NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
This work was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Contract No. DE-FC01-94EW54069. All opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Energy.
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COMMITTEE ON THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY-OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY'S PEER REVIEW PROGRAM
C. HERB WARD, Chair,
Rice University, Houston, Texas
BARRY BOZEMAN,
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
RADFORD BYEPLY, JR.,
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (retired), Boulder, Colorado
LINDA A. CAPUANO,
AlliedSignal Aerospace, San Jose, California
RICHARD A. CONWAY,
Union Carbide Corporation (retired), South Charleston, West Virginia
THOMAS A. COTTON,
JK Research Associates, Vienna, Virginia
FRANK P. CRIMI,
Lockheed Martin Advanced Environmental Systems Company (retired), Saratoga, California
JOHN C. FOUNTAIN,
State University of New York, Buffalo
DAVID T. KINGSBURY,
Chiron Corporation, Emeryville, California
GARETH THOMAS,
University of California, Berkeley
Staff
GREGORY SYMMES, Study Director*
SUSAN B. MOCKLER, Research Associate
ERIKA L. WILLIAMS, Research Assistant/Senior Project Assistant
ROBIN L. ALLEN, Senior Project Assistant
BOARD ON RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT
MICHAEL C. KAVANAUGH, Chair,
Malcolm Pirnie, Inc., Oakland, California
B. JOHN GARRICK, Vice-Chair,
PLG, Inc., Newport Beach, California
JOHN F. AHEARNE,
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, and Duke University, Research Triangle Park and Durham, North Carolina
JEAN M. BAHR,
University of Wisconsin, Madison
SOL BURSTEIN,
Wisconsin Electric Power (retired), Milwaukee
ANDREW P. CAPUTO,
Natural Resources Defense Council, Washington, D.C.
MELVIN W. CARTER,
Georgia Institute of Technology (emeritus), Atlanta
PAUL P. CRAIG,
University of California (emeritus), Davis
MARY R. ENGLISH,
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
DARLEANE C. HOFFMAN,
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, California
JAMES H. JOHNSON, JR.,
Howard University, Washington, D.C.
JAMES O. LECKIE,
Stanford University, Stanford, California
JANE C.S. LONG,
University of Nevada, Reno
CHARLES MCCOMBIE,
NAGRA, Wettingen, Switzerland
ROBERT MEYER,
Keystone Scientific, Inc., Fort Collins, Colorado
D. WARNER NORTH,
Decision Focus, Inc., Mountain View, California
PAUL SLOVIC,
Decision Research, Eugene, Oregon
MARY LOU ZOBACK,
U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California
NRC Staff
KEVIN D. CROWLEY, Director
ROBERT S. ANDREWS, Senior Staff Officer
KARYANIL T. THOMAS, Senior Staff Officer
THOMAS E. KIESS, Staff Officer
SUSAN B. MOCKLER, Research Associate
ERIKA L. WILLIAMS, Research Assistant
TONI GREENLEAF, Administrative Associate
ROBIN L. ALLEN, Senior Project Assistant
PATRICIA A. JONES, Senior Project Assistant
ANGELA R. TAYLOR, Project Assistant
COMMISSION ON GEOSCIENCES, ENVIRONMENT, AND RESOURCES
GEORGE M. HORNBERGER, Chair,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville
PATRICK R. ATKINS,
Aluminum Company of America, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
JAMES P. BRUCE,
Canadian Climate Program Board, Ottawa, Ontario
WILLIAM L. FISHER,
University of Texas, Austin
JERRY F. FRANKLIN,
University of Washington, Seattle
THOMAS E. GRAEDEL,
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
DEBRA KNOPMAN,
Progressive Foundation, Washington, D.C.
KAI N. LEE,
Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts
PERRY L. MCCARTY,
Stanford University, Stanford, California
JUDITH E. MCDOWELL,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
RICHARD A. MESERVE,
Covington & Burling, Washington, D.C.
