Investigating the Challenges of Funding Public Research Institutions in Iran

The quantitative and qualitative expansion of research activities is necessary for the development of all countries in different aspects for example economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions, and this has increased the demand for various and new resources for funding research. The purpose of this study is to identify and classify the challenges of financing public research institutions in Iran and to propose some modifications in related laws and regulations in order to solve those challenges. For this purpose, first, semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts and after implementation, coding, and analysis of the results using MAXQDA2020, the aforementioned challenges were classified under five groups, in terms of the number of challenges are low cost-effectiveness and resource-consuming process efficiency, a weak evaluation system for performance-based financing of the institutions, the weak performance of the board of trustees, board of directors in connection with financing and lack of the institutions’ autonomy in the expenditure of resources, lack of the diversification of financing mechanisms and excessive emphasis on attracting external income. Some of these challenges can be solved by amending and strengthening relevant laws, for example, it is possible to amend the budget structure and performance-based budgeting, considering the difference in the nature of research and executive activities and the differentiation of institutions from the perspective of mission, establishing more flexible and competitive funding mechanisms while paying attention to guiding activities, setting priorities, independence of institutions and setting the priority of mechanisms and monitoring government financial resources by a national research agency.