants to design their project as they find appropriate, but it also does not stimulate integrative ITDR, and if more intensive approaches are not rewarded with higher chances and/or more resources, it may even give more integrative approaches a competitive disadvantage. At the same time, establishing more restricting eligibility criteria implies rejecting less integrative forms of cross-disciplinarity, while there is no conclusive evidence that those are fundamentally less effective or less interesting (Mennes \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEffectively stimulating heterogeneous ITDR practices, we argue, therefore requires different instruments, with each their own set of criteria and discourses and criteria, to raise multiple different bars and set multiple different ceilings. Such diversification of instruments, criteria and discourses, requires also legitimizing less intensive forms of ITDR as valuable in their own right, such as preventing oversimplified concepts of societal value (Smit \u0026amp; Hessels \u003cspan citationid=\"CR45\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e), complexity as a one-size-fits-all justification for the need of ITDR, and the integration as a rhetoric device (Madsen \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e). In the context of NWO, the separate NWA-ORC and KIC instruments with different profiles hold the potential to raise two different bars and set two different ceilings. But based on our findings, we see opportunity to further differentiate between the two. If, as the discourses NWO deploy suggest, they are committed to actively supporting complexity oriented projects, this requires the development of application and selection procedures that are more fitting for the inherent open-ended nature of complex problems (Derrick \u0026amp; Samuel \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e; Hultqvist et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; Huutoniemi et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR13\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e). This could include more flexibility for adaptive management during the project to cater to the open-ended and uncertain nature of ITDR (Mattor et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR28\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e; Munaretto et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; P\u0026auml;rli \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e; Pohl et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR34\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e; Woelert \u0026amp; Millar \u003cspan citationid=\"CR47\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e), more dedicated funding for labor-intensive knowledge integration activities (Hoffmann, Deutsch, et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR8\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e), and resources for early project stages (Horcea-Milcu et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Luthe \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Roux et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eQuality criteria and evaluation procedures can also play a key role in stimulating ITDR (Ramos-Vielba et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR38\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e). Whereas eligibility criteria are binary, quality criteria leave room for assigning relative weights and interpretating contextual relevance and fitness for purpose. Moreover, quality criteria and evaluation allow for assessing design elements targeting the \u003cem\u003ehow\u003c/em\u003e of collaboration \u0026ndash; e.g. governance and collaboration structures \u0026ndash; that are difficult to capture in eligibility criteria. As such, quality criteria hold the potential to be implemented to fund projects with a wider range of characteristics in a single instrument, while still also assessing ITDR quality. This does, however, make the reinforcement of those criteria dependent on the evaluation process, which has been shown that evaluation of ITDR is challenging, among others because evaluation panels often consist of disciplinary experts and may have limited experience with ITDR (Huutoniemi \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Pohl et al. \u003cspan citationid=\"CR35\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e). It makes guarding a scheme\u0026rsquo;s objectives \u0026ndash; and thus the execution of funders policies \u0026ndash; highly dependent on external reviewers and committee members.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAll in all, we urge funders who aim to actively stimulate ITDR to decide which form or forms of ITDR they aim to stimulate, and define one or more coherent set(s) of discourses, eligibility criteria, quality criteria, and selection procedures accordingly. This echoes the call by Schneider, Buser, et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e) for funders to explicate, consistently implement, and continuously evaluate their agendas. Making such decisions is an inherently normative and political activity, as targeted stimulation of specific types of research is by design selective, as it means not prioritizing other research activities (Caswill \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2003\u003c/span\u003e). We argue that being explicit about the normative and political nature of policy making and of the research agendas and priorities would support a more plural understanding of ITDR and its funding, diversification of funding instruments for ITDR, and thereby the effective implementation of research funders\u0026rsquo; agendas.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eIn studying how funding criteria aimed at stimulating ITDR shaped project design and execution, we saw that the funding criteria had dual effects on ITDR practices. On the one hand, funding criteria spurred applicants to adopt a more ITDR approach, for instance motivating collaboration with academic- and non-academic partners they would otherwise not have work with and considering societal impact. On the other hand, we saw that those same requirements could also be experienced as unsupportive or restrictive for ITDR practices, for instance imposing a linear approach to impact. So, funding criteria could stimulate as well as restrict the uptake of more ITDR approaches; raising a bar and setting a ceiling. We consider this an inherent paradox that funders who aim to stimulate ITDR have to navigate by explicitly committing to the range(s) of ITDR practices they aim to support and defining corresponding funding criteria, discourses and procedure.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBelcher BM, Claus R, Davel R, Ramirez LF (2019) Linking transdisciplinary research characteristics and quality to effectiveness: A comparative analysis of five research-for-development projects. 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High Educ 66/6:755\u0026ndash;767. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003e10.1007/s10734-013-9634-8\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/s10734-013-9634-8\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"Radboud University Nijmegen","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":true,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, research funding, research policy, societal impact, power dynamics","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7478548/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7478548/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eWhile research funders aim to stimulate inter- and transdisciplinary research (ITDR) through funding policies, little is known about how funding discourses and criteria shape ITDR in practice. Therefore, we set out to understand how funding requirements shape ITDR practices. We selected two funding instruments from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) that target ITDR, analyzed call information, and interviewed different actors involved in project design and execution. We saw that the funding criteria had dual effects on ITDR practices. On the one hand, eligibility criteria spurred applicants to adopt a more ITDR approach, for instance prompting collaboration with academic- and non-academic partners they would otherwise not have work with and placing societal impact more central in their approach. On the other hand, we saw that those same requirements could also be experienced as unsupportive or restrictive for ITDR practices, for instance imposing a linear approach to impact. Moreover, we saw that the impact of quality criteria on ITDR practices was more diffuse and could even be experienced to disincentivize more ITDR approaches. So, funding criteria could stimulate as well as restrict the uptake of more ITDR approaches; raising a bar and setting a ceiling. We consider this an inherent paradox that funders who aim to stimulate ITDR have to navigate by explicitly committing to the range(s) of ITDR practices they aim to support and defining corresponding funding criteria, discourses and procedure.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Raising the Bar and Setting a Ceiling: The Paradox of Stimulating Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research through Funding","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-08-29 07:16:30","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7478548/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"d7885422-4a22-4c05-bb8f-d9e4436454d5","owner":[],"postedDate":"August 29th, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[{"id":53830661,"name":"Other Public Policy"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2025-08-29T07:16:30+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-08-29 07:16:30","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-7478548","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-7478548","identity":"rs-7478548","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}