EC grant applicants need fuller feedback

Why we still need grant peer review.

B ollen et al [1] propose a novel mechanism for allocating research funds that first distributes all available funds equally among all practising scientists and then requires them to transfer a portion of their annual funds to other scientists of their choice. This distributed mechanism, the authors suggest, will substantially reduce the cost of funding allocation, by making proposal drafting a...

Matt Fuller

Traditionally users subscribe to RSS feeds of interest using an RSS feed reader. The RSS feed reader periodically polls the subscribed feeds for updates or items to be displayed to the user. Many RSS feeds usually pertain to a single news source or blog. Others may aggregate various feeds usually on some topic and produce a single RSS feed. Middleware publishsubscribe systems allow users to sub...

Factors that influence doctors in the assessment of applicants for disability grant

Background: A disability grant is the financial assistance given by the government to South African citizens and bona fide refugees who have debility that results in inability to work. Doctors in state hospitals and clinics are tasked with the duty of assessing applicants for this grant. Ideally, the assessment is done by an institutional committee consisting of a doctor, physiotherapist, socia...

Further need for EC awareness and access.

Response: "Why we still need grant peer review".

W hile we welcome a discussion on the merits and demerits of possible funding systems, we fundamentally disagree with Avin’s comments. His letter is entitled “Why we still need grant peer review”, but it does not actually make a case for grant peer review. It merely criticizes our proposal in the abstract. Avin is mistaken about a number of points: 1 Of course an ideal funding system must be as...