Analysing research funding flows in the Global South

(The Spanish version of this blog post is available here).

The project, funded by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), is led by the Latin American Forum for Scientific Evaluation (FOLEC) of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), in collaboration with the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University and SIRIS Academic.

International funding circuits are not neutral; rather, they reflect historical structures, power relations, and political decisions that shape which knowledge is prioritized, who produces it, and for what purposes. Although these funds are often presented as ways to promote international cooperation, in practice, they can reproduce dynamics of dependency, concentration, and exclusion.

To study this issue, we plan to combine analyses of bibliometric and project funding data, critical literature review, data visualization tools and dialogue spaces with researchers, and policy-makers from Latin America and other regions of the Global South.

The project has two objectives. On the one hand, to generate robust quantitative evidence on how funding flows circulate globally and under what logics. On the other hand, it aims to contribute to debates towards more equitable, contextualized modes of funding aligned with the social and scientific priorities of Global South countries. This blog post introduces the motivation and objectives of the project. In future communications we will provide more details on our data collection methods and share further insights into the project's outcomes.

Unequal Dynamics in the Circulation of International Funding

The project started by conducting a review of grey literature —including technical reports, institutional documents, and materials produced by multilateral organizations, cooperation agencies, and private foundations.

One of the problems identified is the imbalance in research capacities across countries. Research systems in the Global South are often characterized by low investment in human resources, limited infrastructures, weak connections with other socio-economic sectors, and institutional fragilities. This situation creates a vicious cycle: unequal access to international funds tends to benefit the consolidated scientific elites within each country, reinforcing the concentration of opportunities and excluding peripheral actors.

Moreover, in many funding cooperation schemes there is the tendency to impose predefined research agendas: research topics and frameworks are established by Northern funders before involving Southern partners. This limits the ability of local actors to formulate research questions relevant to their contexts. It also weakens the potential to build meaningful, context-sensitive solutions from and for the South.

Another critical issue is knowledge ownership and data access. Internationally funded research often leaves data and results under the control of Northern institutions. This practice not only prevents Global South teams from developing their own research agendas, but also limits their recognition and visibility as knowledge producers. These dynamics have been described as forms of academic or scientific extractivism.

The literature review also highlighted imbalances in decision-making. Southern institutions often participate merely as implementers, joining in the later stages of project design or as marginal members of advisory boards. This unequal distribution of power hampers local ownership of scientific processes and reinforces external governance structures.

Finally, lack of transparency emerges as a cross-cutting issue. Information about funding amounts, conditions, actors involved, and expected results is seldom systematized or publicly accessible. This opacity hinders accountability to local communities, prevents monitoring, and limits the ability to assess real impacts. Moreover, it affects both scientific communities and the societies that should benefit from research outcomes. In this context, one has to value the efforts to make funding data available by the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information, and the upcoming indexing of grants into OpenAlex recently announced by the Wellcome Trust.

These findings show that the problems surrounding international funding are not solely about volume (i.e. amount of money) but also concern its design, circulation, and governance. Moving towards fairer funding models requires not only redistributing resources but also transforming decision-making mechanisms, promoting co-production of research agendas, and ensuring transparency and equitable access to data and results.

Subordinate Integration: Key Insights into Unequal Participation in Global Science

The diagnosis of the literature review relates to the notion of subordinate integration, developed by Pablo Kreimer, which we plan to use as a key concept in this project.

This concept helps explain how science produced in the South is incorporated into the 'global' research system under unequal conditions—without fully achieving autonomy, capacity to shape research agendas or being able to benefit from its own scientific contributions.

Subordinate integration refers to a specific pattern of participation in international scientific networks, where Southern research teams gain formal recognition and access to prestigious circuits—such as large consortia and international calls—but in exchange for assuming primarily technical and subordinate roles. Rather than leading projects conceptually, peripheral groups often get international funding for tasks related with data collection, hypothesis testing, or validation of protocols developed in the North.

This restricted form of participation is sustained by a combination of institutional, political, and epistemic mediations that operate simultaneously. Dependence on external funding shapes the topics that are studied, as available resources are often tied to priorities defined outside the local context.

