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Published online 11 November 2009 | Nature 462, 145 (2009) | doi:10.1038/462145a
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Wellcome Trust makes it personal in funding revamp
People not projects are the focus of longer-term grants.
The Wellcome Trust, the UK's largest non-governmental funder of biomedical research, is giving its grant scheme a major overhaul.
The trust plans to stop asking researchers to submit extensive applications detailing their proposed work over the three- or five-year period of a grant.
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It's just like soccer: You are hired to make goals, but it's really hard to predict how many you'll make and exactly in which match. Instead of signing a contract describing just that, you're judged on your merit (maybe you scored 28 goals last year) and faith is put in the fact that you'll likely try your hardest. After all, in soccer and research careers alike, if you fail to deliver you'll eventually be left without a contract ...
"People not projects" is on track but the Wellcome revamp fails to satisfy two important criteria: (i) evaluations must be as objective as possible, and (ii) despite this, evaluation error-proneness must be recognized. A system that meets these criticisms - "bicameral review" - has been available for decades. Details may be found in my Peer Review Web-Pages and in my book Tomorrow's Cures Today? (Harwood Academic, 2000).
While in principle an excellent approach, I'm not convinced that current project/programme grants should be entirely jettisoned – in particular for colaborative projects between two or more PIs/groups (or is collaboration to be restricted to WT "investigators"?) or for small-scale / pilot studies. Logistically also I foresee a problem if there is no overlap between initial submissions for Investigator awards and final submissions for project / programme grants (as currently envisaged) - I would suggest at least a 2-year overlap to allow potential "investigators" to come on board.