Which universities in Germany are particularly strong in research? What are the overall developments in the budget for research and development, and what are their salient features – also when compared internationally?

Which universities in Germany are particularly strong in research? What are the overall developments in the budget for research and development, and what are their salient features – also when compared internationally?

Our DFG Funding Atlas provides answers to these and other questions. Its findings are not only of interest to target groups in Germany, but also to an international audience. It has therefore also been published in English since the 2003 edition. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) is the largest organisation that funds basic research at higher education institutions and non-university research institutions in Germany and it publishes the Funding Atlas in a three-yearly cycle to present a broad set of key figures relating to publicly-funded research and development in Germany. The recently published English edition presents a selection of findings focusing on key figures relating to the internationality of research and depicting the German higher education landscape in an international context. As in the German edition, the core aspects involve a depiction of the subject-related priorities set by the individual higher education institutions and non-HEI research institutions in their local regions (chapter 4). The DFG Funding Atlas thus also enables international target groups to form an impression of the highly diverse location-specific subject profiles within the German research landscape.

Preceding this main chapter, the DFG Funding Atlas 2021 provides key figures relating to issues of internationality within research. Here the focus extends beyond the borders of Germany, to Europe in particular. The statistics presented document the 25 countries with the highest level of involvement in Horizon 2020, for example. In addition, cartographic diagrams show how European Research Council (ERC) funding is distributed among target countries and scientific disciplines. A world map finally reveals those countries whose researchers are particularly closely involved in projects pursued by DFG funding recipients. The large number of key figures relating to international collaboration presented here offer an impressive illustration of the strong global networks involved in modern research interactions. As this chapter points out, Russia assumes a prominent position in many of these networks. The new era ushered in by the war against Ukraine has resulted in temporary cessations in this respect, the long-term effects of which can scarcely be foreseen today.

It is finally worth drawing your attention to the website, which presents brief, thematically based introductions along with an extensive range of download options. Brief descriptions of more than 80 higher education institutions provide essential data on their funding profiles in compact form.

Since the third edition, the DFG Funding Atlas has been supported by Stifterverband für die deutsche Wissenschaft. It is this, along with the DFG’s close ongoing cooperation with various funding institutions, that enables the reporting spectrum of the Funding Atlas to be advanced on a continuous basis.

Further Information

Copies of the book publication can be obtained from the DFG press office.

DFG Press Office and PR activities

• Tel. +49 228 885-2109
  presse@dfg.de

Information on the Funding Atlas 2021 and website link:

• www.dfg.de/fundingatlas

Contact persons:

• Dr. Jürgen Güdler
  Information Management Group
  Tel. +49 228 885-2649
  juergen.guedler@dfg.de
• Christian Fischer
  Information Management Group
  Tel. +49 228 885-2589
  christian.fischer@dfg.de