Meetings that matter: the dual benefits of panel peer review

Abstract Grant peer review panels constitute a central mechanism for distributing competitive research funding, yet how such panels add value to assessments remains understudied. This exploratory analysis demonstrates that panel review can add value by increasing the extent of systematic over heuristic information processing, potentially resulting in different review outcomes than that which aggregation of individual reviews produces. On the one hand, the prospect of panel discussion can influence individual application processing, as panellists, motivated by reputational concerns, carry out more systematic individual reviews. On the other hand, panel discussion can pool and quality check panellists’ assessments, contributing further to systematic information processing. However, the extent of these benefits depends on the characteristics of the review task. The implications of these findings for review process design are examined.