Fig 1.
Proportions between baseline funding and national research grants between 2009–2021 [4].
Fig 2.
Overview of the evaluation process of national research grants in Estonia [22].
Table 1.
Description of Estonian national grant types.
Table 2.
Information of the number of grants, distribution of gender and fields of research across grant types (early/advanced) for grants awarded by the Estonian Research Council between 2013–2022.
Fig 3.
The importance of timing in applying for the grant: Success rate and annual budget available for new grants.
Percentage values shows the success rate in the given year.
Fig 4.
Yearly size of the grant and success rate for early-stage and advanced-stage grant types across all grants awarded by the Estonian Research Council between 2013–2022.
The line between 2017 and 2018 indicates the change in grant policy.
Fig 5.
Annual success rates across fields and grant levels.
Table 3.
Average age of PI at the time of the grant across different fields of science for grants awarded by the Estonian Research Council between 2013–2022 (Research question 1).
Fig 6.
Distribution of the age of the PI at the time of the grant and distribution statistics for early and advanced grant types across all grants awarded by the Estonian Research Council between 2013–2022.
Fig 7.
The distribution of the normalized number of peer-reviewed articles (1.1 articles) and distribution characteristics for different grant types through all grants awarded by the Estonian Research Council between 2013–2022.
The article number was normalized with respect to the age of the PI (Eq. 1). The insets show the distributions after logarithmic transformation.
Table 4.
Average number of peer-reviewed articles and age-normalized number of articles published by grant holders for different grant types across different fields of science for grants awarded by the Estonian Research Council between 2013–2022 (Research question 2).
Fig 8.
The average ± SE number of peer-reviewed articles normalized with respect to the age of the researcher (Eq. 1) for PIs of early and advanced-career grants.
The number of grants gained in particular year is given above the intervals. a–differs significantly from the average of advanced level; A–differs significantly from the average of years 2019, 2020 and 2021 (comparison between the years is within the particular career level, two-sample Wilcoxon rank-sum test, P < 0.05). EP-Expert Panel; EC-Evaluation Committee, both play important role in final decision making over funding allocation.
Fig 9.
The relationship between the normalized number of peer-reviewed articles and the age of PI at the time of the grant for different grant types across all grants awarded by the Estonian Research Council between 2013–2022.
Peer-reviewed articles as in Fig 7. The article number was normalized with respect to the age of the researcher by Eq. 1. RI–research institution. Above–all grants with outliers; middle–early-career grants, outliers left out below–advanced career grants, outliers left out.
Fig 10.
The average (± SE) number or peer-reviewed articles normalized with respect to the age of the PI (Eq. 1) across age groups and Frascati fields through all grants awarded by the Estonian Research Council between 2013–2022.
Agricultural and veterinary sciences are not shown because of low number of grant holders in the oldest age group (5 PIs).
Table 5.
The share of PIs who have gained the grant several times across different fields of science for grants awarded by the Estonian Research Council between 2013–2022 (Research question 3).
Fig 11.
The share (± SE) of PIs, who have gained the grant several times across grant type and Frascati fields through all grants awarded by the Estonian Research Council between 2013–2022.
Agricultural and veterinary sciences are not shown because of low number of early-career grant holders with several grants (2 PIs).
Fig 12.
Average age at the time of gaining PhD (± SE) in relation to success of obtaining the grant once or multiple times for different grant types (early vs. advanced).
The comparisons are based for all grants awarded by the Estonian Research Council between 2013–2022.