Non-university research institutions
In this report, non-university research institutions are defined as the institutes and centres of the following research organisations: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (FhG), Helmholtz Association (HGF), Leibniz Association (WGL) and Max Planck Society (MPG), as well as other organisations such as hospitals and also federal and state institutions which are involved in R&D . The financial and personnel data for non-university institutions relate to the year 2021 (supplemented by 2022 in Figure 3-6) and are drawn from the monitoring report on the Pact for Research and Innovation (PFI) issued by the Joint Science Conference (GWK). As in the course, the personnel figures for non-university research institutions (cf. Table 4-6) only include academic staff in the group “Other academic staff”, excluding administrative, technical and other personnel.
AvH funding
Funding from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH) refers to the number of funded stays by visiting researchers during the five-year period from 2018 to 2022. This longer period (as in the case of -> DAAD funding) ensures that annual random effects carry less weight. The data includes both research fellows and Humboldt prize recipients. Two things should be noted in these statistics with regard to the definition of the term “AvH-funded”. Firstly, the data includes stays at German research institutions by visiting researchers of one month or more. Secondly, an AvH fellowship or award may be split over multiple visits to one or more German host institutions. In cases where more than one visit was completed at the same institution as part of a fellowship or award, this is counted here as one visit. On the other hand, if visits to various institutions took place in connection with a single fellowship or award, these are counted as separate visits.
In some cases, multiple fellowships and/or awards may also have been awarded to the same individual during the five-year period. If an individual received multiple fellowships and all were used to visit the same host institution in Germany, this is only counted once. On the other hand, if a researcher received one fellowship and one award and chose the same host institution for both, this is counted twice.
Since the AvH’s Humboldt ranking has been revised, this Funding Atlas also includes stays under the Federal Chancellor Fellowship Programme and the International Climate Protection Fellowship Programme for the first time. This means that in some cases, information relates to guest stays at business organisations.
The subject assignment is made according to the subject of the respective visiting researcher. AvH-funded visits are assigned to universities and research institutions in accordance with the DFG institutions database.
Federal funding
The Funding Atlas draws on data from the funding catalogue of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for the analyses of federal research funding activities, largely covering direct federal project funding in the civil sector (https://foerderportal.bund.de/foekat). In addition to BMBF funding measures, funding programmes run by other ministries are also recorded – in particular those of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV). Funding for military projects is not included, nor is funding data in the categories “natural persons” and “sole proprietorship”. Furthermore, thanks to separate data provided by the BMWK, the funding provided by the latter under the programme Industrial Collective Research (IGF) and the Central Innovation Programme for SMEs (ZIM) – which are not included in the PROFI database – is fully included in the analyses of direct federal R&D project funding.
The Funding Atlas only takes account of direct project funding measures classified as R&D projects which received funding between 2020 and 2022. It does not include the provision of financial resources for funding programmes run by the DFG or for the academy programme, for example, or administrative funds for the bodies responsible for the project concerned or the management of federal government network initiatives. R&D measures both at publicly funded institutions and in industry are taken into account. Here, as in the last edition of the Funding Atlas, funding for projects in industry is shown under a separate heading in the discipline-specific analyses in sections 6.2 to 6.5.
In contrast to -> DFG funding, the amounts approved in these years are not reported; instead, all measures for which funding was awarded in these years are taken into consideration.
The subject-specific allocation of projects is based on the federal government’s R&D planning system. The IGF and ZIM programmes are allocated to the research areas and technology fields funded under these programmes. The reporting logic for key funding areas in direct R&D project funding is shown in Table Web-22 at www.dfg.de/fundingatlas.
Federal funding recipients are assigned to universities and research institutions in accordance with the -> DFG institutions database.
