An Analysis of the Influence of School Ties on Research Proposal Peer Review

Abstract

This study aims at empirically examining the impact of school ties between the evaluators and evaluatees on the results of research proposal peer review evaluations for the Korean national research and development (R&D) project. Specifically, this study analyzed the evaluation results of 8,402 research proposal entries submitted between 2007 and 2011 for the ‘General Researchers Support Project,’ all in the Natural Science and Engineering areas and sponsored by the National Research Foundation of Korea. Each research proposal entry was evaluated by three evaluators, and approximately 39% of the proposals had at least one evaluator from the same university. The results of the empirical analysis of the impact of school ties on evaluation results using descriptive statistics and regression analysis showed that evaluators have a tendency to give relatively high scores to research proposals submitted by the alumni of the same universities as their alma mater. Also, when an evaluator from the same university as an evaluatee was included in the evaluator group, the results of this study showed that the percentage of entry submissions were higher compared to the contrary. Such results show that in the process of peer review based research proposal evaluations for national R&D projects, school ties have significant influence on evaluation results in South Korea.y, this study analyzed the evaluation results of 8,402 research proposal entries submitted between 2007 and 2011 for the ‘General Researchers Support Project,’ all in the Natural Science and Engineering areas and sponsored by the National Research Foundation of Korea. Each research proposal entry was evaluated by three evaluators, and approximately 39% of the proposals had at least one evaluator from the same university. The results of the empirical analysis of the impact of school ties on evaluation results using descriptive statistics and regression analysis showed that evaluators have a tendency to give relatively high scores to research proposals submitted by the alumni of the same universities as their alma mater. Also, when an evaluator from the same university as an evaluatee was included in the evaluator group, the results of this study showed that the percentage of entry submissions were higher compared to the contrary. Such results show that in the process of peer review based research proposal evaluations for national R&D projects, school ties have significant influence on evaluation results in South Korea.