Essays

Are the two heads better than one even if one is a cabbage? – memories and reflections on the project peer review practices in Croatia

BERISLAV MOMČILOVIĆ ; Institute for Research and Development of the Sustainable Eco Systems, 10 000 Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

The scientific project (SP) peer review process (PRP) is reviewed in the context of an virtual project and with the aim to identify the key stumbling blocks in the current practices of such SP reviewing in Croatia. Current practice of the PRP in Croatia is grossly non transparent and reminds of an »old boys club«. It’s not known how the project reviewers are chosen and assigned to review certain subject area, there are no publicly available guidelines of what is considered to be important for such a project PRP and there
are no guidelines on how to summarize and quantify the end result of such the PRP. The perennial problem of conflict of interest among the peers competing for the same funding sources is neither addressed nor resolved. The results of the reviewing are not sent to the principal investigators and researchers have no chance to confront the unfair project reviewing, or improve and resubmit their project following the reviewer comments. How the quality of the project assessment is transformed into the funds allocated to the project is mystery, and per capita distribution appears to be the decade
followed practice regardless of the proclaimed political declarations in support of the scientific project merits. The role of local ethic committees (LEC) on human subject research in project submission procedure is also critically evaluated since there is a tendency for some LEC to act as a self-imposed pre-project reviewer even before the regular PRP. By virtue of having a power of final project submission approval, LEC may impose censoring of the strictly scientific issues. Therefore, there should be a chance to appeal such LEC practice and what is now grossly limited by the time frame
of the project submission deadlines. Peer reviewing would always be subjective to a certain extent, but the excessive and/or unlimited subjectivity of the reviewer opinion and respective allotted funds should be prevented by carefully structured guidelines and full transparency of the whole process of the project peer-reviewing and funding.

Keywords

Research project peer review; guidelines; process transparency; conflict of interest; funds allocation; local ethic committees

Hrčak ID:

67233

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/67233

Publication date:

31.3.2011.

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