DAAD funding
The funding data evaluated here from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) on individual funding relates to the number of foreign researchers, graduates and doctoral researchers who completed a visit to a German university or research institution during the five-year period from 2018 to 2022. Undergraduates are not taken into account. Only universities and research institutions whose total expenditure in the DAAD funding statement was at least €1 million in each of the five years of the reporting period are considered. This criterion applies to 66 German universities; no non-university research institution met this criterion. The classification of subjects according to one of the four scientific disciplines and 14 research areas defined by the DFG (see Table 6-1) is based on the subject classification of the visit as supplied by the DAAD. DAAD funding recipients are assigned to universities in accordance with the -> DFG institutions database.
Destatis subject classification system
The subject classification system used by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) for staff statistics – which also applies in an adapted form to statistics on university finances, students, examinations and doctoral researchers – is used in the -> DFG institutions database to classify institutions by subject. The system is divided hierarchically into nine subject groups, 83 teaching and research areas, and 648 subjects (as at 2024), distinguishing between a total of 211 subjects in its current version. For the concordance with the DFG research areas (-> DFG subject classification system), see Table Web-32 at www.dfg.de/foerderatlas.
The recommendations of the German Science and Humanities Council (Wissenschaftsrat, WR) on the Research Core Data Set, in which the organisational unit is recommended as the primary unit of aggregation and carrier for subject-related information (WR, 2020), also suggest the use of this subject classification system.
DFG proposals for projects involving international collaboration
Research-related international partners specified in proposals submitted to the DFG are documented as international collaborations. These include joint proposal submissions, intended host organisations and cooperation partners, etc. partner organisations in the respective countries are not taken into account. Extensive (planned) international participations are possible for each project or network. All DFG funding instruments are analysed. Collaborations under the Excellence Initiative and the Excellence Strategy of the federal and state governments are not included, since it was not possible to incorporate in the data basis the numerous instances of international involvement in the networks.
DFG institutions database
The institutions database maintained by the DFG reflects the hierarchical structure of universities and non-university research institutions, e.g. faculties, departments or institutes. In order to standardise the various names of the institutions for all data used in the Funding Atlas and allow them to be linked, they were used to build a concordance.
As well as additional information such as institution type, the institutions database includes the subject area classification of each institution (in accordance with the -> Destatis classification system, see Table Web-32 at www.dfg. de/www.dfg.de/foerderatlas). It also contains full address data, which is used to georeference the statistical information and represent it cartographically. Extracts from the DFG’s institutions database can be accessed online via the information system “GERiT – German Research Institutions” (www.gerit.org).
The analyses presented in sections 4 and 6 generally apply at the level of the entire institution. All data relating to the funding providers covered by the Funding Atlas has been compiled based on the DFG institutions database. In the case of Clusters of Excellence, the information in the institutions database relating to the institution of the principal investigator (PI) is used to classify their award amounts by institution and research area (-> DFG funding and -> DFG subject classification system).
The merged university hospitals are a special case here. Where funding or other key figures (in particular -> University staff) are reported directly by a university hospital supported by two universities and these cannot be broken down by site, they are split between the partner universities which support it. At Charité Berlin, the percentage split is 50:50, at Giessen and Marburg University Hospital it is 40 (Giessen):60 (Marburg) and at Schleswig-Holstein University Hospital it is 50 (Kiel):50 (Lübeck).
In the case of university mergers or reorganisations, the structure of the university as it existed in the 2022 reporting year is taken into account, while naming is based on the current status. For example, U Koblenz (formerly U Koblenz-Landau) is listed under the name it was given in the year it was founded (2023). As the Landau site was still part of the university in the 2022 reporting year, funding and other key figures for the Landau site are reported together with U Koblenz.
DFG subject classification system
The DFG’s subject classification system is continually adapted on a four-yearly basis in correlation with the elections of DFG review boards. It consists of four levels and, in the version applicable to this Funding Atlas, comprises 211 research areas which are assigned to 49 review boards. In statistical contexts, to avoid confusion with the statutory bodies, the term “research field” is used rather than “review board”. The review boards / research fields are organised into 14 research areas and finally four scientific disciplines. The classification system at the levels of the 49 review boards, 14 research areas and four scientific disciplines is shown in Table 6-1 and the complete classification system of 211 research areas is shown in Table A-1 in the appendix.
