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PLOS One logoLink to PLOS One
. 2023 Jan 20;18(1):e0280480. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0280480

Supporting grant reviewers through the scientometric ranking of applicants

Balázs Győrffy 1,2,3,*, Boglarka Weltz 1,3, István Szabó 4
Editor: Fausto Cavallaro5
PMCID: PMC9858403  PMID: 36662799

Abstract

Introduction

Comparing the scientific output of different researchers applying for a grant is a tedious work. In Hungary, to help reviewers to rapidly rank the scientific productivity of a researcher, a grant decision support tool was established and is available at www.scientometrics.org. In the present study, our goal was to assess the impact of this decision support tool on grant review procedures.

Methods

The established, publicly available scientometric portal uses four metrics, including the H-index, the yearly citations without self-citations, the number of publications in the last five years, and the number of highly cited publications of a researcher within eleven independent scientific disciplines. Publication-age matched researchers are then ranked and the results are provided to grant reviewers. A questionnaire was completed by reviewers regarding utilization of the scientometric ranking system. The outcome of the grant selection was analyzed by comparing scientometric parameters of applying and funded applicants. We compared three grant allocation rounds before to two grant allocation rounds after the introduction of the portal.

Results

The scientometric decision support tool was introduced in 2020 to assist grant selection in Hungary and all basic research grant applicants (n = 6,662) were screened. The average score of funded proposals compared to submitted proposals increased by 94% after the introduction of the ranking. Correlation between ranking scores and actual grant selection was strong in life and material sciences but some scientific panels had opposite correlation in social sciences and humanities. When comparing selection outcome to H-index across all applicants, both type I and type II errors decreased. All together 540 reviewers provided feedback representing all eleven scientific disciplines and 83.05% of the reviewers (especially younger reviewers) found the ranking useful.

Conclusions

The scientometric decision support tool can save time and increase transparency of grant review processes. The majority of reviewers found the ranking-based scientometric analysis useful when assessing the publication performance of an applicant.

Introduction

Research and development (R&D) represents systematic creative activity done in the area of science and technology with the purpose of increasing the level of knowledge [1]. Worldwide, 1.3 million scientific documents were published in 2000 –this number almost tripled to 3.7 million in 2020. A country’s R&D performance can be measured in various ways. The SCImago Country Rank (http://www.scimagojr.com) is a public database providing journal- and country-specific publication measures. SCImago is based on the Scopus database and provides a ranking for all scientific journals by assigning them into four quartiles where Q1 is the best and Q4 is the weakest cohort. It also contains aggregate data useful for comparing the scientific output of different countries. Decision makers and also the broader R&D community employs in many cases some other figures, like the GERD (Gross domestic Expenditure on R&D), the total number of publications, the number of researchers, or the number of patents.

What is the scientific position of Hungary according to these major indicators? In terms of R&D spending, Hungary is standing in a decent position, not far from the EU average (1.61% in Hungary vs 2% EU average according to Eurostat). According to the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, the total number of researchers shows a steady increase, from 53,911 researchers in 2010 to 73,412 researchers in 2020. However, when analyzing SCImago data for Hungary, a steady drop in ranking position can be observed in the last two decades (Fig 1). Although the total number of publications grows, the pace of scientific output increase lags behind similar EU countries.

Fig 1. Selected countries in the SCImago country rank index compared to Hungary.

Fig 1

While most Eastern European countries were able to maintain their overall ranking, Hungary consistently reached lower scores in the last twenty years. Some countries were able to achieve significant growth.

A country’s performance is the sum of the outputs of all national researchers. Therefore, on the level of individual researchers, especially in the case of grant schemes, which provide funding based on researcher quality, it is of utmost importance that the supported projects should result in excellent and frequent publications wherever possible. The National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NRDIO), as the main funding organization for individual researchers’ projects in Hungary is working closely with more than 5,000 reviewers for its grant applications. This Office introduced a system that shows scientific performance based on the current international standards, which motivates both the reviewers and the researchers to focus even more on research impact. According to the Leiden Manifesto, “decision-making about science must be based on high-quality processes that are informed by the highest quality data”[2]. With this in mind, the NRDIO adopted a reviewer support tool (www.scientometrics.org) that shows the reviewers the individual applicants performance based on currently available metrics. Notably, the implemented system differs from available tools generally used for the evaluation of scientific output (like the H-index, citation count, or number of publications), because it provides an age-matched ranking. The age-matched ranking can provide similarly high scores for younger and older researchers. The tool’s solitary ranking is based on the concept that “simplicity is a virtue in an indicator because it enhances transparency” [2].

