Anatomy of funded research in science

Significance The study of scientific collaborations has been predominately focused on characterizing publication coauthorships. Here, we study instead collaboration networks by looking at project partnerships funded over the years and show clearly the substantial impact of funding shifts on the pattern of interactions. We find that the leading universities form a cohesive clique among themselves and occupy brokerage positions between otherwise disconnected entities, and as the inequality in the distribution of funding grows over time, so does the degree of brokerage. Specifically, the elites overattract resources but they also reward in variety of research and quality. We are the first to our knowledge to systematically quantify the far-reaching effects of external forces on the complex interactions in team research that underpin the production and evolution of science. Seeking research funding is an essential part of academic life. Funded projects are primarily collaborative in nature through internal and external partnerships, but what role does funding play in the formulation of these partnerships? Here, by examining over 43,000 scientific projects funded over the past three decades by one of the major government research agencies in the world, we characterize how the funding landscape has changed and its impacts on the underlying collaboration networks across different scales. We observed rising inequality in the distribution of funding and that its effect was most noticeable at the institutional level—the leading universities diversified their collaborations and increasingly became the knowledge brokers in the collaboration network. Furthermore, it emerged that these leading universities formed a rich club (i.e., a cohesive core through their close ties) and this reliance among them seemed to be a determining factor for their research success, with the elites in the core overattracting resources but also rewarding in terms of both research breadth and depth. Our results reveal how collaboration networks organize in response to external driving forces, which can have major ramifications on future research strategy and government policy.