“Institutional support”

Institutional support means resources or official encouragement provided by institutions.

For example, a university might support a research area through:

• establishing a research center,
• hiring professors specializing in it,
• funding research assistants,
• offering grants,
• organizing conferences,
• creating courses,
• providing laboratory/archive resources.

Thus:

“Which research areas receive institutional support?”

means:

Which areas receive organizational resources and encouragement that make research in those areas easier to conduct and publish?