Past performance, peer review, and project selection: A case study in the social and behavioral sciences

TL;DR

This study examines how the Netherlands Research Council's grant decisions relate to applicants' past performance and peer review scores, revealing that top performers are often rejected and peer review scores do not always predict funding success.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that research councils may not effectively select the highest-performing researchers, challenging assumptions about the role of past performance and peer review in funding decisions.

Findings

Top performers are often rejected for funding.

Peer review scores do not reliably predict grant success.

The council effectively corrected for gender bias.

Abstract

Does past performance influence success in grant applications? In this study we test whether the grant allocation decisions of the Netherlands Research Council for the Economic and Social Sciences correlate with the past performances of the applicants in terms of publications and citations, and with the results of the peer review process organized by the Council. We show that the Council is successful in distinguishing grant applicants with above-average performance from those with below-average performance, but within the former group no correlation could be found between past performance and receiving a grant. When comparing the best performing researchers who were denied funding with the group of researchers who received it, the rejected researchers significantly outperformed the funded ones. Furthermore, the best rejected proposals score on average as high on the outcomes of the peer review process as the accepted proposals. Finally, we found that the Council under study successfully corrected for gender effects during the selection process. We explain why these findings may be more general than for this case only. However, if research councils are not able to select the 'best' researchers, perhaps they should reconsider their mission. In a final section with policy implications, we discuss the role of research councils at the level of the science system in terms of variation, innovation, and quality control.