Researchers usually read papers for the science, and reviewers are supposed to judge the work itself. The acknowledgments section is therefore easy to skim past. Strictly speaking, it contributes almost nothing to evaluating the claims in a paper. Still, it often contains another kind of information: how good the authors are at getting money, and how strongly institutions or funders are willing to back a person, a lab, or a line of research.

What Chinese acknowledgments tend to reveal

In China, research funding usually comes first from the National Natural Science Foundation. Early-career scholars often list a Young Scientists Fund or a postdoctoral fellowship, while more senior academics commonly rely on general program grants to keep a research group running. Large platforms and laboratories may apply for major research plans or key projects. If a project involves multiple institutions and becomes large enough, it may go through national science and technology megaprograms.

Alongside project-based support, the major funding bodies also have grants aimed at individuals. These are the familiar “talent titles,” or what people casually call “hats.” Beyond the National Natural Science Foundation, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences all have comparable streams of support: some reward individuals, such as the Changjiang Scholars program, which has historical ties to the Li Ka Shing Foundation; others are project-based, such as the National Key R&D Program.

Outside national funding, local governments often build similar funding structures of their own, especially around provincial universities. Private foundation money also exists. In China it is more common for alumni to donate to universities and let the universities allocate the money internally; direct private-foundation support for a specific academic project is less common. In industry, however, the equivalent is everywhere: investment, equity participation, or project financing.

Why American acknowledgments look more varied

The United States has a more diverse funding landscape in paper acknowledgments. Several large organizations appear repeatedly as major sponsors: the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, NASA, and various federal departments.

One easily missed distinction is that the U.S. National Academy of Sciences is not equivalent to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The former is more of an honorific academic body and a nonprofit advisory organization. The latter is closer, in some ways, to the NIH as a network of research institutes. Even that comparison has limits: NIH institutes can oversee funding decisions in a particular area, somewhat like disciplinary divisions in a grant agency, but NIH institutes also conduct research themselves. Institutes under the Chinese Academy of Sciences conduct research too, but they do not have the same grant-approval authority.

The way they are organized also differs. Many Chinese Academy institutes are built around basic disciplines, such as physics or chemistry. NIH institutes are more often organized around applied or disease-oriented directions, such as aging or cancer. In that sense, NIH is structurally more welcoming to applicants from different research backgrounds who converge on the same problem. In China, the National Natural Science Foundation has instead created an explicit interdisciplinary division.

The alphabet soup of NIH grants

NIH grants come in many types, and the letters in the grant number say a lot.

Grants beginning with T or F are training-related. The best-known F grant is probably the F32, which allows a newly minted PhD to conduct postdoctoral research with a degree of independence. It resembles a Chinese postdoctoral fellowship. T grants, by contrast, are awarded to institutions for training programs; an institute receives the money and uses it to recruit and train postdocs or other trainees.

Grants beginning with K are career-development awards for individuals. The famous one is K99. A postdoc who wins a K99 is often in a strong position to land an assistant professorship at a top university. In broad function, it resembles various national, local, and university-level talent programs in China.

Grants beginning with R fund specific research projects. The most common examples are R01 and R21. For an assistant professor, securing an R01 can go a long way toward making tenure possible. In rough Chinese terms, these are comparable to young-investigator grants or general program grants.

Grants beginning with U often involve cooperation among multiple institutions, closer to China’s key projects. P grants usually support larger programs. They may be divided among several principal investigators, but the subprojects are held together by a common theme, making them somewhat comparable to major research plan projects.

All of these can be submitted to NIH institutes. But when a theme extends beyond the scope of a single institute, NIH can support it through an even larger Common Fund mechanism. These are theme-based rather than institute-specific, and the number of active programs is not large—fewer than thirty. A rough Chinese counterpart would be national science and technology megaprograms, such as the water pollution control program in environmental research, or the National Key R&D Program. The difference is that the NIH Common Fund is confined to biomedical research.

NSF has a similar grant logic, but its scope is broader and generally more basic-science-oriented. It also lacks NIH-style subordinate institutes that decide funding within their own domains. Both NSF and NIH have funds aimed at industrial translation, meaning they can sometimes function like a seed or angel round for academic ideas. Many American universities also invest in companies started by their own students or faculty. One could call it keeping the good water within the family field.

Why many U.S. researchers like NIH money

Ask an American researcher which funding they prefer to apply for, and if their topic fits even loosely, the answer is often NIH. The reason is simple: success rates and award sizes are both attractive compared with many alternatives. Biomedical research is also relatively easy to justify to taxpayers.

