Partial and particularistic: grant peer review panels evaluating interdisciplinarity

Abstract There are indications that the degree of interdisciplinarity in grant proposals correlates negatively with funding success. However, insight into how this competitive disadvantage is produced is limited. This study provides an exploratory analysis of the challenges interdisciplinary research proposals face in review processes, building on extensive observations of grant review panels and interviews with panellists in a wide variety of funding organizations. Results suggest that individual assessments are partial, with a tendency towards cognitive particularism. The organizational framework and panel interaction potentially perpetuate and even reinforce these individual tendencies. The implications of these findings for review process design and their potential to explain the contrasting results in extant research on cognitive particularism are examined.