peer review
Interdisciplinary peer review may sound like an oxymoron: a "peer" is most often characterized in terms of shared disciplinary expertise. It may therefore seem odd that peer review is one of the major research areas for the Center of the Study of Interdisciplinarity. However, the existing system of peer review is under increasing stress, and many of the issues that have been raised concerning the use of peer review as a tool for research assessment can be traced to underlying assumptions regarding the nature, scope, and limits of disciplinary expertise.
CSID is exploring these issues in two related areas:
NSF's Broader Impacts Criterion Here we have developed the web's most extensive collection of resources examining the broader impacts criterion, as well as help for others to address the broader impacts of their research proposals. Preview our forthcoming special issue of Science and Engineering Ethics.
Comparative Assessment of Peer Review (CAPR) CAPR is our NSF funded research project aimed at studying the interdisciplinary nature of the peer review processes across 6 US and foreign public funding agencies, with particular focus on how different agencies attempt to integrate 'broader impacts' issues into the review of scientific proposals.