In the current study, two years after its introduction, our goal was to assess the impact of this decision support tool on grant review procedures. The tool is assembled based on the results of our previous studies, in which we analyzed individual researchers’ output in relation to scientometric parameters and reviewer scores [3], to discipline-specific past performance [4], and to the different age of the scientists [5]. In the present study, we aimed to determine the effects of the established decision support tool on applicant selection and on the reviewers’ satisfaction.

Methods

Publication and citation data

Publication and citation data for Hungarian researchers was obtained from the Hungarian Scientific Work Archive (MTMT, www.mtmt.hu). This user-maintained repository comprises all research papers, books, proceeding, and other publications of Hungarian researchers as well as all citations these received. Of note, unlike other sources like Google Scholar, the citation data in MTMT is catalogued to list self-citations and citations without self-citations for each publication. Self-citation occurs in case there is an overlap between the author lists of the cited and the citing document. Birth year of the researchers was downloaded from the doktori.hu database.

The scientometrics.org system

The scientometrics.org platform uses three principal parameters to determine scientometric output for a selected researcher. These include the H-index, the number of citations received in the last complete calendar year, and the number of publications in the last five calendar years (Fig 2A). The H-index is determined using all citations received for all publications. For the citation parameter, only citations without self-citations received in the last calendar year are included for all publications. The number of publications is determined differently in each scientific discipline: all publications (e.g. journal articles regardless of ranking, books, book chapters, and abstracts) are counted in humanities, only Q ranked papers are considered in economics, only Q1 ranked publications are used in mathematics, and only first- or last-authored Q1 ranked publications are utilized in all other disciplines (Fig 2B). The disciplines were set up using the classification of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences as described in our previous publication [5]. For each parameter, the absolute values were computed for each researcher for each year. The initial year is set as the year of the first publication, and the number of years passed since this year is termed the researcher’s “publication age”. Finally, researchers are ranked across researchers with the same publication age within the same scientific section into percentiles. Ties are handled by using the median rank for each included researcher. To increase simplicity, the average of the three percentiles is computed (in this, the number of publications has a double weight), and this final score is transformed into deciles between D1 and D10, where D1 is the best.

Fig 2. Setup of the scientometrics.org decision support tool.

Fig 2

The included parameters (A), the scientific discipline-specific inclusion of publications (B), the distribution of researchers across the different scientific disciplines in the reference database (C), the distribution of age across the entire database (D), and representative example of the provided ranking for a randomly selected researcher (E).

The web-based scientometric decision support portal was adopted in 2020 to assist grant selection and is available at www.scientometrics.org (Fig 2C). A snapshot of the system is deposited at www.tudomanymetria.com. The tudomanymetria.com site is only updated once a year, right after the yearly deadline of the basic research grants. This enables the reproducible comparison of researchers without the influence of new publications or citations attained after the grant cutoff date.

Reviewer feedback

With one and a half thousand grant applications evaluated yearly, the basic research grant of the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund is the most widely distributed grant available in Hungary. Since 2020, all basic research grant applicants of the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund are screened by using the scientomterics.org algorithm and the results is provided to grant reviewers in a table format.

Last year, a web questionnaire was conducted after completing the yearly review round for basic research grants. The questionnaire was sent to all reviewers electronically. In addition to the general data including position and scientific discipline, an assessment of the decision support tool was requested. Reviewer responses were collected anonymously. Ethical approval for the research was granted by the Institutional Ethical Board under the number NKFIH-2729-6/2020.

Statistical analysis

A detailed description of the statistical pipeline for determining a researcher’s total score is provided above. During the system setup we assessed different parameters and used Spearman rank correlation to evaluate the relationship between continuous variables (e.g. publication age and biological age). Percentiles were used to rank and compare the total score values of submitted and funded applications. Median and mean of all total score values in different cohorts were computed to measure the magnitude of the difference. Statistical significance when comparing continuous variables between submitted and funded proposals was determined using Kruskall-Wallis or Mann-Whitney tests. Type I errors and type II errors were computed as described previously [6]. The cutoff for statistical significance was set at p<0.05. Country ranking data was obtained from the SCImago database (https://www.scimagojr.com/). Descriptive usage statistics data for website visitor trends was obtained using the Universal Analytics module available in Google analytics (https://analytics.google.com).

