Research domains
This could apply to career assessment, to funding assessment, or to any other types of assessment, including research or journal submissions.
Context and considerations
Several elements relevant to this idea may be seen in the idea on reducing the frequency of assessment. A core reasoning behind this idea is the need to reduce application burden. Application processes take time and resources, regardless of the outcome. In fact, several studies have shown that the costs of application to grant proposal is non negligeable, and that these costs can even exceed the awarded funding that is redistributed in research (see Herbert et al., (2013); Gross and Bergstrom (2019); Schweiger (2025)). Consequently, removing assessments where they are not entirely necessary could support a more efficient research system.
Assessments looking at this could, for example study the impact on research and researchers when:
- Competitive proposal are replaced with a finite ‘First come first serve’ system of funding
- Competitive assessment is replaced with guaranteed bench funding
- Assessments of career/project progression are removed and only added ad-hoc if a problem occurs - Publication of research outputs is not dependent on peer-review assessment – these assessments are only added at a later stage in the process (e.g., preprint, specific journals like F1000, eLife, etc.)
Challenges and mitigations
Challenge: Removing assessments may raise problems in terms of fairness of resource distribution if the distribution process or approval process are not clearly delineated.
Mitigation: Providing clear and transparent information on how distribution of resources or on how career progression works is probably one of the most important mitigation to this challenge.
Evaluating success
Success should keep the core obectives of this change in mind. Depending on the desired objective, success could be linked to a diversity of elements, including: - Changes in perceptions of fairness of applicants (and thereafter those impacted by the decision done without an assessment process)
- Efficiency of the process
- Resources needed for the process
- Final results and overall impact of removing the process on the funding attribution/progressing applicants
Relevant resources and literature
This section includes resources, literature, and reports relevant to this specific experimental idea.
Templates from funders and institutions
Case examples and literature
Ghent University decided to reduce the need for competitive funding in the beginning of researchers’ career by providing all starting researchers with Starting grant of basic research funding.
Several funding calls from Open Science NL adopt a non-competitive model, where applications are checked for quality standards but not placed in competition with one another. For instance, the call Recognising and rewarding Open Science stated that “The applications in this round are of a non-competitive nature, and Open Science NL strives to award all applications that meet at least ‘good’ on the conditions and criteria as stated in Section…”, the Strengthening Local and Thematic DCCs states that “This Call for proposals is not competitive”, and the calls for Open Access Books similarly explains that “Applications within this programme are not in competition with each other, and NWO intends to honour all applications that meet the conditions and criteria as long as the annual budget is sufficient.”
Other resources
The SCOPE Framework for Research Evaluation mentions how crucial it is to “Evaluate only where necessary”, stressing that evaluation is not always the right strategy, especially when the desired outcome is a behaviour change.