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. 2011 Sep 27:343:d4797.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.d4797.

Funding grant proposals for scientific research: retrospective analysis of scores by members of grant review panel

Nicholas Graves  1 , Adrian G Barnett, Philip Clarke
Affiliations

Funding grant proposals for scientific research: retrospective analysis of scores by members of grant review panel

Nicholas Graves et al. BMJ. .

Abstract

Objective: To quantify randomness and cost when choosing health and medical research projects for funding.

Design: Retrospective analysis.

Setting: Grant review panels of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.

Participants: Panel members' scores for grant proposals submitted in 2009.

Main outcome measures: The proportion of grant proposals that were always, sometimes, and never funded after accounting for random variability arising from differences in panel members' scores, and the cost effectiveness of different size assessment panels.

Results: 59% of 620 funded grants were sometimes not funded when random variability was taken into account. Only 9% (n = 255) of grant proposals were always funded, 61% (n = 1662) never funded, and 29% (n=788) sometimes funded. The extra cost per grant effectively funded from the most effective system was $A18,541 (£11,848; €13,482; $19,343).

Conclusions: Allocating funding for scientific research in health and medicine is costly and somewhat random. There are many useful research questions to be addressed that could improve current processes.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare: no support from any organisation for the submitted work; no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Figures

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Fig 1 Proportion of grants that were never funded, sometimes funded, and always funded if review panels had seven, nine, or 11 members
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Fig 2 Range in ranks for grants assessed by review panel with largest proportion of sometimes funded proposals
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Fig 3 Range in ranks for grants assessed by review panel with smallest proportion of sometimes funded proposals
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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