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The Participation and Motivations of Grant Peer Reviewers: A Comprehensive Survey

View ORCID ProfileStephen A Gallo, Lisa A Thompson, Karen B Schmaling, Scott R Glisson
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/479816
Stephen A Gallo
American Institute of Biological Sciences
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  • For correspondence: sgallo@aibs.org
Lisa A Thompson
American Institute of Biological Sciences
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Karen B Schmaling
Washington State University
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Scott R Glisson
American Institute of Biological Sciences
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Abstract

Scientific peer reviewers play an integral role in the grant selection process, yet very little has been reported on the levels of participation or the motivations of scientists to take part in peer review. AIBS developed a comprehensive peer review survey that examined the motivations and levels of participation of grant reviewers. The survey was disseminated to 13,091 scientists in AIBS’s proprietary database. Of the 874 respondents, 76% indicated they had reviewed grant applications in the last 3 years; however, the number of reviews was unevenly distributed across this sample. Higher review loads were associated with respondents who had submitted more grant proposals over this time period, some of whom were likely to be study section members for large funding agencies. The most prevalent reason to participate in a review was to give back to the scientific community (especially among frequent grant submitters) and the most common reason to decline an invitation to review was lack of time. Interestingly, few suggested that expectation from the funding agency was a motivation to review. Most felt that review participation positively influenced their careers through improving grantsmanship and exposure to new scientific ideas. Of those who reviewed, respondents reported dedicating 2-5% of their total annual work time to grant review and, based on their self-reported maximum review loads, it is estimated they are participating at 56%-89% of their capacity, which may have important implications regarding the sustainability of the system. Overall, it is clear that participation in peer review is uneven and in some cases near capacity, and more needs to be done to create new motivations and incentives to increase the future pool of reviewers.

Footnotes

  • Just added the link to the anonymized survey data at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.8132453.v1 .

  • https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.8132453.v1

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted June 04, 2019.
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The Participation and Motivations of Grant Peer Reviewers: A Comprehensive Survey
Stephen A Gallo, Lisa A Thompson, Karen B Schmaling, Scott R Glisson
bioRxiv 479816; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/479816
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The Participation and Motivations of Grant Peer Reviewers: A Comprehensive Survey
Stephen A Gallo, Lisa A Thompson, Karen B Schmaling, Scott R Glisson
bioRxiv 479816; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/479816

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