| In recent years, under the influence of new managerialism, university ranking and knowledge economy, the performance-based research funding system has become a powerful policy tool widely used in many countries to enhance the competitiveness of universities. Different countries have built their own research funding systems through different institutional design of evaluation methods and evaluation units. The widespread use of performance-based research funding system has had varying degrees of impact on university autonomy and internal governance structures, the quantity and quality of research outputs, academic careers and research cultures. On the one hand, it strengthens institutions' ability to act autonomously and enhances research productivity. On the other hand, it may limit the substantive autonomy of universities, induce researchers' opportunistic behavior, inhibit the diversity of research, block interdisciplinary research and breakthrough innovation, and form a strong disciplinary effect on academic professions. In addition, the cost/benefit ratio of performance evaluations is often challenged. In view of this, we should balance the proportion of competitive output-oriented funding and non-competitive input-oriented funding, adopt peer review as much as possible to carry out formative evaluation, and build a more scientific and reasonable research funding system from the full cycle and multi-dimensional aspects of scientific research input-process-structure-output-effect. |