Kreimer also warns of the risk of a form of "hyper-normal science": technically sophisticated but conceptually routine, lacking situated innovation or social relevance. In this scenario, the knowledge produced—while valid and recognized—has limited capacity to be translated into policies, technologies, or meaningful interventions in the contexts where it originates. This phenomenon has been described by Kreimer and collaborators as Applicable Knowledge Not Applied (AKNA, or in the original Spanish at CANA: Conocimiento Aplicable No Aplicado).

Furthermore, Kreimer argues that subordination affects not only researchers and institutions but also the objects of research. Southern problems—such as endemic diseases, territorial conflicts, or local production systems—must be "legitimized" according to cognitive frameworks lacking place-based perspectives and imposed from "outside" (either from overseas or from the national capitals and their 'cosmopolitan' elites), hindering the development of science oriented toward the local or regional social priorities.

In sum, subordinate integration describes a form of inclusion in which actors from the South are incorporated into global networks, but under conditions that reinforce their technical and conceptual dependence.

In the project we will explore if and how these dynamics of subordination are partly associated with North-South funding flows. Since mere participation in global science is not enough, it is essential to develop new forms of participation also in funding instruments that expand decision-making capacities, and build the means to lead scientific agendas from and for the South.

Participatory engagement: The Project's Advisory Board and Strategic Consultations

Since the project is committed to collaborative work, we established an Advisory Board that brings together experts from various fields, regions and institutions. This board serves as a space for critical reflection, methodological validation and questioning, and strategic guidance. It includes representatives from science agencies (e.g. IATI), scholars and members of multilateral organizations.

In June 2025, as part of the Tenth Latin American and Caribbean Social Sciences Conference (CLACSO 2025) held in Bogotá, we organized a Strategic Consultation. The event brought together public officials, researchers, and other experts to engage in an open dialogue about the current architecture of international funding, its impacts, and possible alternatives.

The meeting identified several key challenges: fragmentation of available data, the lack of clear typologies to classify funding sources, limited participation of Southern actors in the early design phases of projects, and the urgent need to develop more sovereign funding mechanisms. Participants also proposed concrete actions: promoting mandatory disclosure of funding sources in publications, creating accessible visualizations of funding flows, and mapping collaborative networks to identify patterns of concentration or exclusion. These inputs will be used in the subsequent stages of the project.

Towards a New Horizon: Autonomy, Relevance, and Justice in Science

International funding is not merely a technical or economic issue—it is a political, epistemic, and ethical one. In a world marked by multiple crises—climate, health, energy, food—it is essential for science produced in the Global South to be able to develop its own agenda, oriented and contextualized to the concrete problems of its societies.

This project offers a roadmap toward this horizon: identifying unequal relational structures, documenting funding trajectories, making asymmetries visible, and developing tools to imagine alternatives.

It is necessary to pursue a critical and sovereign integration of research from the Global South, where international cooperation and funding do not reproduce power imbalances, but instead foster reciprocity, mutual learning, and context-sensitive, place-based innovation. Ultimately, this means building models of science that serve integral development, social justice, and knowledge as a common good.

Note: We used AI tools to assist with drafting, restructuring (ChatGPT by OpenAI), and translation (DeepL) of this piece.

Matías Alcántara is member of the FOLEC team (Latin American Forum on Evaluation of Science) at CLACSO (Latin American Council of Social Sciences)

Mariángela Nápoli is member of the FOLEC team (Latin American Forum on Evaluation of Science) at CLACSO (Latin American Council of Social Sciences)

Judith Naidorf is Coordinator of FOLEC (Latin American Forum on Evaluation of Science) at CLACSO (Latin American Council of Social Sciences) and Principal Researcher in CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council).

Rodrigo Costas is UNESCO co-Chair and Senior Researcher at CWTS, Leiden University.

Ismael Rafols is UNESCO Chair at CWTS, Leiden University and Senior Researcher at INGENIO (CSIC-UPV).