Results

The decision support tool

The scientometrics.org decision support is currently available for 41,448 researchers. Ranking is based on 17,071 researchers who declared completeness of their MTMT record. Of these, 1,427 belong to language and literature (8.36%), 2,266 to philosophy and history (13.27%), 599 to mathematics (3.51%), 1,209 to agricultural sciences (7.08%), 2,476 to medicine (14.50%), 2,191 to engineering (12.83%), 1,102 to chemistry (6.46%), 1,680 to biology (9.84%), 2,732 to economics and law (16%), 693 to earth sciences (4.06%), and 696 to physics (4.08%). The graphical analysis output of scientometrics.org is summarized in Fig 2C.

Scientometrics.org was originally developed by using the biological age of the researchers. However, a separate database is needed to keep a record of the birth year for all researchers. For this reason, we tested the utilization of the year of the first publication. The two values had a very high correlation with a Spearman rank correlation coefficient of 0.92 (p<1e-16, n = 16,497). Hence, the year of the first publication was used in all subsequent analyses when determining the researcher’s age. The initial version of scientometrics.org also included an option to use the year of the PhD as the reference point. However, this was discontinued because when evaluated by the grant reviewers (see below), over 90% of responders agreed with the cancellation of this feature.

Utilization in basic research grant evaluation

All together 6,662 basic research grant applications were submitted to the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund between 2017–2021 and 1,960 of these received funding. These numbers translate to a success rate of 29.4% for individual applications. The D ranking as well as the total score values of each applicant were provided for reviewers since 2020.

We computed the total score values for all researchers, including all who submitted their application since 2017. The mean total score of submitted applications was 68.2 and the median score was 76. The mean total score of funded applications before the introduction of the scienomterics.org system (2017–2019) was 76.3 and the median score was 82. After providing the D ranking and the total score values for researchers (2020–2021), the mean total score increased to 82.2 and the median score to 86 (Fig 3A).

Fig 3. Total score values of basic grant proposals submitted before and after the introduction of the decision support tool (between 2017–2019 and between 2020–2021, respectively).

Fig 3

Aggregate data for all submitted and funded proposals (A), the difference in the average total score value between submitted and funded proposals in each year (B), and the difference between those who received a single funding vs those who received funding a second time (C).

We computed the difference between the total score values of submitted and funded proposals for each year separately (Fig 3B). Overall, the difference in total score values increased by 94% when comparing the difference between submitted and funded proposals before and after the introduction of the scientometric decision support tool (4.81 vs 9.33, p = 0.03). Notably, even before the introduction of the scientometrics.org system, the difference between the submitted and funded total score values had a small (statistically not significant) improvement in each year (Fig 3B).

During the five-year period of 2017–2021, 48 applicants received a grant from the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund two times. The average total score value of these researchers was significantly higher than the average total score values of all other funded researchers (77.5 vs. 84, p = 0.0068, Fig 3C).

Type I and type II error

Peer review decisions were previously validated using the H-index as a reference [6]. In this, grant applicants are assigned into four groups. First, those with a H-index over the median (“high”) and approved application represent a correct decision. Similarly, those with a low H-index and rejected application also correspond to a correct decision. Funded applicants with a low H-index correspond to a type I error, while rejected applicants with high H-index correspond to a type II error (see Table 1A). In this analysis, the number of applicants was normalized to correct for the 26% increase in funding through the 2020–21 period. During the computation of type I and type II errors all applicants were analyzed within their respective scientific discipline, and the final outcomes were aggregated for all researchers. When comparing 2017–2019 grant review rounds to 2020–2021 review rounds, type I error decreased from 10.7% to 8.9% and type II error decreased from 25.5% to 23.7%–for details, see Table 1B and 1C.

Table 1. Type I error and type II error when comparing the decision outcome and the applicant’s H-index before and after the introduction of the decision support tool.

Overview of type I and type II errors (A), proportion of type I and type II errors between 2017–2019 (B) and proportion of type I and type II errors between 2020–2021 (C). For more details about type I and type II errors see [6].

