Registered report protocol: Factors associated with inter-rater agreement in grant peer review

Jan-Ole Hesselberg, Pål Ulleberg, Øystein Sørensen, Knut Inge Fostervold, Sigrid Hegna Ingvaldsen and Ida Svege

PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 5, 1-11

Abstract: Grant peer review processes are pivotal in allocating substantial research funding, yet concerns about their reliability persist, primarily due to low inter-rater agreement. This study aims to examine factors associated with agreement among peer reviewers in grant evaluations, leveraging data from 134,991 reviews across four Norwegian research funders. Using a cross-classified linear regression model, we will explore the relationship between inter-rater agreement and multiple factors, including reviewer similarity, experience, expertise, research area, application characteristics, review depth, and temporal trends. Our findings are expected to shed light on whether similarity between reviewers (gender, age), their experience, or expertise correlates with higher agreement. Additionally, we investigate whether characteristics of the applications—such as funding amount, research area, or variability in project size—affect agreement levels. By analyzing applications from diverse disciplines and funding schemes, this study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the drivers of inter-rater agreement and their implications for grant peer review reliability. The results will inform improvements to peer review processes, enhancing the fairness and validity of funding decisions. All data and analysis scripts will be publicly available, ensuring transparency and reproducibility.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0322696 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 22696&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0322696

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0322696

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().