The DFG classification system is used to classify proposals and the associated award amounts by subject.
When the DFG receives a proposal for an individual grant, Research Centre (FZT), Collaborative Research Centre (CRC), Priority Programme (PP), Research Unit (FOR) or Research Training Group (RTG), the DFG Head Office decides on the basis of the topic described in the proposal which review board it should be allocated to. Research Centres, Collaborative Research Centres, Priority Programmes and Research Units all consist of multiple projects. Each of these projects is given its own subject classification.
In the case of Graduate Schools and Clusters of Excellence (-> Excellence Initiative), the DFG Head Office has no information on individual projects. Here, the very extensive funds are distributed using the so-called PI method. For each principal investigator (PI) involved, it is first established at which institute they are employed. A research area is then assigned to this PI on the basis of the institute’s subject classification in the Destatis subject classification system used in the -> DFG institutions database. Using a concordance of the DFG subject classification system, the project is then assigned to one of the DFG research fields. This makes it possible to map the distribution of funding across multiple research areas with sufficient accuracy even for funding lines with very high amounts of funding.
• The university allowance under the Excellence Strategy is not classified by subject.
• Awards for infrastructure funding are not classified by subject either. They are therefore not included in the analyses focusing on subject profiles in section 6.
DFG funding
The DFG funding amounts reported in the Funding Atlas relate to the reporting period from 2020 to 2022. Awards for new proposals, renewal proposals, supplemental proposals and completion funding are included.
The Funding Atlas takes account of the funding instruments and funding lines of individual grants, Coordinated Programmes (Research Centres, Collaborative Research Centres, Priority Programmes, Research Units, Research Training Groups), infrastructure funding and the Excellence Initiative funding line under the Excellence Strategy (-> Excellence Strategy). Only institutional recipients of funding within Germany are considered. Prizes and the funding of international scientific contacts, committees and commissions, and central research facilities are not included in calculations (see Table 3-3).
The reported funding amounts include the additional funds made available for programme allowances for indirect project costs (www.dfg.de/de/foerderung/antrag-foerderprozess/programmpauschale). In comparisons with the expenditure-based statistics on federal and EU funding or the third-party funding data collected by the Federal Statistical Office, it should be noted that the DFG statistics are not expenditure statistics; instead they are based on decision data in the format of “awards for a given year”.
An award amount is generally allocated proportionally to the institutions at which the applicants were employed at the time when the funding decision was made.
In the case of individual grants, the award amount is allocated to the institutions of the (co-)applicants.
In the case of Collaborative Research Centres, Priority Programmes and Research Units, the award amount is split into individual projects. The amount awarded for a project is allocated to the institution at which the project leader is based. Here is an example: A Collaborative Research Centre consists of ten projects. Project 1 receives €100,000. The total funding amount is allocated to the institution of the single project leader. Project 2 also receives €100,000, but has three project leaders. Here, €33,333 of approved DFG funds is assigned to each of their institutions.
In the Funding Atlas, award amounts for Research Training Groups are allocated to the institutions of the participating lecturers and other researchers based at non-university research institutions. Here is an example: A Research Training Group is awarded €100,000 for the period 2017 to 2019. The spokesperson and deputy spokesperson are based at University X, as are six other participating lecturers. Two other participating researchers are employed at the non-university institutions Museum A and Max Planck Institute B. In this case, a sum of €80,000 is allocated to University X and €10,000 each to Museum A and Max Planck Institute B.
DFG Research Centres are handled in the same way as Clusters of Excellence (-> Excellence Strategy), i.e. funds are allocated to the institutions of the principal investigators.
