Greetings all,
I'd like to ask a question that I expect might generate some spirited
discussion.
We have seen recently a groundswell of support for openness and
transparency in peer review. Not only are pre-prints popular, but we are
also seeing reviewer comments getting published along with the papers
themselves. Sometimes even signed by the reviewers, who would have
traditionally remained anonymous.
My question is: why don't we also do this for grant proposals?
I know this is not the norm. However, after thinking about it, why
wouldn't we want the process of how funding is awarded in science to be
at least as transparent as the process of publishing the results? Not
that the current process isn't transparent, but it could be more so.
What if applications, and their reviewer comments, were made public?
Perhaps after an embargo period? There could be great benefits here.
New investigators especially, would have a much clearer picture of
format, audience, context and convention. I expect unsuccessful
applications might be even more valuable than successful ones. And yet,
in reality, those old proposals and especially the comments almost never
see the light of day. Monumental amounts of work goes into them, on both
sides, but then get tucked away into the darkest corners of our hard drives.
So, 2nd question is: would you do it? Would you upload your application
into the public domain for all to see? What about the reviewer comments?
If not, why not? Afraid people will steal your ideas? Well, once
something is public, its pretty clear who got the idea first.
3rd question: what if the service were semi-private? and you got to get
comments on your proposal before submitting it to your funding agency?
Would that be helpful? What if in exchange for that service you had to
review 2-3 other applications? Would that be worth it?
Or, perhaps, I'm being far too naiive about all this. For all I know
there are some rules against doing this I'm not aware of. Either way,
I'm interested in what this community thinks. Please share your views!
On- or off-list is fine.
-James Holton
MAD Scientist
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