Discussion that "anonymous paper review" should be incorporated in order to draw out excellent knowledge

In order to improve society, researchers from around the world are working on various tasks, but getting subsidy "research grant" for research expenses can not be avoided in order to realize by promoting research forGrant ReviewIt is a review called. However, there is a view that there is a bias in the result of the examination, depending on who the researcher who created the thesis is and who past history of that person is involved in the judgment. In order to solve this problem, the person who was engaged in the examination once expressed that opinion that the examination of the paper should be based only on its contents.

Fund ideas, not pedigree, to find fresh insight
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02743-2

Professor at Aalborg University in Denmark, a private fund in CopenhagenLundbeck FoundationThomas Sinkjær, who is an executive director at the Danish National Research Foundation (Danish National Research Foundation) around 2013, has advocated the need for a grant review that is not based on researcher backgrounds and backgrounds as a director.

When I was involved in the Danish National Research Foundation, Mr. Sinkjær has a meeting with a doctoral researcher (postdoctoral researcher) and researchers in the early stages of research workers asking how funders are important for their research He said that. Then, it seems that young researchers mentioned the fact that they are applying for applications that are "likely to obtain subsidies," rather than preparing applications for the contents that they really want to research. Also, at that stage it has been revealed that there are many things that are hidden without truly innovative ideas.


Regarding this reason, Mr. Sinkjær points out that the grant review is biased because it is chosen only "contents confirmed to be surely realized". In order to incorporate a revolutionary new method, it should be necessary to evaluate new ideas that did not exist so far, but there is a tendency that the evaluation tends to be biased toward conservative content by the way at the stage of review It is a point.

Peer review (peer review) can see the results indicating that excellent content and low content of content are being sifted, but it is not necessarily used for "finding the best content" There is a reality that it is not. To solve this problem, Mr. Sinkjær says that "financial aid should try a whole new scheme and share individual experience." Here, Mr. Sinkjær proposes a new method by introducing the method of Villan Fonden which is a charity organization of Denmark.

Villum Fonden is an organization that provides assistance to the fields of industrial and natural sciences, and said that it is in a relatively affordable financial condition compared with this group that taxes are put in. Mr. Sinkjær, who was a director in this organization in 2016, tried a method to find innovative ideas by evaluating applicants in unprecedented ways. There, the survey on the research proposal is said to have been informed by the explanation of three pages, and the information on the applicant's background, the past thesis etc. It is supposed not to understand. Coincidentally, at the same time the German Volkswagen Foundation was doing the same efforts, both of which used this method as "experiment".


In 2017, Villum Fonden is a research program open to researchers regardless of nationality and age "VILLUM ExperimentIn order to tackle the problem of "science so risky that applicants would not be considered putting forward the project for funding" (science is risky enough not to propose a project to obtain funds) We have taken action. The Foundation decided to devote 15% of the budget to research in this field and hired an appropriate evaluation personnel for it. At the same time that the person in charge evaluates each of the contents of the application through the eyes, it gives one "Golden ticket" that can independently apply the budget to the application he thought is good regardless of judgment from other evaluators It is done.

In response to this effort, the percentage that the budget was approved was more than 10%. Some certified applicants included postdoctoral fellows and department heads, and it is also clear that one-third was a man whose age was 40 or less. The Villum Foundation has supported up to two years of research budget for 39 articles so far. Meanwhile, the Volkswagen Foundation has admitted up to 18 months of budget for 96 papers. It has also been clarified that the amount of each aid was from 120 thousand euros to 250 thousand euros (about 16 million yen to 33 million yen).

And in the case of Villum Foundation, 31% of the total was due to 'Golden Ticket'. Entries selected by Golden Ticket gained higher overall score than others, but half of them were probably not selected by the traditional biased selection method. In addition, 11% of Volkswagen Foundation was chosen by Golden Ticket, and it was also revealed that not all of it was selected by the conventional method.


Subsequent investigation, many of the applicants said that the examination will not be done anonymously and that if they had been based on past history, they would not have received financial assistance. Also, from the evaluator, there seems to be a voice that judges that the examination done with no information about applicants is good.

Meanwhile, challenges remain in this effort. Several evaluators were concerned about the negative effect that if the risky idea of ​​young researchers did not go well, the idea of ​​"hard" researchers who were originally supposed to have been aid would also be tangled It is said that. Another researcher has raised concerns that there are cases in which some of the accredited persons are not prepared to actually conduct research.

Among various tasks, Sinkjær's approach is said to be an attention to be noticed in the sense of "scooping up groundbreaking ideas". Mr. Sinkjær is going to evaluate what kind of results will be continued with this effort.