Two-stage applications and lotteries for awarding research grants should be considered by UK funders to help cut red tape and speed up peer review, a long-awaited evaluation of UK research bureaucracy has recommended.
The major review, led by Adam Tickell, vice-chancellor of the University of Birmingham, recommended that funders experiment with more innovative approaches to grant awarding, including the introduction of “two-stage application models” in which an expert panel would conduct an “initial triage” on brief summaries of projects before asking researchers with the most promising ideas to submit detailed proposals.
