From proposal to decision

Step one: peer review

When a proposal arrives, a staff member at the DFG Head Office selects qualified reviewers, researchers in the field, who assess its scientific quality. The DFG states that scientific quality is the only criterion that counts towards its funding decisions.

Step two: the review boards

The reviews then go to a review board, one of the DFG’s statutory bodies. The board looks at the proposal in the wider context of its discipline, comparing it with others, and its assessment forms the basis for the funding decision. A separate unit at the Head Office checks that the procedure was followed correctly.

Step three: the decision

The final decision is taken by the Joint Committee, which brings together researchers and representatives of government; researchers always hold the majority. Afterwards, applicants receive the reviews in anonymised form, so they can see how their proposal was judged.

Why it is built this way

The steps are separated on purpose: individual reviewers judge one proposal, a review board compares proposals across a field, and the Joint Committee, with a majority of researchers, decides. More about the organisation itself is on The German Research Foundation.