Towards a fairer and more inclusive science: understanding the circulation of international funding in the Global South
New project by FOLEC-CLACSO, CWTS and SIRIS Academic to track international scientific funding circuits and their influence on research systems and agendas
In a global context marked by profound asymmetries in access to research resources, the project "Tracking the Circulation of Research Funding in the Global South for More Transparent and Inclusive Science" proposes a work agenda aimed at making visible, analyzing, and transforming the ways in which international science and technology funds circulate. The project, funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, is led by the Latin American Forum for Scientific Evaluation (FOLEC) of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) in collaboration with the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University and Siris Academic.
The project is based on the premise that international funding circuits are not neutral, but rather respond to historical structures, power relations, and political decisions that directly influence what knowledge is prioritized, who produces it, and for what purposes . Often, these funds are presented within the framework of international cooperation, but in practice they can reproduce logics of dependency, concentration, and exclusion.
To address this problem, the team is developing a research strategy that combines the analysis of bibliometric and project databases, critical literature review, and the design of tools to visualize funding circuits. In addition, the project incorporates the creation of spaces for dialogue with researchers, scientific authorities, and decision-makers from Latin America and other regions of the Global South.
The objective is twofold . On the one hand, we seek to generate robust quantitative knowledge about how funds circulate, the logic behind them, and their impacts. On the other hand, we aim to foster public and institutional debates on the need to move towards more equitable, contextualized forms of financing that are aligned with the social and scientific priorities of developing countries. In this blog, we present the project's motivation and objectives.
Unequal dynamics in the circulation of international finance
As part of its initial activities, the project conducted a systematic review of grey literature —including technical reports, institutional documents, and materials produced by multilateral organizations, cooperation agencies, and private foundations—to characterize the main features of international funding for science and technology in countries of the Global South. This review identified structural challenges and persistent trends.
One of the most notable problems identified is the imbalance in research capabilities . The differences between the scientific and technological ecosystems of the Global North and South are marked by suboptimal human resource endowment, limited infrastructure, weak links with other sectors, and institutional weaknesses in many countries of the Global South. This situation generates a vicious cycle: unequal access to international funding tends to benefit an already established scientific elite within each country, reinforcing the concentration of opportunities and excluding emerging or peripheral actors.
Added to this is the tendency to impose predefined research agendas . In numerous cooperation schemes, research topics and frameworks are already established by funders in the Global North before involving partners in the Global South. This "turnkey project" approach reduces the scope for local teams to formulate questions relevant to their contexts. Furthermore, it disregards the situated dimension of the problems, weakening the possibility of developing relevant solutions from the Global South.
Another critical issue is knowledge ownership and access to data . Internationally funded research often leaves data and results under the exclusive control of leading institutions in the Global North. This practice not only prevents local teams from building upon these foundations but also limits their recognition and visibility as knowledge producers. These situations have been characterized as forms of academic or scientific extractivism, especially in Latin America.
The review also highlights imbalances in decision-making . Southern institutions often participate as implementers, joining in the later stages of project design or as marginal members of advisory committees. This unequal distribution of decision-making power hinders local ownership of scientific processes and reinforces external governance structures.
Finally, a lack of transparency emerges as a pervasive problem. Information on the amounts, conditions, stakeholders, and expected outcomes of funding is often neither systematically organized nor publicly accessible. This opacity hinders accountability to local communities, impedes monitoring, and limits the ability to assess real impacts. Furthermore, it affects both the scientific community and the societies that should benefit from the research results.
These findings from the literature review show that the problems surrounding international financing lie not only in its volume, but also in its design, distribution, and governance. Moving towards fairer systems involves not only redistributing funds, but also transforming decision-making mechanisms, fostering the co-production of agendas, and ensuring transparency and equitable access to data and outcomes.
Subordinate integration: keys to understanding unequal insertion in global science
The diagnosis developed through the literature review resonates deeply with the notion of subordinate integration , developed by the Argentine sociologist Pablo Kreimer. This concept allows us to understand how, despite the growing process of internationalization, science produced in the Global South is inserted into the global system under structurally unequal conditions, without achieving full autonomy or the capacity to influence research agendas or the utilization of the results obtained.
