Recio-Saucedo Alejandra, Crane Ksenia, Meadmore Katie, Fackrell Kathryn, Church Hazel, Fraser Simon, Blatch-Jones Amanda
Wessex Institute, National Institute of Health Research Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre, University of Southampton, Alpha House, Enterprise Road, Southampton, Southampton, SO16 7NS, UK.
School of Primary Care, Population Sciences and Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.
Res Integr Peer Rev. 2022 Mar 4;7(1):2. doi: 10.1186/s41073-022-00120-2.
Allocation of research funds relies on peer review to support funding decisions, and these processes can be susceptible to biases and inefficiencies. The aim of this work was to determine which past interventions to peer review and decision-making have worked to improve research funding practices, how they worked, and for whom.
Realist synthesis of peer-review publications and grey literature reporting interventions in peer review for research funding.
We analysed 96 publications and 36 website sources. Sixty publications enabled us to extract stakeholder-specific context-mechanism-outcomes configurations (CMOCs) for 50 interventions, which formed the basis of our synthesis. Shorter applications, reviewer and applicant training, virtual funding panels, enhanced decision models, institutional submission quotas, applicant training in peer review and grant-writing reduced interrater variability, increased relevance of funded research, reduced time taken to write and review applications, promoted increased investment into innovation, and lowered cost of panels.
Reports of 50 interventions in different areas of peer review provide useful guidance on ways of solving common issues with the peer review process. Evidence of the broader impact of these interventions on the research ecosystem is still needed, and future research should aim to identify processes that consistently work to improve peer review across funders and research contexts.
研究资金的分配依赖同行评审来支持资金决策，而这些过程可能容易受到偏见和低效率的影响。这项工作的目的是确定过去哪些同行评审和决策干预措施有助于改善研究资金分配实践，它们是如何起作用的，以及对谁起作用。
对同行评审出版物和灰色文献进行实证综合分析，这些文献报告了研究资金同行评审中的干预措施。
我们分析了96篇出版物和36个网站来源。60篇出版物使我们能够提取50项干预措施的特定利益相关者背景-机制-结果配置（CMOCs），这构成了我们综合分析的基础。较短的申请、评审员和申请人培训、虚拟资金评审小组、改进的决策模型、机构提交配额、同行评审和资助申请撰写方面的申请人培训减少了评分者间的差异，提高了资助研究的相关性，减少了撰写和评审申请所需的时间，促进了对创新的投资增加，并降低了评审小组的成本。
关于同行评审不同领域50项干预措施的报告为解决同行评审过程中的常见问题提供了有用的指导。仍需要这些干预措施对研究生态系统更广泛影响的证据，未来的研究应旨在确定在不同资助者和研究背景下持续有效改善同行评审的过程。
