New agency is a chance for new voices to be heard

The legitimacy of UK Research and Innovation’s decisions will depend on when and how it uses peer review, says Gemma Derrick.

Earlier this year, after a particularly heated conference panel on whether metrics could surpass peer review, the head of evaluation at a major European funding agency came up to me. “What exactly,” he asked me, “are the advantages of peer review?”

The question felt strange, considering that peer review is used by journals and funding agencies worldwide, and determines the distribution of such enormous amounts of money. As one of the last bastions of academic self-governance, we hold onto peer review as the gold standard. Other assessment methods are judged on their ability to replicate its outcomes, and are deemed unworthy if they don’t.