Adding lottery to funding process ‘improves women’s success rates’

Introducing a lottery before peer review in the research funding application process can boost women’s chance of success by almost a quarter, a new study has found, with its authors saying that the approach can also reduce costs and make applying for funding less labour-intensive.

Academics from the University of Lübeck and the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods analysed data from a funding line at the German Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education, both before and after the funder introduced a “lottery-first approach”.

The new procedure required applicants to submit only an expression of interest, outlining their project in 1,500 characters or fewer, which were then checked by the funder for eligibility before 500 were selected, via lottery, to submit a full proposal for peer review.

Using this approach, the number of female applicants increased 10 per cent, while the number of funded projects by women rose by 23 per cent. The financial costs of the process, based upon the working hours and personnel costs of applicants, reviewers and funding staff, were also estimated to be 68 per cent lower than a conventional approach.

Finn Luebber, one of the study’s authors, said of the standard funding application approach: “When you know you have to write 40 pages for the application and the success rate is only 2 per cent, then you need to have a lot of resources to apply and you also have to be very convinced that your idea will be well received.”

Sören Krach, another of the paper’s authors, told Times Higher Education that the conventional approach resulted in “a lot of wasted time of scientists writing applications that at the end are not funded”. This could dissuade “structurally disadvantaged” researchers with less free time, employment security or financial resources, women among them, to apply. By lowering the initial requirement to a 1,500-character proposal, the scholars explained, researchers with fewer resources might be more inclined to apply for funding.

The lottery approach is not without its detractors, Krach acknowledged: “An aspect that is often mentioned is the potential loss of genius ideas, because if you have 5,000 people submitting an application and you only draw 500, there is of course a chance that you miss some great ideas.”

“The question is, is a different system really better at doing this?” Luebber added. “There’s actually not much data, if at all, showing that.” Indeed, he said, a common criticism of the reliance on peer review first is that it “tends to be more conservative”, with an inclination towards funding “incremental ideas”.

More research is needed on the strengths and failings of funding procedures, Luebber stressed. “It’s very interesting how much this system of grant peer review is based on people’s trust in it. There’s really not much data supporting [the belief that] peer review is actually doing what it’s supposed to do, and it costs a lot of money,” he said.

“I think there is a lot of work to be done in general about funding. The discussion about this is basically just about to start.”