Subordinate integration refers to a specific pattern of insertion into international scientific networks, where teams from the Global South achieve formal recognition and access to prestigious circuits—such as large consortia and international calls for proposals—but in exchange for assuming predominantly technical and subordinate roles. Instead of conceptually leading projects, peripheral groups typically handle tasks such as data collection, hypothesis testing, or the validation of protocols developed in the Global North (Kreimer, 2006 , 2010 ; Kreimer and Zabala, 2006 ).
This form of restricted participation is sustained through a series of institutional, political, and epistemic mediations that operate simultaneously. On the one hand, dependence on external funding conditions the research topics, since available resources are often tied to priorities defined from outside the local context. Added to this is the pressure exerted by scientific evaluation systems, which tend to value exclusively certain quantitative indicators—such as the number of publications, citations received, or the ability to attract international funding—displacing other forms of knowledge production relevant to the immediate environment. Furthermore, these evaluation systems are strongly aligned with the hegemony of criteria and standards established in centers of the Global North, which operate as exclusive and exclusionary validation frameworks, reinforcing existing hierarchies and limiting epistemic diversity (Kreimer, 2011 ; Feld and Kreimer, 2020 ).
Kreimer also warns about the risk of consolidating a “hypernormal science” : highly sophisticated in technical terms, but conceptually routine, lacking situated innovation or social relevance. In this scenario, the knowledge produced—although valid and recognized—has little chance of being translated into meaningful policies, technologies, or interventions in the contexts where it originates. This phenomenon has been termed CANA : Applied Knowledge Not Applied (Kreimer and Thomas, 2005; Kreimer and Zabala, 2006 ).
Likewise, Kreimer argues that subordination affects not only researchers but also the objects of research . Problems of the Global South—such as endemic diseases, territorial conflicts, or local production systems—must be “legitimized” in the face of cognitive frameworks imposed from the outside, hindering the emergence of a science oriented towards the social priorities of its own environment (Herrera García & Kreimer, 2022 ).
In sum, subordinate integration describes an ambiguous insertion: actors from the Global South are included, but under conditions that reinforce their technical and conceptual dependence. This dynamic demonstrates that simply participating in global networks is insufficient: it is necessary to challenge the rules of that participation, expand decision-making power, and build capacities that allow them to lead scientific agendas from and for the Global South.
Participatory instances: the Advisory Council and the Strategic Consultation of the project
One of the project's strengths is its commitment to collaborative and multi-stakeholder work. From its inception, an Advisory Council was formed with specialists from diverse fields and regions, serving as a forum for critical reflection, methodological validation, and strategic guidance. This council includes institutional representatives from national science and technology agencies, academics in the field of STS (Science, Technology, and Society), and representatives from multilateral organizations.
In June 2025, within the framework of the 10th Latin American and Caribbean Conference of Social Sciences (CLACSO 2025) held in Bogotá, we organized a Strategic Consultation on international funding flows in science and technology (North-South) . The event brought together officials, researchers, and specialists to openly discuss the current architecture of international funding, its impacts, and possible alternatives.
During the meeting, key challenges were identified: the fragmentation of available data, the lack of clear typologies for classifying funds, the limited participation of the Global South in the initial project design phases, and the urgent need to build more sovereign financing mechanisms. Concrete actions were also proposed: promoting the mandatory registration of funding sources in publications, creating accessible visualizations of fund flows, and mapping collaborative networks to identify patterns of concentration or exclusion.
Towards a new horizon: autonomy, relevance and justice in science
Thinking about international financing is not a technical or exclusively economic discussion: it is a political, epistemic, and ethical one. In a world marked by multiple crises—climate, health, energy, food—it is essential that science produced in the Global South be able to develop its own agendas, oriented and contextualized to the specific problems of its societies.
The project “ Scientific Funding Flows” proposes a roadmap for that horizon: identifying unequal relationship structures, documenting funding trajectories, highlighting asymmetries, and building tools that allow for thinking about alternatives.
Instead of subordinate integration, we must strive for critical and sovereign integration, where international cooperation does not reproduce power relations but rather enables spaces for reciprocity, mutual learning, and contextualized innovation. Ultimately, it is about building models of science that serve integral development, social justice, and knowledge as a common good.
