The reliability of scientific grant review for manuscript: A cross-disciplinary investigation

The validity of peer review of scientific publications and the standards by which scientists evaluate the work of their colleagues are reexamined, with an emphasis on the persistently low levels of dependability reported. Grant reviewers tend to agree on things that are less deserving of financing than those that are scientifically beneficial. This seems to rely on how wide and diffuse a subject (or subfield) is, such as cross-disciplinary physics, vast disciplines of medicine, cultural anthropology, or social psychology, or how narrow and concentrated it is (e.g., nuclear physics, medical specialty areas, physical anthropology, and behavioral neuroscience). The considerable correlation between referee recommendations and editing decisions and the large difference in application rejection rates suggest that reviewers and editors agree more on acceptance than rejection in the former. Several suggestions are made to enhance the reliability and caliber of peer review, and further study is needed, especially in the physical sciences. 

The situation seems to be very different in the important astrophysics and astronomy publications. Only about a third of rejected manuscripts eventually get published in other journals. This finding is supported by the belief that, in contrast to social and medical professionals, astronomers and astrophysicists are more prone to believe that their work that has been rejected does not merit publishing elsewhere. This may indicate greater agreement on evaluation standards in well-defined areas of the physical sciences than in smaller, more specialized areas of the same field (such as general physics or cross-disciplinary physics) or in the more public areas of medicine or behavioral science that have been previously investigated. 

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