Improving the efficiency of research proposals evaluation: A two-stage procedure

An important share of research funding is allocated via competitive programs, which entail considerable direct and indirect costs, such as to develop and evaluate the proposals. The goal of this article is to explore whether adopting a two-stage evaluation procedure could improve the efficiency of the process. For this purpose, we study the evaluation system designed by the Foundation Dam (Stiftelsen Dam), one of the largest foundations in Norway supporting health research. In 2020, Foundation Dam adopted a new evaluation procedure consisting in a short proposal for a first stage of selection and, for those selected, a second-stage evaluation of a long proposal. We explore whether such a procedure reduces the evaluation costs and how the evaluation procedures compare in terms of reliability. Survey responses from 94 of the 594 applicants in the one-stage procedure (2018-19) and all the 668 applicants in the two-stage procedure (2020-21) show that the two-stage procedure reduced the average time that applicants spent in drafting the proposal(s) by 38%. According to the reviewers' estimate, the two-stage procedure also reduced by 28% the time they spent on average to evaluate an applicant's proposal(s). The analysis of the evaluation data of 594 long proposals in the one-stage procedure and 668 short proposals in the two-stage procedure shows that reviewers' scores of short proposals display greater reliability and agreement than the reviewers' scores of long proposals in the old one-stage procedure. Our findings suggest that a two-stage procedure can substantially improve the efficiency of grant writing and review, without harming the reliability of the evaluation.