Ella Garrison, Ex Libris
What Funding Opportunities are Researchers Searching For?
The Ex Libris funding solutions Pivot and Research Professional combined hold the most comprehensive, up-to-date database of sponsored research funding opportunities. With billions of dollars available from a wide array of sponsors, researchers and academic research offices worldwide use Pivot and Research Professional to track down the resources that are focused on their fields of research.
Delving into aggregated statistics from Pivot, we were able to identify the subject areas in which researchers are most often looking for funding and where funding opportunities lie. The data we analyzed was collected over a period of 15 months, including all of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019.
Delving into aggregated statistics from Pivot, we were able to identify the subject areas in which researchers are most often looking for funding and where funding opportunities lie. 
What Were the Top Keyword Topics?
According to our data, over 100,000 keywords were used in over 450,000 Pivot searches. The top 20 keywords searched were, not surprisingly, in STEM subject areas.
In the chart below, we’ve grouped the top 20 search topics— those which produced over 27,000 searches— into several academic categories. This conceptual division makes it easier to measure the amount of funding available.
| Leading search categories (based on top 20 keywords) | Percentage of the top 20 keywords |
| Health & Sciences (Medicine) | 56% |
| Education | 20% |
| Arts & Humanities | 8% |
| Engineering | 5% |
| Sustainability | 4% |
| Agriculture | 4% |
| History | 3% |
The Funding Available
The US dollar value of funding opportunities in each of the above categories is currently estimated as follows:
- Health & Sciences (Medicine) – 23 billion+
- Engineering – 27 billion+
- Educations – 12 billion+
- Arts & Humanities – 6 billion+
- Agriculture – 6 billion
- History – 250 million +
- Sustainability – 4 billion+
The competitiveness of a research institution in today’s economy and within the global academic community is greatly influenced by its ability to provide scholars with access to needed funds. Given that support, researchers’ results are more likely to make a greater contribution to the body of academic knowledge and positively impact the reputation of the institution.
Thanks to data analysis such as the above, institutions and funders can get better insight into the type of funding that researchers are searching for most intensively.
Over the next few months, the Ex Libris research team will be sharing additional data highlighting researchers’ efforts to find funding opportunities using Pivot’s advanced search tool.
December 9, 2022
