Reviewed: May 2025
Every five years, AMRC assesses our member's expert review processes against our membership requirements and our six principles of expert review.
AMRC members must use expert review to make robust funding decisions. To help them achieve this we provide principles and guidance as well as assessing their expert review processes when they join and in a five-yearly audit.
All AMRC member charities must:
Abide by and apply the principles of expert review to their processes of awarding research funding. This includes when funding in partnership.
Use a process of expert review which incorporates a stage in which:
At least two experts review each application in detail and;
At least five experts consider this in-depth review and discuss the relative merits (scientific and otherwise) of applications to give guidance to the charity on what to fund.
Undertake long-term review of funding where funding has been awarded for a period longer than five years through a single award to a project, institute, centre, location, individual or team. In these instances, alongside applying the six AMRC principles of expert review, which assess the ongoing quality of the work funded, you must also review whether the direction of this investment still represents the best strategic use of your funding. This review must take place at a sensible mid-point of the funding period, no longer than five years after funding was awarded, whichever is sooner. Where relevant this funding must also be reviewed every five years thereafter. We advise our members to use this flow-chart to establish whether these requirements apply to you.
Read our principles and guidance
Expert review, also known as peer review, is the assessment of the quality and value of research applications by independent experts to guide research funding.
Experts include individuals with relevant knowledge or experience in a particular subject area. They can include academic researchers, clinicians, industry representatives and regulators as well as patients, people with lived experience, service users, carers and loved ones, donors of tissues cells and data, and other interested members of the public where appropriate.
The way experts are used to support decision making may differ from one charity to another, as well as between funding streams or grants calls within an individual charity.
Expert review is recognised as the most robust and rigorous way to decide what research to fund. For medical research charities, expert advice helps trustees to ensure charity funding is used effectively, and maintains the credibility of the charities' contribution to research, the research system and the public.
Properly conducted, expert review allows charities to support high quality research, maximise the impact of their funding, and deliver changes that really matter to their communities.
External organisations consider AMRC membership a hallmark of quality in research funding. It gives assurance that the expert review standards of a charity are rigorous and reliable and can be used to confirm eligibility for government funding schemes such as:
the Charity Research Support Fund (CRSF)
Research Part B Cost funding for studies in the NHS
the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Non-commercial Partner status.
The process of expert review may follow a basic pathway like the one illustrated below. This can be supplemented with additional stages that charities can use, alone or in combination. Regardless of the pathway the principles must be applied.
We support our members in experimenting with and using innovative methods of peer review. Click the button below to explore innovative expert review methods and how to apply our principles to them.
Innovative expert review
If you have any questions about this topic or information to share, please get in touch with our Audit Team at [email protected]