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Funder Data Platform

A Secure Collaboration Hub for Metascience

Summary

The Funder Data Platform (FDP) is a secure digital platform for research funders to share their internal data for analysis. While data on funded grants and published outputs is freely available, the far more sensitive data on, for example, unsuccessful applications and review processes, is not. The FDP enables these types of data to be used for analysis while funders keep full control over it, critically enhancing our ability to analyse and understand how research funding works. The FDP is designed to be flexible, both in facilitating different types of projects and data, and in accommodating the different demands and requirements that funders must adhere to in providing access to their data.

Key features include:

  • Data Upload & Access: Partners securely upload and store data for collaborative projects.
  • Secure Workspace: Teams analyze data in a closed environment. Each project has its own workspace where user access is tailored to project specifications. 
  • Open Outputs: Approved findings are shared in open formats.

The FDP is now fully operational and is connected to two RoRI projects: MATTHEW and CRITERIA.

Project team

Partner organisations

  • Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
  • Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR)
  • Center for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS)
  • DBT Wellcome Trust India Alliance
  • Digital Science
  • Dutch Research Council (NWO)
  • Health Research BC (HRBC)
  • Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR)
  • Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research
  • Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF)
  • Research Council of Norway (RCN)
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)
  • Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
  • University of Sheffield
  • Wellcome Trust

The project in detail

The Funder Data Platform (FDP) offers a groundbreaking solution for funders and researchers to collaborate securely, driving new insights that advance research funding and policy. The FDP provides:

  • a platform and legal framework for funders to share their internal data for analysis on specific problems, topics and research questions
  • protocols for standardising (and where needed anonymising) internal funder data into a common format, enabling cross-funder analysis
  • linking this internal ‘closed data’ to open data on research outputs and outcomes

Bridging the Data Gap in Research on Research

For research that has been funded and published, there is ample available information enabling analysis of publications, citations, collaborations, funding landscapes and so on. However, pre-award data – unsuccessful applications, reviews and review processes, applicant ‘journeys’ – are the bottom of the ocean of research data. Very little work exists to analyse such data across funders, largely because of data privacy issues. This has long been a challenge, limiting insights into funding processes and strategic investments. The Funder Data Platform (FDP) addresses this by providing a secure environment for sharing and analyzing data, enabling collaboration on critical issues such as funding design, assessment criteria, selection processes, and outcomes.

What Is the Funder Data Platform?

The FDP is a secure platform for data sharing and analysis among RoRI’s consortium members and partners. The Platform is designed to promote knowledge sharing in a secure environment, based on confidential data that can otherwise not be made openly available. While this confidential data cannot be made publicly available, the Platform strives to make all work and results openly available and can potentially also be used as an open repository for funding data. Access is also possible for other researchers and analysts interested in conducting studies within metascience.

Key features include:

  • Data Upload & Access: Partners securely upload and store data for collaborative projects.
  • Secure Workspace: Teams analyze data in a closed environment. Each project has its own workspace where user access is tailored to project specifications. 
  • Open Outputs: Approved findings are shared in open formats.

Initially developed by Wellcome Trust, the FDP is now managed by the Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy (CFA) at Aarhus University, supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Development continues through RoRI’s second phase, until the end of 2027.

The FDP fosters collaboration and knowledge exchange among research funders by:

  • Providing a secure environment: Create a safe space for storing and analysing confidential data.
  • Facilitating Collaboration: Bring together researchers and funders to address critical metascience questions.
  • Enhancing Access: Streamline access to funder data for collaborative projects.
  • Simplifying Processes: Reduce barriers to initiating and managing joint analyses.

Current projects

Two ongoing RoRI projects currently leverage the FDP:

  1. Criteria: Examines gender effects across funders.
  2. Matthew: Studies the accumulation effects of early grants.

How the FDP works

The FDP supports several models for collaboration:

  1. Centralised Analysis: Funder data is transferred to the FDP, where all data preparation, merging, and analysis occur.
  2. Hybrid Model: Data preparation is supported locally by the funder before anonymised datasets are transferred to the FDP for joint analysis.
  3. Data-Owner Control: Data owners clearly control who has access to their datasets, and can enable granular control where only partial access is granted to some analysts.
  4. Alternative Data Types: Projects utilising non-quantitative data, such as interviews or documents, can also be conducted.

These models enable diverse research topics, including funding practices, selection criteria, evaluation processes, allocation patterns, and links between funding and outcomes.

Project timeline

The FDP was piloted by RoRI in its CRITERIA project, which explored the relationship between evaluation criteria for funding applications and the outcomes of those applications by gender.

The FDP will run for the five-year duration of RoRI’s second phase (to the end of 2027), and potentially beyond. 

Outputs

Besides the platform itself, the main outputs of the Funder Data Platform (FDP) are the research projects that the Platform hosts and facilitates. Currently, the FDP hosts two RoRI projects: MATTHEW and CRITERIA.

The FDP was demonstrated to the RoRI partnership in May 2025 and will be presented in online demonstration workshops and at a number of conferences in 2025:

  • International Conference on the Science of Science and Innovation, June 16 – June 18, 2025 in Copenhagen
  • MetaScience 2025 Conference, June 30 – July 2, 2025 in London
  • 29th International Conference on Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators, 2025, 3 – 5 September in Bristol

The Funder Data Platform offers a groundbreaking solution for funders and researchers to collaborate securely, driving new insights that advance research funding and policy.

A background paper forming part of the foundation of FDP was published in 2021: Woods HB and Pinfield S. Incentivising research data sharing: a scoping review. Wellcome Open Res 2021, 6:355

For more information on access, participation in current projects or opportunities for new projects, please contact Emer Brady (bradyem@ps.au.dk) or Carter Bloch (carter.bloch@ps.au.dk)