Faculty Views on the Barriers and Facilitators to Grant Activities in the USA: A Systematic Literature Review

Research development in higher education is a service-delivery system. In any service field, when choosing appropriate services, practitioners should reach for 'evidencebased practices! Limited empirical research has addressed the preferences of research faculty regardingresearch support services. In this project, we sought to provide research development professionals with critical knowledge related to decision making and strategic utilization of resources and in choosing client-centered grant-related services for faculty. The specific research question or objective of this study was to answer, 'What factors are perceived by faculty to be barriers or facilitators to grants activity based on extant literature?' This systematic literature review on faculty perceptions of barriers and facilitators to grant activity used an eight-step systematic literature review methodology. The findings describe the characteristics, methodological attributes, and the methodological quality of the articles. Additionally, the integration of the findings revealed eight main factors that faculty perceived to be important for facilitating or hindering grant activity. Three main emerging factors or core categories appeared to be most important across all barriers or facilitators to faculty grant activity. Research development professionals need to be able to provide evidence-based and clientcentered research support services. This review provides the factors that faculty view as being most important to grant activity and recommendations for management. Implementing effective client-centered research support services is critical for the success of faculty grant activity. Keywords: grants, funding, faculty, evidence-based practice, systematic literature review, research development
Introduction Grants and contracts are critical sources of university income. Public universities in the U.S. received 22% of university operating revenues from grants and contracts in 2016-2017 (U.S. Department of [...]