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Funding for leading research projects around the globe is more likely to be falling than increasing, according to a survey of thousands of researchers who have published some of the most influential science in the past few years.
The Research Leaders survey polled more than 6,000 authors of articles published in journals tracked by Nature Index journals since 2020. It found that 53% think funding for leading projects in their field is decreasing; by contrast, 21% say it is rising.
In all regions, more respondents thought funding was decreasing than increasing, but the view in North America was particularly bleak: 69% of researchers there said funding was decreasing. By contrast, 40% of respondents in Asia and Oceania reported declining funding, compared with one-third who said it was on the up. Around half of respondents in Europe and Africa and South America said funding was falling.
Nature Index 2025 Research Leaders
Simon Marginson, a higher-education researcher at the University of Bristol, UK, says it is not surprising that researchers in North America are pessimistic, given the US funding cuts implemented since President Donald Trump returned to office last year.
Last March, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, announced that it was cutting grants deemed ‘unaligned’ with agency priorities, amounting to some US$1.8 billion in funding. In September, a judge allowed the administration to cancel more than 1,600 grants issued by the National Science Foundation (NSF), worth more than $1 billion. In May, Trump proposed a 57% reduction for the NSF’s budget, to $3.9 billion, and a 41% cut for the NIH, to $27.9 billion, although the US Congress is working to pass bills that would avoid the bulk of these cuts.
Regional split
Marginson says the optimism of researchers in Asia is consistent with longer-term patterns in research investment.
“China is a big driver — in aggregate terms — of any trend. But Singapore, Malaysia, [South] Korea and even Vietnam are all increasing their funding in science. And Japan is reinvesting in science after university budgets were left to wither for decades” because public investment did not keep up with rising costs. Singapore, for example, has committed 37 billion Singapore dollars (US$29 billion) to its Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2030 plan — equivalent to around 1% of its gross domestic product (GDP) — representing a $9-billion-Singapore-dollar increase on the previous five-year funding cycle. South Korea, meanwhile, spent 5.3% of its GDP in 2023 on research and development (R&D), making it one of the largest R&D investors in the world.
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