Desk rejection shadow experiment post-experiment survey

Overview

Information about the desk rejection shadow experiment:

UKRI has chosen to take part in a desk rejection shadow experiment in partnership with the Research on Research Institute (RORI) at UCL. Desk rejection refers to the practice whereby staff at a funding agency screen applications early in the process and remove those that are unlikely to succeed, without sending them out for external peer review.

For this experiment, we are only asking staff delivering funding opportunities to score, rather than reject, applications. This will allow us to compare staff scores with those provided by external reviewers to find out whether staff can identify applications that are unlikely to be considered fundable through traditional expert review. As such, this is a ‘shadow experiment’ because we are only collecting data - the scores given by staff will not be used for actual funding decisions.

Thank you for taking part in this shadow experiment. All data including UKRI staff information will be handled in accordance with strict research ethics. No personal data will be shared or reused, and all findings will be reported only in anonymised form.

In this short post-experiment survey, we would like to ask you about your experience of taking part in this desk rejection shadow experiment.