(A) Application outcome
Funded Rejected
High output (H-index over median) Correct Type II error
Low output (H-index below median) Type I error Correct
(B) Application outcome (2017–2019)
Funded Rejected
High output (H-index over median) 13.1% 25.5%
Low output (H-index below median) 10.7% 50.6%
(C) Application outcome (2020–2021)
Funded Rejected
High output (H-index over median) 12.9% 23.7%
Low output (H-index below median) 8.9% 54.6%

Panel differences

The difference between the submitted and funded proposals was not equal across different scientific disciplines. We grouped the different panels into three disciplines (material sciences, life sciences, and humanities and social sciences) and computed the difference between the total score values of submitted and funded proposals in each panel separately. After the introduction of the scientometrics.org ranking, funded proposals had consistently higher total score values (Fig 4A and 4B). Although the highest difference between submitted and funded proposals was observed in the psychology and education panel (total score difference = 20.27), in two other panels of humanities and social sciences the funded proposals had markedly lower total score values than submitted proposals. In particular, the total score difference in archeology was -9.28 and in linguistics it was -14.74 (Fig 4C).

Fig 4. The difference between the average total score for submitted and funded proposals.

Fig 4

The applicants were grouped according to scientific panels in material sciences (A), in life sciences (B), and in humanities and social sciences (C).

Reviewer feedback

Feedback was provided by all together 540 reviewers representing the eleven scientific sections of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, including language and literature (n = 26, 4.81%), philosophy and history (n = 60, 11.11%), mathematics (n = 19, 3.52%), agricultural sciences (n = 48, 8.89%), medicine (n = 30, 5.56%), engineering (n = 41, 7.59%), chemistry (n = 82, 15.19%), biology (n = 85, 15.74%), economics and law (n = 78, 14.44%), earth sciences (n = 21, 3.89%), and physics (n = 31, 5.74%). The remaining 19 reviewers (3.52%) did not select any of these sections. Notably, the panels of the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund do not exactly overlap with the sections of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Nevertheless, we collected the section memberships of the reviewers as one reviewer can be active in multiple panels. According to the occupation, 15.74% of the reviewers were active as senior lecturer (or adjunct / assistant professor, n = 85), 36.11% were employed as associate professor (or docent / adjunct professor, n = 195), 37.96% were full professors (n = 205), and 9.07% had a different job (n = 49). 1.12% of reviewers did not provide response to this question.

Altogether, 83.05% of reviewers found the ranking valuable. When asking about the utility of the decision support tool, 90.9% of senior lecturers, 86.2% of associate professors and 77.8% of full professors found the platform useful during grant evaluation process (Fig 5).

Fig 5. The majority of reviewers found the ranking-based scientometric analysis useful when assessing the scientometric performance of an applicant.

Fig 5

When stratified by position, a higher proportion of younger researchers (senior lecturers) found the tool useful than older researchers (full professors).

Transparency and usage statistics

An important feature of any tool evaluating researcher output is the transparency and reliability of the analysis. To enable reconstruction of the computational steps, the complete publication record of the investigated researcher is computed and provided for download (see Fig 6 for an example). Besides publication-specific data, the publication record also includes citation data and SCImago ranks for each publication.

Fig 6. The complete publication record for a researcher as assembled by the scientomteric.org site.

Fig 6

In addition to the title, the name of the journal or publisher (in case of book), the number of authors, the number of citations received, publication year and type, lead authorship, and SCImago journal rank are provided. The table delivers an opportunity to control and validate the computation of the scoring parameters.

Usage statistics for scientometrics.org were recorded in January 2022. According to Google Analytics, the weekly number of visitors in this period was 650 with an average session time of five minutes. Of all visitors, 95.2% came from Hungary confirming that the specificity of the platform is restricted to Hungarian researchers. Daily users / monthly users ratio stood at 9.7% and weekly users / monthly users stood at 47.2% reflecting frequent usage of a smaller user community.

Discussion

By evaluating 42,905 grant application reviews for 13,303 applications, we have previously exposed a higher publication output for researchers who already had more publications before grant submission [4]. In particular, while reviewers’ scores had a minimal correlation with subsequent publication output during the course of the grant time, past scientometric performance of the principal investigator including H-index, citations without self-citations, and number of Q1 publications were the strongest predictors of future output. In another study, we evaluated the scientific output of the Momentum grant scheme and found the highest correlation between output and the total number of citations, H-index, and the cumulative impact factor in the two most recent years before grant submission [3]. Similar trends of randomness in grant reviewer scores were also documented by other studies in Australia [7] and the United States [8]. Some have even suggested that a modified lottery for research fund allocation could be advantageous compared to the current system [9]. Finally, we explored whether publication characteristics of various scientific disciplines exhibit age-related trends. We have determined a discipline-specific “Golden Age” when the individual scholarly performance peaks [5]. Surprisingly, the results of this study revealed an unexpected degree of predictability with respect to the Golden Age in most analyzed disciplines.

