GoKawiilUK Metascience Unit shares lessons after two years testing grant-funding methods
The co-founder of the UK Metascience Unit, a joint initiative of the UK's science department and UK Research and Innovation launched in 2024, describes experiments run on live funding processes. Tests included appeals to social obligation in reviewer recruitment e-mails (no effect), distributed peer review among applicants (which sped up assessment by expanding the reviewer pool), and ongoing trials of staff desk rejection to screen out non-competitive applications before peer review.