Abstract
Research funding is a key determinant of scientific progress. However, current allocation procedures for third-party funding are criticized due to high costs and biases in the selection. Here, we present data from a large German funding organization on an implementation of a lottery-first approach followed by peer review to allocate funding. We examine the changes in submissions and funded projects of female applicants after implementation, estimate the costs of the overall allocation process, and report on the attitudes and satisfaction of researchers and reviewers. The data show an increase of 10% in submissions and a 23% increase in funded projects from female applicants with the lottery-first approach compared to a previously used procedure. Additionally, the lottery-first approach was estimated to have 68% lower economic costs compared to a conventional single-stage peer review approach. Satisfaction with this funding approach was high and around half of applicants preferred an initial lottery followed by peer review over a conventional approach. Thus, the lottery-first approach is a promising addition to allocation procedures.
| Originalsprache | Englisch |
|---|---|
| Aufsatznummer | 9824 |
| Zeitschrift | Nature Communications |
| Jahrgang | 16 |
| Ausgabenummer | 1 |
| ISSN | 1751-8628 |
| DOIs | |
| Publikationsstatus | Veröffentlicht - 12.2025 |
Fördermittel
To address some of these issues, lotteries have been proposed as an alternative way of distributing funds. While the random allocation of grants is seen as increasing the chances of marginalized scientists and unconventional approaches to receive funding, the scientific community has greeted this idea with skepticism, expressing fears of a threat to science due to a lack of quality control, as the gold standard of evaluation, peer review, is absent in a pure lottery. Against the backdrop, a combination of grant lottery and peer review was advocated, i.e. lotteries were introduced as a tie-breaker at the end of the decision process in funding allocations (e.g., by the Swiss National Science Foundation, or the VolkswagenStiftung in Germany) or to select applications after an initial screening (Explorer Grant from the Health Research Council of New Zealand). Under these systems, full applications are reviewed, and among the selected proposals, the final funding decision is determined by lot. However, while the tie-breaker lottery may eliminate certain biases in the last step of the decision process, two problems remain: First, the cumulative financial and temporal costs of the funding allocation process remain significant, driven by the many resource-intensive proposals for projects that ultimately will not be funded. Second, even if the lottery eliminates bias in the final decision-making step, it cannot prevent bias in the earlier stages of the procedure, including initial submissions. For instance, some applicants or groups of potential applicants may be more likely to submit proposals because they have more resources, better support structures, or more confidence than others.
| Träger | Trägernummer |
|---|---|
| Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung | |
| Volkswagen Foundation | |
| Health Research Council of New Zealand |
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