The real cost of the NSERC peer review is less than 5% of a proposed baseline grant.
A recent publication in this journal (Gordon and Poulin, 2009) argues that the cost of the NSERC peer review exceeds the cost of giving every researcher a $30,000 baseline grant. However, the authors overestimated the ratio of peer review expenses to baseline grant cost by a factor of 26. The real cost of peer review is less than 5% of the baseline grant amount.
Roorda
Sjoerd
S
Departement de Physique, Universite de Montréal, Quebec, Canada. sjoerd.roorda@umontreal.ca
D002170:Canada; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D005380:Financing, Government / Q000191:economics*; D017712:Peer Review, Research; D012109:Research Support as Topic / Q000191:economics*