Stefano Bianchini (University of Strasbourg – BETA)

“Gender diversity of research consortia contributes to funding decisions in a multi-stage grant peer-review process”

Abstract. This study seeks to draw connections between the grant evaluation process, the decision-making setup in which evaluators operated, and the gender dimensions of research consortia. We examined the implementation of a multi-disciplinary, pan-European funding scheme – EUROpean COllaborative RESearch (EUROCORES) Scheme (2003-2015) – and the reviewers’ materials that this generated. EUROCORES promoted investigator-driven, multinational collaborative research in multiple scientific areas and brought together international consortia (9,158 Principal Investigators) that were sequentially evaluated by 467 expert panel members and 1,862 external reviewers. We found a strong negative bias towards consortia with a higher proportion of female Principal Investigators. This bias was evident in the evaluation outcomes of both panel members and reviewers: applications from consortia with a higher share of female scientists were less successful in panel selection and systematically received lower scores from external reviewers, although no differences were found in the evaluative language of the written reports. We highlight the differences between the decision-making mechanisms of the expert panels and external reviewers and suggest that these differences may be responsible for distinct forms of gender bias at different stages of evaluation.