§ Mr. SawfordTo ask the President of the Board of Trade what systems are in use to evaluate the quality of research material produced using funding from the research councils. [46838]
§ Mr. BattleThe Research Councils operate a range of systems to evaluate the quality of research that they fund, commensurate with the aims of the research and level of funding.
At the individual project grant level, the Research Councils operate a system of peer review and grading of final scientific reports. In addition, project grants which result in publication in a scientific journal are automatically peer reviewed by the wider scientific community.
At the programme level (groups of projects in a related area), projects are additionally reviewed together and the added value of the combined research assessed by peer review.