But the more important issue is how the money is distributed. Anyone who has applied for grants knows that the number in the award is not always the amount that goes directly into experiments. Part of it pays for research costs according to the budget; another part, usually called overhead, indirect costs, or facilities and administrative costs, is taken by the host institution to cover management, rent, utilities, and administrative salaries.

With NIH, the number awarded for the research itself is generally real research money, and indirect costs are added separately. With NSF, the headline number often includes both direct and indirect costs; the research group may effectively see something like sixty percent, depending on the institution’s rate and budget structure.

China has its own version of this. For example, if a principal investigator at a research institute wins a Distinguished Young Scholars grant of 4 million yuan, 500,000 yuan may be listed as indirect cost, or the amount may be calculated proportionally.

In the United States, every institution has its own arrangement. Indirect cost rates below 40% are uncommon, and some institutions have negotiated rates close to 100%. In other words, if NIH gives a lab one million dollars in direct costs, the institution may also receive another million for overhead. Does a higher overhead rate make a grant less likely to be funded? Not necessarily. This is partly a brand effect. Scripps, for example, once had a rate near 100%, but NIH still had reason to fund work there.

For powerful institutions, high indirect cost income is extremely useful. It can support better salaries and provide internal bridge funding for young principal investigators whose grants lapse, giving them time to work on important problems instead of immediately shrinking the lab. U.S. political parties have disagreed over this arrangement. During the Trump administration, attempts to cut NIH spending focused heavily on indirect costs. In practice, however, the system has not changed very much. The actual indirect cost rate is negotiated between the institution and the funder, and many universities publish these figures on their websites. Some individual-oriented awards, such as K grants, cap indirect costs at 8%.

Private foundations are not just decorative donors

Another part of acknowledgments worth noticing is private foundation support. Many studies are funded by private foundations, family foundations, or philanthropic organizations. Rare diseases are a typical example: a family affected by a disease may directly approach a hospital or laboratory and sponsor research. Compared with government grants, private funds are often more flexible in how they can be used.

In recent years, Silicon Valley wealth has become increasingly active in this area. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is one visible example. Traditional philanthropy often meant putting a donor’s name on a building or endowing scholarships. Newer forms of philanthropic science funding are more willing to intervene directly in research and finance what donors believe to be the future. Some of these efforts even have a venture-capital flavor.

This is not quite the same as “horizontal funding” in China, which usually refers to money from companies or non-governmental clients. In fact, horizontal funding may itself become a historical term. Research groups capable of attracting that kind of money often now start companies of their own and raise capital directly. In many fields, especially those close to industry, corporate R&D has already surpassed the small-workshop model of academic labs. Many open-source projects are also sustained by private-foundation support.

Crowdfunding as a small but interesting experiment

There are also newer and stranger ways to pay for research. If a topic is very new and the public cares about it, a crowdfunded research project may appear. During the crowdfunding boom around 2013, many researchers tried to raise money this way. SciFund reported that 70% of crowdfunded research campaigns successfully raised funds. Even now, plenty of research projects seek public support through websites.

A look at these projects shows a pattern. Many are led not by famous universities but by professionally trained scholars at less prestigious institutions. The topics are usually very focused, and the amounts are not large. Their advantage is clarity: the research plans tend to be readable, progress updates are posted regularly, and the organizers often accept questions directly from specialists, the public, and donors. Many large research groups may not have that ability to face the public so plainly.

Crowdfunding is unlikely to replace traditional research funding, but it can supplement it and provide a starting point for exploratory work. In a broad sense, even asking friends to like or share a project is a kind of crowdfunding for moral support, and reader tips or small donations are material support. The soil for crowdfunded research is not absent in China; the question is how researchers choose to plant and harvest. A necessary warning should be added: check the legal difference between crowdfunding and illegal fundraising before starting. The latter is a crime.

For a working scientist, the realistic picture is still that national agencies provide the main support, private funding plays a secondary role, and public funding can act as a supplement. It is worth knowing that all three exist and applying flexibly when the opportunity fits. If someone is confident enough in both the project and the ability to explain it in human language, putting it online and waiting for the right supporter may occasionally bring a surprise. And if the money does arrive, the acknowledgments section should not forget those patrons who, in most cases, are funding a high-risk enterprise with little chance of financial return. Research has always been expensive, and the risk is part of the job.