Distributed Peer Review in the UKRI Engineering Biology Programme 'Expand and Extend' funding opportunity

Overview

The Engineering Biology Mission Awards (EBMA) Expand and Extend initiative is a £20m investment aimed at maximising the impact of the portfolio of existing awards.

EBMA teams were invited to apply for additional funding to support an expansion and extension to their research and innovation programme (from 05 January 2026 to 31 March 2027) with the aim of enabling increased outputs to be delivered and greater impacts and benefits to accrue. 

As you know, UKRI used Distributed Peer Review (DPR) as the application review process. For DPR, all applicants were also assessors and reviewed other proposals submitted to the same funding opportunity. UKRI normally runs funding opportunities using an expert peer review process, inviting external academic experts as reviewers. However, this is a resource intensive process and can be a slow way of making decisions.

We know that there are some advantages and disadvantages to using DPR. For example, DPR requires applicants to spend additional time completing reviews. However, a DPR process can also reduce the time taken from applications made to decisions communicated. Also, applicants to a specific opportunity can be very well placed to judge other applications.

Why your views matter

UKRI is currently trialling DPR across a range of opportunities and we would like to understand the views of participants in this process.

We would be grateful if you could share your thoughts with us by completing this short survey by 01 June 2026.

Your responses to this survey will be anonymous. Thank you.