Surveys of current status in biomedical science grant review: funding organisations' and grant reviewers' perspectives (original) (raw)
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Peer review of grant applications in biology and medicine. Reliability, fairness, and validity
Scientometrics, 2009
This paper examines the peer review procedure of a national science funding organization (Swiss National Science Foundation) by means of the three most frequently studied criteria reliability, fairness, and validity. The analyzed data consists of 496 applications for projectbased funding from biology and medicine from the year 1998. Overall reliability is found to be fair with an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.41 with sizeable differences between biology (0.45) and medicine (0.20). Multiple logistic regression models reveal only scientific performance indicators as significant predictors of the funding decision while all potential sources of bias (gender, age, nationality, and academic status of the applicant, requested amount of funding, and institutional surrounding) are non-significant predictors. Bibliometric analysis provides evidence that the decisions of a public funding organization for basic project-based research are in line with the future publication success of applicants. The paper also argues for an expansion of approaches and methodologies in peer review research by increasingly focusing on process rather than outcome and by including a more diverse set of methods e.g. content analysis. Such an expansion will be necessary to advance peer review research beyond the abundantly treated questions of reliability, fairness, and validity.
Peer Review of Grant Applications: Criteria Used and Qualitative Study of Reviewer Practices
PLoS ONE, 2012
Background: Peer review of grant applications has been criticized as lacking reliability. Studies showing poor agreement among reviewers supported this possibility but usually focused on reviewers' scores and failed to investigate reasons for disagreement. Here, our goal was to determine how reviewers rate applications, by investigating reviewer practices and grant assessment criteria.
Peering at peer review revealed high degree of chance associated with funding of grant applications
Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2006
Background and Objectives: There is a persistent degree of uncertainty and dissatisfaction with the peer review process underlining the need to validate the current grant awarding procedures. This study compared the CLassic Structured Scientific In-depth two reviewer critique (CLASSIC) with an all panel members' independent ranking method (RANKING). Eleven reviewers, reviewed 32 applications for a pilot project competition at a major university medical center.
How many reviewers are required to obtain reliable evaluations of NIH R01 grant proposals?
2019
The National Institutes of Health uses small groups of scientists to judge the quality of the grant proposals that they receive, and these quality judgments form the basis of its funding decisions. In order for this system to fund the best science, the subject experts must, at a minimum, agree as to what counts as a “quality” proposal. We investigated the degree of agreement by leveraging data from a recent experiment with 412 scientist reviewers, each of whom reviewed 3 proposals, and 48 NIH R01 proposals (half funded and half unfunded), each of which was reviewed by between 21 and 30 reviewers. Across all dimensions of NIH’s official rubric, we find low agreement among reviewers in their judgments of scientific merit. For judgments of Overall Impact, which has the greatest weight in funding decisions, we estimate that three reviewers yield a reliability .2, and 12 reviewers would be required to bring this reliability up to .5. Supplemental analyses found that reviewers are even le...
Research Evaluation, 2017
To blind or not researcher's identity has often been a topic of debate in the context of peer-review process for scientific publication and research grant application. This article reports on how knowing the name and experience of researchers/institutions influences the qualification of a proposal. We present our experience of managing the peer-review process of different biomedical research grants. The peer-review process included three evaluation stages: first, blinded assessment; second, unblinded assessment by the same reviewer; and final, assessment of the better qualified proposals by an ad hoc committee. The change between the first (applicants blinded) and the second assessments (unblinded) for each evaluation and reviewer was evaluated. Factors associated with change were analysed, taking into account the characteristics of proposals, reviewers, and researchers. A qualitative content analysis of the reviewers' comments was also carried out to assess the reasons for change. The analysis of 5,002 evaluations indicated that in 18.5% of the evaluations (from 10.5 to 27.7% depending on the year of the edition), the reviewer changed the second assessment: either for better (11.9%) or worse (6.6%). Our findings also suggest that a change in the second assessment was highly correlated with a positive evaluation of the experience of the principal investigator or research team. With a change of 1 in 10 to 1 in 4 depending on the year of the edition, we believe that concealing the identity of researchers/institutions could help to focus exclusively on the proposal and reduce some of the common biases of the peer-review process in grant decisions.
Criteria for assessing grant applications: a systematic review
Palgrave Communications, 2020
Criteria are an essential component of any procedure for assessing merit. Yet, little is known about the criteria peers use to assess grant applications. In this systematic review we therefore identify and synthesize studies that examine grant peer review criteria in an empirical and inductive manner. To facilitate the synthesis, we introduce a framework that classifies what is generally referred to as ‘criterion’ into an evaluated entity (i.e., the object of evaluation) and an evaluation criterion (i.e., the dimension along which an entity is evaluated). In total, the synthesis includes 12 studies on grant peer review criteria. Two-thirds of these studies examine criteria in the medical and health sciences, while studies in other fields are scarce. Few studies compare criteria across different fields, and none focus on criteria for interdisciplinary research. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of the 12 studies and thereby identified 15 evaluation criteria and 30 evaluated entities, as well as the relations between them. Based on a network analysis, we determined the following main relations between the identified evaluation criteria and evaluated entities. The aims and outcomes of a proposed project are assessed in terms of the evaluation criteria originality, academic relevance, and extra-academic relevance. The proposed research process is evaluated both on the content level (quality, appropriateness, rigor, coherence/justification), as well as on the level of description (clarity, completeness). The resources needed to implement the research process are evaluated in terms of the evaluation criterion feasibility. Lastly, the person and personality of the applicant are assessed from a ‘psychological’ (motivation, traits) and a ‘sociological’ (diversity) perspective. Furthermore, we find that some of the criteria peers use to evaluate grant applications do not conform to the fairness doctrine and the ideal of impartiality. Grant peer review could therefore be considered unfair and biased. Our findings suggest that future studies on criteria in grant peer review should focus on the applicant, include data from non- Western countries, and examine fields other than the medical and health sciences.
The journal of research administration, 2015
While Elizabeth Barrett Browning counted 25 ways in which she loves her husband in her poem, "How Do I Love Thee? Let me Count the Ways," we identified only eight ways to evaluate the potential for success of a federal research grant proposal. This may be surprising, as it seems upon initial glance of the review criteria used by various federal funding agencies that each has its own distinct set of "rules" regarding the review of grant proposals for research and scholarship. Much of the grantsmanship process is dependent upon the review criteria, which represent the funders' desired impact of the research. But since most funders that offer research grants share the overarching goals of supporting research that (1) fits within its mission and (2) will bring a strong return on its financial investment, the review criteria used to evaluate research grant proposals are based on a similar set of fundamental questions. In this article, we compare the review criteri...
Funding biomedical research: a common ground for concern?
Respiration physiology, 1992
Despite record levels of support, concerns over the ability of individual investigators to obtain funding for their research have been growing within the biomedical research community. The concerns have been focused almost exclusively upon the outcomes of funding decisions, and have ignored the pressures that produce them. Yet, it is those pressures that constitute our 'common ground for concern'. Resources committed in response to the pressures from special interest groups are unavailable for general competition based upon scientific merit. We in the biomedical research community must recognize that such self-interested efforts to dedicate resources undermine the integrity of the existing processes for making funding decisions. As a community, we should instead attempt to ensure that adequate resources are available to support the best quality research.