国家自然科学基金资助体系中管理科学与工程学科的资助特点与发展路径

Characteristics and Development Pathway of the Discipline of Management Science and Engineering within the Funding System of National Natural Science Foundation of China

本文分析了2010-2022年国家自然科学基金委员会管理科学与工程学科资助项目的发展趋势与项目特征等资助特点,探讨了科学基金资助体系中管理科学与工程学科的发展路径;进而论证了科学基金资助体系通过项目类型设置、学科规划要求、项目管理办法等规则主导了学科发展方向、同时学者智慧以多种方式对其发挥作用并产生影响这一基本运作逻辑,并提出了作为科学基金资助体系中重要主体的学科处与学者在这一运作逻辑下如何紧密合作以实现推动学科发展的共同目标。

The funding system of National Natural Science Foundation of China(NSFC)consists of a wide range of contents,including discipline categories,application codes of disciplines,types of projects,discipline development plans,project management regulations,etc.,which have made significant impacts on the natural science development in China.In 2000,the discipline of Management Science and Engineering(MS&E)started to have a formal application code(G01)in the NSFC’s funding system,and this discipline had its own division-level office six years after.During the past decade,the development of the Discipline of MS&E has shown distinctive NSFC-featured characteristics,which should be further examined in order to better understand the operation rules of NSFC’s Funding System.On the basis of the funding data in practice,the growth trend and distribution characteristics of the projects funded by the Discipline of MS&E during 2010 and 2022 is analyzed,and it is found that:(1)Each partial adjustment in the Funding System could have a great influence on a specific research field in terms of the number of funded projects and even its future development trend;(2)93-95%of the funded projects are the General Programs,Young Scientists Fund,and Fund for Less Developed Regions(GY&L),which ensures a broad funding coverage for more scholars and extensive scientific issues.Moreover,the proportion of Young Scientists Fund projects was increased from 35%in 2010 to 46%in 2022,suggesting a great development potential of the Discipline;(3)The number of Key Program and Major Program(K&M)projects increased rapidly,with the number of funded projects in 2022 three times that in 2010,indicating that the Discipline of MS&E has intentionally strengthened its funding strategy to fulfill the national needs;(4)For PIs of Excellent Young Scientists(EYS)projects of the Discipline,the average time from obtaining the Young Scientists Fund project to obtaining the EYS project is approximately 5 years.In addition,if those PIs can further obtain the project of National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholar(DYS),it would take another 5 years averagely;(5)The field distribution of GY&L projects is relatively balanced,and that of K&M projects is more concentrated.The concentration level of EYS and DYS projects is the highest,with 70%of the projects concentrated in operations research and management,logistics and supply chain management,information system and management,and transportation management.Based on the above findings,the development path of the Discipline of MS&E in China is further examined within the NSFC funding system,and it is concluded that by designing application codes and specifying key frontier research fields,the discipline plan influences the development of a specific research field through two levels of projects,GY&L projects and K&M projects,which support scholars at different academic stages,and thus promotes the development of this research field.It is an important development pathway from discipline plans to scholar growth,and from scholar growth to the discipline development.Finally,the basic operation logic of the NSFC funding system is elaborated,in which the NSFC funding system dominates the discipline development direction through rules such as project types,discipline plans,and project management requirements,while scholars’academic thoughts and wisdom can produce various impacts on this procedure.Then the point is further put forward that the discipline offices and scholars,as two important agents in the NSFC funding system,should cooperate closely under this operation logic,in order to achieve the shared target of promoting discipline development.