NSERC posted a press release yesterday providing an update on the changes to the peer review structure for the Discovery Grants program. The new “Conference Review” system will come online for the 2010 competition (so we have one more year of the old system left – kind of, read on).

There is a new FAQ document available through the press release (as a downloadable pdf) that describes how the new system of peer review will work. In essence, the 28 current GSCs (Grant Selection Committees) will be compressed into 12 new panels called “Groups”. Each group will be broken down into “Sections”.

(The last documents that I read on the process suggested that there will be an average of 4 sections per group, leading to a total of (potentially) 48 sitting committees . . .er. . . I mean sections. This will result in a requirement for more members of the peer review panels.)

The FAQ raises many points of interest, but my two highlights are:

1. The budgets of the current GSCs will be “superseded by the budgets for the larger Groups and a new budget process will be introduced” for the 2010 competition. Hello, reallocation.
2. A new rating system will come into play for the 2009 competition, whereby an application will be scored on: excellence of the researcher, merit of the proposal, and training of HQP (highly qualified personnel). These scores will be multiplied by a cost of research factor (specific to the discipline) and will allow the committees to classify applications into categories (or “bins”). In 2010, the funding recommendations will be applied by an Executive Committee (rather than the GSC or Section itself). However, in the 2009 competition, the GSCs will carry out the binning process AND play the role of the Executive Committee. This will effectively take the applicant’s funding history out of the loop in the decision making process and make past contributions to research more important.

Buried at the bottom of the press release is NSERC’s response to the International Review Committee’s evaluation of the Discovery Grants Program. This highlights the rationale behind many of the recent and forthcoming changes.

I can’t help but wonder: If the tri-councils have to cut $87M in funding to their base budgets, and the NSERC peer review committees are getting larger (with increasing travel and accommodation costs), where are the cost-efficiencies going to be found?