DFG project leaders
The data basis for this is the participants who hold leadership positions in DFG projects and research groups and who obtained approvals for the year 2021. A project – or group – is counted regardless of its duration within the year 2021, i.e. a project/group that ended on 31 January 2021 is counted as one, as is a project/group that lasted 12 months.
All applicants for individual grants are counted as project leaders. In the case of Collaborative Research Centres, Priority Programmes and Research Units, these are the spokespersons and individual project leaders. In the case of Research Training Groups, it is the university lecturers and researchers involved. For Clusters of Excellence and Research Centres, all principal investigators are treated as project leaders. University allowances exist across different universities, so as with infrastructure projects, no project participants are listed here.
ERC funding
The data basis is provided by the funding lines Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants and Advanced Grants. The seven calls issued in 2021 and 2022 are taken into account.
The data on ERC funding is taken from the project database for Horizon 2020 (-> EU funding) as at 12 January 2024. Grants for which a signed grant agreement is recorded in the database are included in the data.
Subject classification according to -> DFG subject classification system is carried out automatically based on project titles and abstracts in the same way as for projects under other Horizon Europe funding lines. See -> EU funding for details.
The allocation to research institutions for the institution-specific analyses in the Funding Atlas is based on the host institutions of the principal investigators with whom the grant agreements were in place at the time when the database was generated. Allocation is based on the -> DFG institutions database.
EU funding
The evaluations of funding activities under the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation – Horizon Europe were carried out in cooperation with the BMBF’s EU office (project implementer German Aerospace Center – DLR) based on the project database for this Framework Programme (as at 12 January 2024). The basis here is the projects under the 2021 and 2022 calls for which grant agreements had been signed at the time the database was published. Funding for German recipients is taken into account in the analyses in sections 4 and 6. In the same way as for ->Federal funding, measures in industry are fully integrated in the analyses and are also included in the discipline-specific evaluations in section 6. The structure of Horizon Europe can be seen in Table 3-5.
An automated procedure was used to determine the subject-specific funding structures in order to clearly assign the projects to the scientific disciplines and research areas of the DFG’s subject classification system. For this purpose, an algorithm was used to identify text similarities between the abstracts of the EU-funded projects and the typical vocabulary used in the subjects of the DFG subject classification system, which is based on the established TF-IDF measurement (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency).
The TF-IDF indicates the relevance of a term within a document in relation to an entire collection of documents by combining two key figures: the term frequency (TF) takes into account how often a term occurs within a single document, while the Inverse Document Frequency (IDF) determines the specificity of a term in a document collection by assessing whether a term occurs in multiple documents or in only a small number of documents. As such, it measures the significance of the term in distinguishing an individual document from the other documents. Based on this, the TF-IDF ultimately indicates the relevance of the term within a document relative to its frequency throughout the entire document collection (for a precise calculation and further explanation, see also Jurafsky and Martin, 2024: 115ff.).
When it comes to identifying typical subject-specific vocabulary, texts on research projects within a subject were considered as one document, while the document collection comprises the totality of text groups of all subjects.
The TF-IDF was used to determine the proximity between the vocabulary of the individual EU projects and the algorithmically learnt typical vocabulary of a subject within the -> DFG subject classification system; based on this, the projects were assigned to a research area and scientific discipline. Inaccuracies in classification cannot be ruled out, especially if the underlying text information predominantly contains unspecific vocabulary, or if the projects are interdisciplinary in nature, which would justify multiple classification. EU funding recipients were assigned to universities and research institutions in accordance with the -> DFG institutions database.
Excellence Strategy
The Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments is analysed based on the proportional funding for the years 2020 to 2022 (see Table 3-3).
Clusters of Excellence (EXC) are institutionally allocated to the university as a whole. In the case of Clusters of Excellence, in order to allocate the very high award amounts by institution and subject in a way that is statistically more accurate, an approximation method is used. For each funded group, the principal investigators (PIs) listed in the proposal are recorded. The amount associated with a PI is allocated proportionally to the institution where this person is based. The institute at which the PI is based is classified by research area (-> DFG institutions database). This classification is then used to divide the approved amount for a group between research areas (-> DFG subject classification system).
