How we award grants

All our grant awarding committees are made up of independent scientists and clinicians from the research community with appropriate research expertise and experience to cover the wide variety of grant applications received. The term of office is 4 years, committee members do not receive any payment and have to abide by a Code of conduct.

Funding process

  • Peer review is central to our grant awarding process
  • Virtually all applications undergo external peer review
  • Last year we received approximately 1400 reviews - an average of 4.3 per application
  • 73% of these reviews were from the UK and 27% from outside the UK

The peer review process

Appropriate external reviewers are selected, usually by the Chair of the grant awarding committee. The applications and the reviewers' reports are then discussed by the committee members who express their own views on the proposal and the external reviews and, by consensus, reach a funding decision. Applications are not normally ranked, but those that have received uniformly low scores from all the external reviewers might not be discussed (or only briefly discussed) by the committee. Candidates for fellowships will, in addition, be called for an interview. For longer term support (programmes, academic posts and Institute and Unit grants) a site visit might also form part of the assessment process. The final approval for all awards is made by arc's Board of Trustees.

Referee scoring system

External reviewers are asked to score applications as excellent, good, moderate or poor on the basis of:

  • Hypothesis: its importance and originality
  • Approach: clarity of the objectives, the feasibility or appropriateness of the methodology and feasibility within the proposed timescale
  • Potential Impact: scientific and/or clinical
  • Relevance: to the cause, cure and/or treatment of musculoskeletal disease
  • Applicants: their standing in the field of research
  • Costs: the appropriateness for the work to be undertaken

They also provide a funding recommendation in one of 4 categories:

  • Fund with high priority: internationally competitive work of high relevance
  • Fund if money available: nationally competitive work of high relevance or internationally competitive work but of moderate relevance
  • Low priority for funding: worthy but lacking in originality, feasibility or relevance
  • Do not fund: scientifically or technically flawed or not relevant

Reviewers are also asked to provide a detailed written critique of the proposal, including comments on the importance and originality of the question, the clarity of the research objectives, the suitability of the methodology and whether the planned experiments are likely to yield decisive results. Additionally, for fellowship applications, the potential of the candidate and the suitability of the environment for research training are also important factors.

The written reviews of referees are an important element in the decision making process, but are not the sole criterion for deciding the success or failure of an application. In practice, however, only applications that score predominantly in the top 2 funding categories are likely to be successful.

Feedback

We provide extensive feedback to both successful and unsuccessful applicants in the form of the reviewers' comments plus any relevant points arising from the committee discussions. For some forms of longer term support and large grants (programmes, clinical trials, Institute and Unit grants), applicants are invited to respond to the reviewers' comments before the funding decision is made. In some cases, unsuccessful applicants are invited to reapply with a modified proposal and, occasionally, mentoring may be arranged.

Finally

We recognise that there are many inherent problems in the peer review system, but we believe that it is the fairest and most consistent way to assess grant applications. We try to ensure that the process is as transparent and open as possible and that we maintain good communications with all our applicants.