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Funding disclosure and acknowledge norms?

In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

I have a question about the etiquette of funding disclosure and acknowledgments in publications. My current position is funded by a grant. When I publish work arising from that project, I declare the funding in the relevant field of the journal’s submission system and include a sentence in the acknowledgments. But what about papers from earlier, thematically unrelated research that are now being accepted? While holding my current position, I might have (a) shepherded a paper through an R&R, (b) made minor revisions, or (c) done essentially nothing beyond waiting for the reviews to come back. In these cases, is it appropriate to (i) declare and (ii) acknowledge the funding – and if so, in what form?

Any helpful tips from readers?

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6 responses to “Funding disclosure and acknowledge norms?”

  1. Anonymous

    My understanding is that you acknowledge the grant for research that is grant related. So even if you wrote a paper while on the grant, if the research is disconnected from the grant, then you don’t need to acknowledge the grant. For instance, if you’re grant is on knowledge and skepticism, but you wrote a paper on the ethics of promising, you wouldn’t have to acknowledge the grant in the ethics of promising paper. This seems to me to be how others operate, both in philosophy and some sciences.

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  2. Anonymous

    I think it is fine (and sometimes even required) to disclose (and thank) funding sources even in papers that were not directly supported by a specific grant. I have in mind, especially cases where you worked on a paper where the funding may result in a perceived conflict of interest. To be concrete, I know someone who does research on addiction. If she were to be funded by a private foundation (for example, a pharma company), she would need to disclose this.
    And I had funding from a foundation for a sabbatical year for a specific project, but I did thank the funder and acknowledge their support in all papers I worked on that year, even those unrelated to the funded project.

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  3. Anonymous

    Different funding schemes might have different rules, but if I had a 100% externally funded fellowship, then I would consider any research work done during the fellowship (including editing, revising etc. though probably not correcting typos) to be supported by the fellowship and thus something to be acknowledged. The resulting publication counts as partly supported by the grant/fellowship, I would think. It may be different if you have a grant for a specific project which isn’t paying 100% for your position.

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  4. Anonymous

    My understanding is a little different than what Anonymous 9/12 describes. If a grant pays your salary, and you did work on a paper while receiving that salary, then it is appropriate to acknowledge the grant. This is so even if the work was merely shepherding a paper through R&R, etc., or was on a different topic than the explicit topic of the grant.

    Of course, there are some caveats. First, most grants require you to report to the funding agency about how the grant was used and whatever results you achieved with the work that was funded by the grant. While it’s fine (I think) to refer to this work in the report; it wouldn’t be wise to pitch it as part of the central work that was done under the grant. But this is a slightly different issue than acknowledging the grant in a publication.

    Second, what I described in the first paragraph applies most closely to the circumstances of early career people, who are employed on someone else’s grant, or who get a grant as PI but where their position/ salary is tied to the grant (as is common in Europe, e.g.). You might already have a permanent position and get a grant. In this case, I suspect that the rule of thumb anon 9/12 describes is more appropriate.

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  5. Anonymous

    Thematically related or not, if you’ve touched the paper while your salary was being paid by the grant, I’d formally acknowledge the grant funding, as it did in fact contribute to the paper. And why wouldn’t you? You get to show off that someone gave you a grant and the funder gets to show off more publications from their funding.

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  6. Anonymous

    I largely agree with those who suggest that if you spent time paid for by a grant to work on the paper, then it would be appropriate to acknowledge the grant. However, rather than following a generic rule, I would look to the terms of the funding/funder in specific and make sure you adhere to their requirements. Funders tend to make explicit the terms and expectations of their funding. Finally, it is worth noting that some journals have their own specific norms on this, particularly in STEM disciplines, and they may only narrowly allow funding disclosures when a funder directly supported the research in question. Given philosophy doesn’t have robust norms for financial and other disclosures, and has more norms regarding grants to fund research leave in general and not a project in specific, this may not be something encountered if publishing in philosophy journals, however.

    Maybe worth mentioning that there is an open letter that recently circulated calling for greater funding transparency in philosophy and establishment of conflict of interest reporting, particularly in philosophy of science, that may be of interest to folks following this thread.

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