In the case of university allowances under the Excellence Strategy, the approved funds are allocated in full to the applicant university at the highest level. They are not proportionally allocated to organisational units such as faculties or departments, nor are awarded amounts classified by subject. The University of Excellence funding line under the Excellence Strategy is not reported in the Funding Atlas as it is basic funding and not third-party funding (GWK, 2016: Section 5).
Third-party funding corrected for subject structure
With regard to the relative consideration of DFG award amounts, the real per-capita awards in relation to the professorial staff are compared with the “statistically expected” volume of third-party funding, corrected for subject structure, according to the institutional average. Third-party funding corrected for subject structure is calculated as follows:
expected third-party funding = ∑14FG (= number of professors at the university in the research area x average per-capita award for professorial staff in the research area)
Third-party volume corrected for subject and staff size = expected third-party funding volume / subject-classified DFG awards * 100
For each individual university considered, the number of professors in a research area (see Table Web-4 at www.dfg.de/fundingatlas) is therefore multiplied by the national per-capita average for professorial staff (see Table Web-3 at www.dfg.de/fundingatlas) in the same research area to calculate the statistically expected volume of third-party funding in this area. In the second step, these values are added together across all 14 research areas. The relative ratio of third-party funding corrected for subject structure to subject-classified DFG awards per university is then shown in Figure 4-3. DFG funding instruments which are not subject-classified (-> DFG funding) and the university allowance under the Excellence Strategy (-> Excellence Strategy) are not included in the calculation.
In the official statistics for KIT Karlsruhe, only the university sector is taken into account; the Helmholtz sector is not recorded. See under -> University staff for an explanation of the KIT staff figures.
Higher education institution staff
The data on Higher education institution staff is provided by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) and describes the situation as at 1 December 2021. The staff figures used in the Funding Atlas cover full-time academic staff, including professors.
According to the definition used by the Federal Statistical Office, professors are all persons with a grade of C4, C3, C2, W3 or W2, junior professors and full-time visiting professors. The full-time academic staff also includes three additional staff groups: associate and assistant lecturers, research assistants and full-time lecturers. It does not, however, include part-time academic staff, which encompasses visiting professors and emeriti, assistant lecturers, honorary professors, private lecturers, non-regular professors, academic assistants, tutors and student assistants.
The staff data used here does not represent full-time equivalents, but rather the number of employed persons (head count).
The data provided by the Federal Statistical Office is aggregated at the level of the 14 research areas defined by the DFG (see Table Web-32 at www.dfg.de/fundingatlas). The proportion of staff which cannot be directly allocated to a DFG research area or scientific discipline (e.g. central scientific facilities) was added to the staff classified under research areas and scientific disciplines, weighted by the subject distribution of the university. The consideration by scientific discipline, relative to staff size, in sections 6.2 to 6.5 only looks at universities where 20 or more professors or 100 or more researchers were employed full-time in the relevant scientific discipline in 2021. Since the official statistics at KIT Karlsruhe only cover the university sector and exclude the Helmholtz sector, an estimate of the staff in the Helmholtz sector is carried out wherever the analysis involves normalising key figures based on staffing numbers (this applies to Tables 6-5, 6-9, 6-14, 6-18, and Figure 4-3). No estimates are applied to university personnel data alone (see Table 4-6, Tables Web-4 to Web-6), ensuring that the totals exactly match the official statistics.
The estimate of personnel in the Helmholtz sector at KIT Karlsruhe is based on the personnel figures published on the KIT website for 2021. An additional 69 professors or 2,167 researchers were taken into account. Since there is no information on their subject-specific distribution, an analogous allocation is made based on the subject assignments reported in the university statistics.
