Peer review in funding organizations: An analytical literature review (RoRI Working Paper No.10)

Peer review performs a crucial and expanding role across the research system. Reviewers evaluate articles, grant proposals, tenure and promotion applications, and research units. Peer review across these domains is prone to common problems, such as the risk of bias, a lack of transparency, and system overload (Smith, 2006; Tennant & Ross-Hellauer, 2020). It also involves common actors, artefacts, and processes, with the same people often doing duplicative reviewing work – adding burden to an already overburdened system. Despite potential synergies across areas where peer review occurs, current analyses examine particular domains in isolation, e.g., focusing only on peer review in publishing or solely on peer review within funding organizations.

How can these systems of peer review work better together? Where do synergies exist? How can peer review be streamlined to reduce burden and increase efficiency? This working paper is part of a broader project to develop a systematic understanding of the goals and characteristics of peer review across domains to develop solutions targeting these questions.

Here, we build on our earlier taxonomy of peer review practices in the publishing domain (Kaltenbrunner et al., 2022) to map out the characteristics of peer review within funding organizations. We present the results of an analytical literature review according to this taxonomy; we conclude by considering possible points for synergies across domains where peer review takes place and pose next steps for future research.