Based on these observations, a publicly available portal was set up to assist Hungarian grant reviewers. The portal compares four scientometric parameters (H-index, number of citations without self-citations per year, publications in the last five years, and the number of high impact publications in the last ten years) and provides a discipline- and publication age normalized ranking for all Hungarian researchers. The ranking values derived by the portal were provided for all reviewers evaluating proposals submitted to the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund in 2020 and in 2021. The reviewers could use the ranking results as additional information when evaluating the CV of the principal investigator and the submitted research plan. Here, we evaluated the grant selection outcome after the introduction of the scientometric ranking and compared the outcome to previous years. Overall, we observed a significantly higher selection of researchers who had a higher publication output before application submission.

Listing the total score value and the ranking value for each applicant can provide important advantages for reviewers. First of all, researchers with negligible publication record and those with exceptional publication output can be identified as the ranking enables grasping the relative performance of a researcher in an effortless and rapid manner. This provides opportunity to focus scarce resources and time on intermediate applications where the research plan in the submitted application can be the primary basis for decision.

Previously, reducing the workload for grant reviewers was the most important recommendation to improve peer review [10]. In line with this expectation, the acceptance of the decision support tool by the peers was very high. All together 83% of reviewers found the provided ranking useful and in each scientific panel (with the exception of two, archeology and linguistics) the ranking had also a strong correlation with the selection. One might ask why these two panels had an opposite correlation. Notably, the highest weight in deriving the score is based on the number of publications. However, sections in humanities and social sciences do not preferentially publish in peer reviewed international journals [11] leading to failed ranking when considering Q ranked publications only. For this reason, we have switched to include all publications, like book chapters, monographs, journal papers, etc. Similarly, H-index values of five, a typical value twenty years after the first publication in these sections, do not allow reliable assessment of publication impact. A future fine-tuning of parameters will be needed to overcome these limitations.

A common criticism of such a system focusing on numerical publication output is that here quantity is put before quality. Available literature data does not support these opinions. For example, a previous project used a Swedish dataset consisting of 48,000 researchers and their WoS-publications to analyze the relation between productivity and production of highly cited papers [12]. The results show that there is not only a robust correlation between productivity (number of publications) and impact (number of citations received), but that this correlation also holds for the assembly of high impact papers: the more papers, the more high impact papers. According to the authors, to write high impact papers, certain output levels seem to be required–of course the numbers depend on which field is under study. Similar results were obtained in a Canadian study [13]. Here, by using a bulky dataset of disambiguated researchers between 1980 and 2013 (n = 28,078,476), the authors have shown that, on average, the higher the number of papers a researcher publishes, the higher the proportion of these papers are amongst the most cited.

The main function of the described portal is to act as a decision support tool for grant reviewers. A previous European study investigated the predictive validity of grant decision-making, employing a sample of 260 early career grant applications in three social science fields [14]. The authors measured output and impact of the applicants about ten years after grant submission to find out whether the chosen researchers perform ex post better than the non-successful ones. Comparing grantees with non-successful applicants with the best performance, predictive validity was absent. This also suggests that the common belief that reviewers in selection panels are good in recognizing outstanding talents is incorrect. Furthermore, the study also investigated the value of the grants on careers and has shown that grant recipients had a much better career than the non-granted applicants.

With this in mind one could speculate about employing a grant selection solely on the basis of scientometric parameters. However, we cannot suggest this approach. The reason for this is that such analysis tools are prone for optimization [15]. For example, the H-index can be easily leveraged by a few targeted self-citations. Employing certain techniques including collusive and coercive citations can be particularly rewarding when incentives like faculty positions, awards, and grants provide long-lasting motivation for these [16]. A recent paper evaluated the employment and also to the misuse of citation metrics [17]. The study established a homogeneous citation database by using the info of quite 100,000 top scientists. The paper described multiple issues like self-citation, citation-farms, and metrics useful for the identification of unethical citation behavior. For example, citation-farms can dramatically inflate one’s scientific output. To enable the investigation of these issues, we have implemented additional parameters including self-citation rate [18], H-index based on self-citation [19], and an algorithm for uncovering citation-farms [17] within the scientometrics.org page.

