Peer review
Assessment of applications by people with relevant expertise, usually external to the funder, scoring against published criteria. It is how most competitive research and federal programmes decide, and it is why the criteria in a notice are worth reading closely.
Part of the GrantTrove grant funding glossary — one entry for every field the catalogue stores.
Also called Merit review · Review panel
In detail
Reviewers are typically volunteers reading many applications in a compressed window. That is a fact about the process rather than a complaint: an application that requires careful reading to be understood is being read under conditions that do not allow it.
Scores are usually aggregated and then moderated by the funder against portfolio considerations, which is why the highest-scoring application is not always the funded one.
Against eligibility screening
Screening removes applications that fail a stated requirement, mechanically and before review. Peer review judges the ones that survive. Nothing on a record predicts a review outcome, and we publish no scoring, no fit score and no likelihood — we hold what the funder published, not a forecast of what it will decide.
How GrantTrove stores it
- `application_effort` records how heavy a submission looks where a notice indicates it. It is a cost signal, not a prediction of success.
- The matching tools compare a record’s stated fields against what you tell them and show which fields matched, rather than producing a score whose basis is invisible.
Common questions
Do you predict whether I will win?
No. We hold what the funder published; a success prediction would be a number with nothing behind it.
Are review criteria published?
On federal notices, almost always. On foundation calls, frequently not.
Does the top score always win?
No. Funders moderate against portfolio and programme considerations.