British Academy trials awarding research grants by lottery

The British Academy will trial the UK’s first major ”research lottery” after announcing that applications to its small grants scheme which pass a quality test will be selected at random for funding.

In a bold break from peer-review tradition in the UK, the humanities and social sciences funder will trial a new “partial randomisation trial” in which scholars who apply for grants of up to £10,000 will see their projects screened by evaluators to ensure they are viable before suitable applications are chosen on the basis of a lottery. Typically, research applications are ranked based on excellence.

The academy is only the second UK research funder to experiment with this type of allocation, following a smaller trial by the Natural Environment Research Council this year, though the three-year pilot is the most significant trial to date. Last year the funder’s small grants scheme allocated £1.4 million to 160 research projects, supporting academics at 64 universities.