Scientometrics.org was developed to assess the publication output of individual researchers. As a general rule, a basic research grant of the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund has only one principal investigator. Other researchers can act as participating researchers. Although the website enables the assessment of each individual researcher, there is no option to generate an “aggregate performance assessment” for a group of researchers. A similar task would be the evaluation of entire universities or research institutes. Such aggregate parameters could support the introduction of performance-based funding models for publicly funded research organizations. Such models were previously introduced in several countries like Denmark, Belgium, and Norway [20]. A future extension of scientometrics.org could provide tools for such analyses.

We have to mention a limitation of the utilized approach, as scientometrics can be influenced by internal aspects. As a simple example, in dentistry, if we compare two specialties (e.g. orthodontics [21] versus endodontics [22]), we will have different values. Ultimately, these differences can result in more funding for fields with higher scientometric values. Our use of SCImago journal ranking when determining publication count can help to at least partially abrogate these variances as, even in different specialties, the same proportion of journals will have Q1 rank. A second limitation of the applied methodology is the utilization of a restricted database including Hungarian researchers only: currently, this prevents an assessment on an international scale. Finally, the computed parameters only include citations without self-citations. We have to note, however, that not all self-citations are illegitimate. Including previous papers of the authors in the reference list of a publication can demonstrate the proficiency and expertise of the authors in the topic of the manuscript.

Some initiatives for research assessment in the last two decades evaluate different publication metrics. The most prominent of these are the Open Science Initiative (https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/strategy/strategy-2020-2024/our-digital-future/open-science_en), the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA, https://sfdora.org/read/), and the Leiden Manifesto [2]. These initiatives share a common view that somehow new evaluation systems should be put in place instead of those that are measuring performance solely on metrics. They seem to dismiss all metrics (at least the “older” ones, like journal rankings and H-index [23]), and would rather resort to the reviewers’ opinion in most cases. When metrics appear in their case, most of the time “altmetrics” are mentioned. These incorporate hard to quantify performances as well, like teaching or public outreach. However, to this day, there is no common agreement among researchers on the exact methodology to compute these alternative parameters. At the same time, an altmetric score (a weighted count of all mentions for a publication) has a positive but weak correlation with citation count, at least in health sciences [24]. Until a new research assessment system is in place, the situation in research evaluation is similar to that of the GDP: everybody seems to know and even understand why it’s an ill-suited tool for measuring a country’s performance, but countries are still judged based upon these [25]. In science, the citations and journal rankings thus have a similar role to that of the GDP-figures when discussing the country’s economic performance

In summary, a grant review support tool calculating the scientometric parameters for applicants was introduced in Hungary and here we evaluated the application of this tool after the first two years of usage. With the easily available ranking, a higher proportion of grant applicants with higher scores received funding. When comparing selection outcome to H-index across all applicants, both type I and type II errors decreased after the introduction of the decision support tool. The majority of reviewers (especially younger reviewers) found the ranking-based scientometric decision support tool useful when assessing the scientometric performance of an applicant. One thing can be taken for sure: excellence and impact will remain the cornerstones of researcher evaluation in the future as well, regardless of the alternate methods through which these will be calculated. Therefore, motivating the researchers to publish in a way that it’s likely to have an impact and publish in international papers is a strategy that will hold its place in the future. A prospective follow-up of proposals funded after the introduction of the scientometrics.org ranking will provide evidence regarding any potential improvement of the nation-wide publication output of Hungary.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the support of Elixir Hungary (www.elixir-hungary.org) and thank Viktoria Lakatos for the careful English editing of the manuscript.

Data Availability

All relevant data are within the paper.

Funding Statement

The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

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  • 22.Doğramacı EJ, Rossi-Fedele G. Predictors of societal and professional impact of Endodontology research articles: A multivariate scientometric analysis. International Endodontic Journal. 2022;55: 312–325. doi: 10.1111/iej.13676 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
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Decision Letter 0

Fausto Cavallaro

24 Oct 2022

PONE-D-22-24996Supporting grant reviewers through the scientometric ranking of applicantsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Győrffy,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Fausto Cavallaro, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This is an interesting analysis, though limited to one aspect of a grant application.

