Conduct the Peer Review

ORAU maintains a Flexible, Structured Approach to Conducting the Peer Review

Advancing opportunities for scientific and technical research is a fundamental aspect of Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ (ORAU) mission. We are the primary coordinator of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science peer reviews and work with a number of other federal and state agencies to provide an independent and objective review process that supports decision makers as they select which research to fund and support.

Conducting a successful peer review requires implementing a flexible, yet structured process to ensure that customers acquire the information necessary to make informed decisions. This allows reviewers to participate in postal reviews where evaluations are submitted with or without group discussion, or in panel reviews in which the reviewers meet in person to discuss evaluations.

No matter how the actual review takes shape, we ensure that it is conducted in a professional manner and with a high degree of process integrity.

Our customers receive results in a timely manner and appreciate the superior level of customer service we provide by minimizing the administrative burden, coordinating travel and processing travel reimbursements, providing on-site honoraria payments, and responding with flexibility to unanticipated situations.

Some of the different scientific peer review methods we implement include:

• Varied size of reviews—ranging from one proposal to hundreds of proposals in a single review.
• Varied complexity of reviews—such as a single panel, several concurrent panels, or series of multiple panels.
• Varied purposes—including research proposals, reports of in-process research, reports of completed research, scientific review assessments, poster sessions and abstracts.
• Varied locations—while many of the reviews are conducted in the Washington, D.C., area, we are flexible and can conduct reviews at almost any location.