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Assigning evaluators to research grant applications: the case of Slovak Research and Development Agency

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Abstract

Peer evaluation of research grant applications is a crucial step in the funding decisions of many science funding agencies. Funding bodies take various measures to increase the independence and quality of this process, sometimes leading to difficult combinatorial problems. We propose a novel method based on network flow theory to find assignments of evaluators to grant applications that obey the rules formulated by the Slovak Research and Development Agency.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by Grants 1/410/11 and 1/0479/12 of the Slovak grant agency VEGA (Cechlárová, Potpinková), by OTKA K108383 and the ELTE-MTA Egerváry Research Group (Fleiner) and by the Operational Program Education and Research funded by the European Social Fund, grant Education at UPJŠ Heading towards Excellent European Universities, ITMS project code: 26110230056. The authors are also grateful to the anonymous referee for careful reading and constructive comments that helped to improve the presentation of the paper.

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Correspondence to Katarína Cechlárová.

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Cechlárová, K., Fleiner, T. & Potpinková, E. Assigning evaluators to research grant applications: the case of Slovak Research and Development Agency. Scientometrics 99, 495–506 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1187-1

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