Would it be possible that the grant assessment process analysed in your study was biased/skewed by the previous dissemination/previous "good name" of the authors? This then reflected on them receiving more funding?

The authors should discuss

what happens if there are several applicants in a single grant application as the values will differ between investigators?

Is the study per se not important when adjudicating research funding?

Some authors make extensive use of social medial, dissemination in other ways. Would it be fair for these to receive more funding?

Would this system skew research funding to those already better known and not allow new researchers to emerge?

Note that scientometrics will be influenced by internal aspects. A simple example, in dentistry, if you compare 2 specialties (e.g. orthodontics versus endodontics, see papers below), you will have different values. Let alone comparing medicine vs dentistry or medicine vs. engineering. Fields with higher scientometric values will gain more funding.

Doğramacı EJ, Rossi-Fedele G. Predictors of societal and professional impact of Endodontology research articles: A multivariate scientometric analysis. Int Endod J. 2022;55(4):312-325. doi:10.1111/iej.13676

Esma J. Doğramacı, Giampiero Rossi-Fedele. Predictors of societal and professional impact of orthodontic research. A multivariate, scientometric approach in Scientometrics (2021)

Reviewer #2: The authors preseted an interesting application of an grant selection decision support system. The anlysi was done competently however the reults are not clearly presented and the discusion is weak. It seems to me that the "exellence" increase based on new metrics provided by the suport tool is quite logical becouse since 2020 reviewers took those metrics into account, and before that their decision was based mostly on the content of the applications. Similar systems/tools are used by quit a few of coutries, so the authors should review them in the introduction and compare them to the Hungarian system in the discusion. They should also criticaly discuss their findings in the disscusion section. The authors shoud also focus more on the question if the review process improved after the tool introduction

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Peter Kokol

**********

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PLoS One. 2023 Jan 20;18(1):e0280480. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0280480.r002

Author response to Decision Letter 0


26 Oct 2022

Reviewer #1

> This is an interesting analysis, though limited to one aspect of a grant application.

> Would it be possible that the grant assessment process analysed in your study was biased/skewed by the previous dissemination/previous "good name" of the authors? This then reflected on them receiving more funding?

There is a cohort of 48 applicants who received funding a second time as well. A potential reason for this could be indeed the good reputation of the PI. However, when we compared these applicants to the other grant recipients, their average total score was significantly higher (see Figure 3C) supporting the higher publication output of these researchers.

> The authors should discuss what happens if there are several applicants in a single grant application as the values will differ between investigators?

As a general rule, a basic research grant of the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund has only one principal investigator.

Other researchers can act as participating researchers. Currently, there is no option to compute an aggregated score for multiple involved researchers or a cohort of scientists. One of our future goals is to expand the tool so that we can derive aggregate values for groups, universities, or research institutions.

We have extended the manuscript Discussion regarding these issues.

> Is the study per se not important when adjudicating research funding?

We thank the reviewer for noticing this very important missing information.

The grant reviewers received 1) the research plan, 2) the CV of the applicant, and 3) the scientometric ranking provided by the analysis tool. Thus, the selection is not based on the publication parameters only. We extended the manuscript to reference this issue.

> Some authors make extensive use of social medial, dissemination in other ways. Would it be fair for these to receive more funding?

This is another very good suggestion, as there is a positive (but weak) correlation between altmetric scores and citation. We have added this info with a new reference* to the Discussion. As the developed tool does not use on altmetrics, we cannot assess their affect, and as a consequence, we cannot assess whether rewarding these activities could bring additional, measurable benefit for classical citation numbers as well.

* Kolahi J, Khazaei S, Iranmanesh P, Kim J, Bang H, Khademi A. Meta-Analysis of Correlations between Altmetric Attention Score and Citations in Health Sciences. BioMed Research International. 2021;2021: e6680764. doi:10.1155/2021/6680764

> Would this system skew research funding to those already better known and not allow new researchers to emerge?

Better known researchers are generally older. The primary goal of the tool is an age-matched ranking of the researchers. Thus, each researcher is compared to other researchers who have the same publication age. This means, that the very same ranking position can be achieved by a 30 years old and by a 60 years old researcher. This is probably the most important reason why, when stratified by position, a higher proportion of younger researchers found the tool useful than older researchers (see Figure 5.)