S. GEORGE PHILANDER,
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
RAYMOND A. PRICE,
Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario
THOMAS C. SCHELLING,
University of Maryland, College Park
ELLEN SILBERGELD,
University of Maryland Medical School, Baltimore
VICTORIA J. TSCHINKEL,
Landers and Parsons, Tallahassee, Florida
E-AN ZEN,
University of Maryland, College Park
NRC Staff
MYRON UMAN, Acting Executive Director
GREGORY SYMMES, Assistant Executive Director
JEANETTE SPOON, Administrative Officer
SANDI FITZPATRICK, Administrative Associate
MARQUITA SMITH, Administrative Assistant/Technology Analyst
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Preface
In March 1996, the National Research Council's Committee on Environmental Management Technologies (CEMT) recommended that the Department of Energy (DOE)-Office of Science and Technology (OST) develop and apply a standardized, rigorous, and independent external peer review process to all of its technology development programs (NRC, 1996). A subsequent report by the General Accounting Office (GAO, 1996) echoed these findings. As a result, in September 1996 OST instituted a new program to perform peer reviews of technologies (or groups of technologies) at various stages of development. Shortly thereafter, OST requested that the National Research Council form a committee to evaluate the effectiveness of its new program and to make specific recommendations to improve it, if appropriate. In particular, the committee was asked to review the following:
- internal procedures used by OST to identify the need for timely peer review of projects and programs;
- structures, protocols, and procedures for obtaining peer reviews of OST projects and programs, including who decides what will be peer reviewed, what criteria for peer review are used, and when in the R&D process peer review is requested; and
- feedback of peer review results into program management and development decisions.
The committee was directed to compare OST's practices to generally accepted norms for scientific and technical peer review, including practices for selection of peer reviewers and screening for bias and conflict of interest.
This is the first of two reports to be prepared by this committee on OST's new peer review program. OST requested this interim report to provide a preliminary assessment of the program. In particular, OST asked the committee to consider whether it is moving in the right direction toward the implementation of a credible, effective, and defensible peer review program. In its final report, the committee will provide a more detailed assessment of OST's peer review program after its first complete annual cycle. The final report will develop a general framework for evaluating the level of development (or "maturity level") of a peer review program, focusing on specific components of the peer review process.
Another NRC Committee, the Committee on Prioritization and Decision Making in the Department of Energy-Office of Science and Technology, is currently conducting a parallel review of the decision-making process in OST's technology-development program. One aspect of its work will be to examine the role and importance of peer reviews in OST's decision-making process. Our committee therefore has focused its work on OST's peer review program itself (including the peer review results used as an input to decision making), but has not addressed OST's decision-making process explicitly.
In conducting this study, the committee has been briefed on the newly instituted peer review program by OST staff at three committee meetings. The committee wishes to thank Gerald Boyd, acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology, in particular, for meeting with the committee at two of its meetings. In addition, Jef Walker, Anibal Taboas,
Texas Chee, and Miles Dionisio were very helpful in providing requested materials, in briefing the committee on various aspects of the new peer review program, for sharing various "lessons learned" about the peer review program, and for coordinating briefings by other relevant DOE staff. They also helped facilitate committee members' observations of a number of the peer reviews. The committee also would like to thank the staff of the Institute for Regulatory Science (RSI) and representatives from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)—most notably, Alan Moghissi and Ernest Daman—for arranging for the committee to observe selected peer reviews, for providing the committee with draft peer review reports, and for sharing their thoughts on the OST's peer review program.
In addition to briefings by DOE, RSI, and ASME, the committee also heard from representatives from other organizations that utilize and/or conduct peer reviews. The committee wishes to thank all of the invited speakers who made presentations to the committee on peer review practices in their organizations, specifically, Dorothy Patton and Jack Puzak from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), David Morrison from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Don Barnes from EPA's Science Advisory Board, Robert Marianelli from the Department of Energy-Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Donald R. Beem from the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and Carl Guastaferro from Information Dynamics, Inc. The latter two organizations have conducted reviews for federal agencies for many years. Although the mission of each of these federal organizations is distinct from that of OST, these presentations illustrated that many of the fundamental characteristics of successful peer review programs are applicable to a diverse range of objectives, from reviewing proposals to reviewing ongoing technology projects.
This report could not have been completed without the able assistance of National Research Council staff. Robin Allen provided meeting and committee support during the early stages of this study; Erika Williams assumed these responsibilities after the first committee meeting and also helped compile committee members' written contributions into coherent drafts. Susan Mockler prepared meeting minutes, conducted research, and edited several drafts of the report. This report also benefited significantly from the writing skills and insight of study director Gregory Symmes.
One of the challenges of this study has been that OST's peer review program has been somewhat of a "moving target" during the study period, as OST has made a number of changes in the program during the past eight months. Although this has made the committee's work more difficult at times, it reflects a positive commitment within OST to modify the peer review program as potential improvements are recognized. The committee offers this interim report to further advance this improvement process and looks forward to providing a more formal assessment in its final report.
C. HERB WARD, CHAIR