Russell Group response to the RCUK Consultation on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Peer Review

15 February 2007

1. The Russell Group is pleased to respond to the RCUK Consultation on the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Peer Review. Individual Russell Group Universities will be responding individually with their particular and detailed comments. This response concentrates on the four particular options set out in the Consultation and also makes reference to the proposals concerning peer review arising from the Warry Report. However, there are also some important introductory observations the Group would like to make.

2. General Points: In this response we have made the assumption that this Consultation is not about whether or not there should be peer review in the general form we understand, but whether present arrangements can be improved or made more efficient. We also note that one of the drivers for this Consultation may be the perception that with a success rate of about 25%, there is a great deal of nugatory time spent in the preparation of research grant proposals. Although, as described below, we would support any move to make present arrangements more efficient and indeed would be happy to work further with RCUK towards that end, we should also emphasise that the preparation of research grant proposals, even if ultimately unsuccessful, can be an important part of the academic process, in that it helps to shape research ideas and to test proposals, leading to refinement and improvement in the longer term.

3. Option 1 - Using Longer and/or Larger Grants: There could be merit in this proposal but real care would need to be taken in its implementation. The creation of very large grants could threaten the essential nature of RCUK funding of programmes or projects and ultimately could be unhelpful in confusing the different roles of RCUK funding and QR funding within the dual support system. Equally, the importance of small start-up project grants should not be lost.

4. Option 2 – Institutional Quotas: The Group believes this proposal to be inherently undesirable but also impracticable, and cannot envisage how this proposal could possibly be made to work effectively.

5. Option 3 – Controlling Re-submissions: This proposal might be worthy of further investigation. There would need to be a readily understood convention to guide this process, for example that there should be no re-submission within (say) a year unless specifically invited by the relevant Panel.

6. Outline Bid Stage: Russell Group Universities recognise that through their internal review arrangements they have a role to play in helping RCUK to manage the number of research proposals. Nevertheless, in theory an outline bid stage could also help to ease the logistic pressures provided that the outline was designed to be very much of a summary – e.g. two sides of A4. This could certainly ease the amount of paper and the time taken in preparing initial bids. However, there are real practical concerns about the ability of Panels properly to select the most relevant and excellent proposals on the basis of such summaries. There is also the danger that the facility of being able to submit a short outline proposal might in turn lead to an increase in the number of submissions. The true feasibility of this proposal is therefore very much in doubt.

7. Warry Report: The Russell Group would like to take the opportunity to comment on the proposal in the Warry Report that an individual competent in the economic impact of research should be accommodated on each Panel. There is no evidence to date of any rigorous way of measuring economic impact other than in the very broadest of terms and outputs. It is therefore extremely difficult to see how such Panel members could be identified or the basis upon which they would be expected to make their observations. Without such a rigorous and accepted methodology, this proposal could do more harm than good.