International reviews
The analysis of international DFG reviews is based on written reviews and participation in panel and on-site reviews by researchers with an address abroad. The designated reporting year for the evaluations refers to the date on which the written reviews were received by the DFG, or, in the case of oral reviews, the date on which the session was held.
DFG annual survey
The DFG collects annual data on the progress of Clusters of Excellence (under the -> Excellence Strategy) as well as Collaborative Research Centres and Research Training Groups (www.dfg.de/erhebung). The survey is concerned with individuals who belong to a research group. The analyses in this Funding Atlas are based on the data from the 2022 reporting year, which relates to the reporting period from September 2021 to August 2022.
In the analysis of international cooperation (section 5.2), the countries of origin of participants in 2022 are taken into consideration. Note that the country of origin does not indicate nationality or country of birth, but the country in which the person was working prior to participation in a research group.
Cartographic network analyses
For each scientific discipline, the Funding Atlas shows graphically which universities and non-university research institutions participated in DFG-funded groups between 2020 and 2022. The diagrams illustrate both absolute participation in the funding instruments and joint participation with other research institutions. Participation means that funding was approved (proportionally) for a research group at a given institution.
As the main aim is to illustrate regional focuses and clusters, the focus is on funding instruments that implement the requirement of local concentration or concentration at the applicant university/universities, i.e. those which, in addition to cooperation within an institution, promote the integration of other universities and non-university research institutions in the local area or wider region. Accordingly, analyses are based on the following funding instruments: Clusters of Excellence under the Excellence Strategy, Research Centres, Collaborative Research Centres, Research Training Groups and Research Units. Priority Programmes are based on nationwide cooperation, so they are not taken into account.
In the network maps, the diameter of a circle represents the number of participations in relevant DFG research groups. Each participation in a research group is counted only once per institution, regardless of how many individuals at this institution are involved in the same group. The size of the circle increases with the number of groups at the institution in question. Only institutions with at least two participations in a research group are shown.
Connecting lines between institutions represent multiple joint participations in a group. The thickness of the lines increases with the number of joint research groups. It should be noted that the threshold values for the representation of connecting lines were defined separately for each scientific discipline. Threshold value 2 applies to the network representation for the humanities and social sciences, the natural sciences and the engineering sciences, while threshold value 3 applies to the life sciences. This should be taken into account when comparing the networks for the four different disciplines. In the network map by federal state (Figure 4-8), all instances of participation by institutions in a federal state are counted (circle diameter), while joint project participations on the part of organisations in the respective federal states are represented by the connecting lines. Joint project participation is only counted once per project, even if several organisations are involved.
German Medical Faculty Association
In cooperation with the German Medical Faculty Association, section 6.3.5 directly juxtaposes the professors at university medical centres with the DFG grants awarded to these institutions. The figures are published at www.deutsche-hochschulmedizin.de. This analysis has been carried out since the 2012 Funding Atlas. In the 2012, 2018 and 2024 editions, the headcount of professors was used; in the 2021 edition, the figures were provided by the German Medical Faculty Association as full-time equivalents (DFG, 2021: 116).
Regions
The Funding Atlas illustrates in cartographic diagrams the distribution of DFG awards, federal government funding and EU funding in the various regions of Germany. The analytical units are the spatial development regions (RORs) defined by the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR). With a total of 96 such regions, this Funding Atlas examines a large area. Spatial development regions serve as an observation and analysis grid for spatial reporting. With the exception of city states, they represent large, functionally delineated spatial units which are defined by an economic centre and its environs. What is more, spatial development regions do not cross federal state boundaries, so with the exception of the Bremerhaven region there are no regions that overlap different federal states. The names given to spatial development regions follow the system developed by the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR).
For each entity in the -> DFG institutions database, the associated spatial development region is indicated. For example, an institute at a university is shown in the regional view with its own address and not that of the university’s central administration, which may differ.
