Funding deadlines act as a zeitgeber for science

Funders decide which science is paid for. Whether they also shape when it becomes public is hard to test. Across 376,542 preprints on bioRxiv and medRxiv, the US share rose by 2.3 to 2.7 percentage points in the four weeks before due dates for the main research grant of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and dropped on the date. About one in ten US preprints in those weeks was attributable to the deadline, and fields that depend least on NIH rose least. Among 15,906 funded investigators, the share of preprints posted in the four weeks before their own deadline was 9% higher than in other four-month cycles, and these preprints resembled the later grant without being more highly cited. Repeated before every application due date, this individual surge matches the national peak’s timing within two weeks. NIH’s application calendar, like its funding, shapes when US biomedical science becomes public.