How to speed up peer review: make applicants mark one another

‘Distributed peer review’ of grants makes process more than twice as fast — and includes some cheat-prevention measures

An experimental way of selecting grant applications simplifies the lengthy process of looking for suitable referees.Credit: Daenin Arnee/iStock via Getty

An experimental peer-review system more than halves the time taken to review grant applications, according to results from a small trial. The system could help research funders to process more quickly and efficiently the deluge of grant applications that they receive.

The system, called distributed peer review, requires researchers who apply for a round of funding to review some of the other applications. This avoids the normally lengthy process in which funders must hunt for external peer reviewers for applications, chase overburdened reviewers and rank applications.

The trial was done by the UK Metascience Unit, a government group established in 2024 to study and improve the way science is funded and conducted. The results were released at the Metascience 2025 conference in London on 30 June.

The gains “are huge in terms of efficiency and delivering funding”, says Tom Stafford, a cognitive scientist at the University of Sheffield. And he credits the Metascience group for using ways of stopping participants from gaming the system — for instance, by marking other applications harshly. “You just cannot benefit from giving someone else a low score,” says Stafford, who is trialling this review method elsewhere. "That’s really admirable."

Surge in applications

Research funders have long sought ways to deal with ballooning numbers of grant applications. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), which has an annual budget of around £8.8 billion (US$12.1 billion) and is the country’s biggest funding agency, had seen its application numbers soar from around 19,800 in 2021–22 to nearly 27,200 in 2023–24. At the same time, the agency had its operational budget cut by more than 15%, lost several hundred staff and faced criticism for being bureaucratic and slow. Usually, peer review of grant applications at UKRI takes between 4.6 and 6.3 months from submission to decision.

Distributed peer review has been tested or adopted in a handful of other places. The European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany, led the way by using it to review applications for a coveted slot on its telescope. The Volkswagen Foundation, a research funder in Hanover, Germany, has also been experimenting with it.

The Metascience Unit spans the UK government’s Department of Science, Innovation and Technology and the UKRI. Appropriately, the metascience experiment involved researchers who were themselves applying for funding for metascience studies. In all, 100 applications were reviewed, and these were competing for around 18 grants worth a total of £4 million. Each applicant was given 8–10 studies to review, and had to deliver those reviews if they wanted their own grant to stay in the running. “Everyone has skin in the game,” said Ben Steyn, who co-directs the Metascience Unit and presented the results at the meeting.

The trial showed that distributed peer review cut the time taken to 2.2 months on average — a reduction of 53%–65%. What’s more, most applicants said it expanded their knowledge of their field, according to a survey of the participants. “So this is peer review not just as a burden,” says Steyn.

Cheating is not an option

The “knee-jerk criticism” of distributed peer review, says Steyn, is that participants could try to game the system. Someone could mark other applications poorly, to boost their own application’s chances. Or two applicants could quietly agree to give each other’s submissions high marks.