IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rseval/v21y2012i1p48-60.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Conservatism and risk-taking in peer review: Emerging ERC practices

Author

Listed:
  • Terttu Luukkonen

Abstract

This article explores the newly founded European Research Council's (ERC) peer review system and its ability to sustain its mission to promote excellent, groundbreaking research. The article explores the extent to which the selection of groundbreaking research is constrained by inherent limitations in peer review by analysing the informal practices of ERC peer reviewers. This article notes that controversy and uncertainty are central characteristics of potentially groundbreaking research proposals. The selection of truly innovative research is constrained by the boundaries on current knowledge, against which the value of proposed research is judged; these boundaries affect the extent to which peer review panellists feel they can take risks in their judgments and the rules of interpretation and deliberation they adopt. The role of customary interpretative rules is to limit the risks involved in decision making. Predicting the outcomes of peer review in controversial situations is difficult, however, as contingent factors play an important role. Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Terttu Luukkonen, 2012. "Conservatism and risk-taking in peer review: Emerging ERC practices," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 48-60, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rseval:v:21:y:2012:i:1:p:48-60
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/reseval/rvs001
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Banal-Estañol, Albert & Macho-Stadler, Inés & Pérez-Castrillo, David, 2019. "Evaluation in research funding agencies: Are structurally diverse teams biased against?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(7), pages 1823-1840.
    2. Nicolas Carayol, 2016. "The Right Job and the Job Right: Novelty, Impact and Journal Stratification in Science," Post-Print hal-02274661, HAL.
    3. Laudel, Grit & Gläser, Jochen, 2014. "Beyond breakthrough research: Epistemic properties of research and their consequences for research funding," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(7), pages 1204-1216.
    4. Pelkonen, Antti – Thomas, 2014. "Project-based Funding and Novelty in University Research – Findings from Finland and the UK," ETLA Reports 29, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    5. Albert Banal-Estañol & Inés Macho-Stadler & David Pérez-Castrillo, 2016. "Key success drivers in public research grants: Funding the seeds of radical innovation in academia?," Economics Working Papers 1518, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    6. Coburn, Josie & Yaqub, Ohid & Chataway, Joanna, 2022. "Targeting research to address societal needs: What can we learn from 30 years of targeting neglected diseases?," SocArXiv 65ws7, Center for Open Science.
    7. Manlio Del Giudice & Melita Nicotra & Marco Romano & Carmela Elita Schillaci, 2017. "Entrepreneurial performance of principal investigators and country culture: relations and influences," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 320-337, April.
    8. Sabatier, Mareva & Chollet, Barthélemy, 2017. "Is there a first mover advantage in science? Pioneering behavior and scientific production in nanotechnology," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 522-533.
    9. Sandström, Ulf & Van den Besselaar, Peter, 2018. "Funding, evaluation, and the performance of national research systems," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 365-384.
    10. Conor O'Kane & James Cunningham & Vincent Mangematin, 2012. "Underpinning Strategic Behaviours and Posture of Principal Investigators in Transition/Uncertain Environments," Working Papers hal-00794944, HAL.
    11. Conor O’Kane & Jing A. Zhang & Jarrod Haar & James A. Cunningham, 2023. "How scientists interpret and address funding criteria: value creation and undesirable side effects," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 799-826, August.
    12. Stephen Gallo & Lisa Thompson & Karen Schmaling & Scott Glisson, 2018. "Risk evaluation in peer review of grant applications," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 216-229, June.
    13. Elise S. Brezis & Aliaksandr Birukou, 2020. "Arbitrariness in the peer review process," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 393-411, April.
    14. Nagar, Jay Prakash & Breschi, Stefano & Fosfuri, Andrea, 2024. "ERC science and invention: Does ERC break free from the EU Paradox?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(8).
    15. Thomas Feliciani & Junwen Luo & Lai Ma & Pablo Lucas & Flaminio Squazzoni & Ana Marušić & Kalpana Shankar, 2019. "A scoping review of simulation models of peer review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 555-594, October.
    16. J. Rigby & K. Julian, 2014. "On the horns of a dilemma: does more funding for research lead to more research or a waste of resources that calls for optimization of researcher portfolios? An analysis using funding acknowledgement ," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1067-1075, November.
    17. O'Kane, Conor & Mangematin, Vincent & Zhang, Jing A. & Cunningham, James A., 2020. "How university-based principal investigators shape a hybrid role identity," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    18. Marco Seeber, 2020. "How do journals of different rank instruct peer reviewers? Reviewer guidelines in the field of management," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(3), pages 1387-1405, March.
    19. Dag W. Aksnes & Liv Langfeldt & Paul Wouters, 2019. "Citations, Citation Indicators, and Research Quality: An Overview of Basic Concepts and Theories," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440198, February.
    20. Claartje J Vinkenburg & Sara Connolly & Stefan Fuchs & Channah Herschberg & Brigitte Schels, 2020. "Mapping career patterns in research: A sequence analysis of career histories of ERC applicants," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-19, July.
    21. Carole J. Lee & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Guo Zhang & Blaise Cronin, 2013. "Bias in peer review," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(1), pages 2-17, January.
    22. Richard R Snell, 2015. "Menage a Quoi? Optimal Number of Peer Reviewers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-14, April.
    23. Antonio Perianes‐Rodríguez & Carlos Olmeda-Gómez, 2021. "Effect of policies promoting open access in the scientific ecosystem: case study of ERC grantee publication practice," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(8), pages 6825-6836, August.
    24. Conor O'Kane & James Cunningham & Vincent Mangematin, 2012. "Underpinning Strategic Behaviours and Posture of Principal Investigators in Transition/Uncertain Environments," Working paper serie RMT - Grenoble Ecole de Management hal-00794944, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:rseval:v:21:y:2012:i:1:p:48-60. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/rev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.