New Peer Review Pilot at NSF: Applicants as Reviewers?

NSF has just released a Dear Colleague letter (NSF 13-096) outlining a pilot for a new method of peer review for proposals.

For this pilot project, instead of a traditional review panel, all principal investigators submitting proposals to the Sensors and Sensing Systems (SSS) will be required to review seven competing proposals! The program officer will then compile the final rankings and select the winners.  Applicants who fail to complete the required reviews will have their proposals withdrawn from consideration and will not receive any reviews that may have already been completed for their own proposal.

NSF has been exploring alternative methods of proposal review for a little while, but we will be very interested to see what comes of this particular pilot program.  Some research administrators and research development professionals are already expressing concern over the protection of privileged information in proposals that are not funded, but may be resubmitted later, if they are reviewed by competing applicants rather than traditional reviewers.

Of course, it isn’t just NSF thinking about changes to the peer review process.  This could be the beginning of a much broader set of discussions and changes with regard to peer review.  We’ll keep you updated as we hear more!