> Note that scientometrics will be influenced by internal aspects. A simple example, in dentistry, if you compare 2 specialties (e.g. orthodontics versus endodontics, see papers below), you will have different values. Let alone comparing medicine vs dentistry or medicine vs. engineering. Fields with higher scientometric values will gain more funding.

> Doğramacı EJ, Rossi-Fedele G. Predictors of societal and professional impact of Endodontology research articles: A multivariate scientometric analysis. Int Endod J. 2022;55(4):312-325. doi:10.1111/iej.13676

> Esma J. Doğramacı, Giampiero Rossi-Fedele. Predictors of societal and professional impact of orthodontic research. A multivariate, scientometric approach in Scientometrics (2021)

We extended the Discussion with an additional paragraph describing this issue and we also include the two suggested references.

Reviewer #2

> The authors preseted an interesting application of an grant selection decision support system. The anlysi was done competently however the reults are not clearly presented and the discusion is weak. It seems to me that the "exellence" increase based on new metrics provided by the suport tool is quite logical becouse since 2020 reviewers took those metrics into account, and before that their decision was based mostly on the content of the applications.

We thank the reviewer for the positive remarks and have improved the Discussion at multiple locations to improve quality.

> Similar systems/tools are used by quit a few of coutries, so the authors should review them in the introduction and compare them to the Hungarian system in the discusion.

In principle, all grant agencies use some form of evaluation for research output, mostly based on already available data from Google Scholar, Scopus, Nature index, or WebOfScience. The utilized system has a major advantage over these conventional publication output tools, because it provides an age-normalized ranking. To our knowledge, our system is the only one providing age-normalized rankings. (We would be happy if the reviewer can help us showing countries with similar systems or tools.)

We have extended the introduction with more information about the ranking.

> They should also criticaly discuss their findings in the disscusion section.

A new paragraph was added to the Discussion describing limitations of the tool.

In addition, we already had two other paragraphs about the use of such a tool in decision making. Starting with:

“A common criticism of such a system focusing on numerical publication output is that here quantity is put before quality…”, and

“With this in mind one could speculate about employing a grant selection solely on the basis of scientometric parameters…”

We have not added further extension for these issues, as at these locations we already provide detailed discussion.

> The authors shoud also focus more on the question if the review process improved after the tool introduction

We asked the grant reviewers whether the provided ranking was useful when evaluating the applicants. To this question, the majority of the reviewers selected that the ranking was useful (Figure 5). We did not ask for specification about the usefulness (e.g. faster or easier review process). We will add this dimension in the future, once we make an evaluation using a longer time period of grant review.

Decision Letter 1

Fausto Cavallaro

4 Dec 2022

PONE-D-22-24996R1Supporting grant reviewers through the scientometric ranking of applicantsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Győrffy,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 18 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

  • A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.

  • A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.

  • An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Fausto Cavallaro, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: I Don't Know

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thanks for addressing my comments not sure why I need to write 100 characters here change this feature

Reviewer #3: The manuscript "Supporting grant reviewers through the scientometric ranking of applicants" presents the Hungarian portal www.scientometrics.org and its usage in grant decisions. The manuscript is very descriptive, maybe too desciptive.

Bornmann and Daniel (2007) proposed to calculate type I and type II errors for measuring (dis-) agreement between bibliometric values and peer review decisions. Such calculation of type I and type II errors would be interesting for this dataset.

The authors mention that the portal www.scientometrics.org presents discipline- and time- normalized indicators. The details of the normalization procedure are not presented. Which discipline delineation was used? How were tied researchers handled? How large (in terms of number of researchers) are the groups of discipline and time groups? How do the distributions of the values look like? Normalizations are only useful if the entitied to be normalized are numerous enough. For percentiles and deciles, it is additionally important to have a rather well distribution of the values.

From Figure 2c I think that handling of ties is problematic: More than two thirds of the researchers in this example discipline and age seem to have not a single first/last Q1 article. Why is this example researcher positioned around rank 900? All researchers between ranks 300 and 1500 seem to have not a single first/last Q1 article. This researcher seems to be in the top deciles in two of the three measures and tied with two third of the other researchers in the third measure. It is strange that the average result is the fourth decile.

The h index has been heavily criticized. Composite scores also have been criticized. The manuscript lacks a thorough discussion of the problems of the indicators employed in the portal www.scientometrics.org.

Some more specific comments are listed below:

- Page 4, section "Publication and citation data": "... the citation data in MTMT is catalogued to list dependent and independent citations for each publication." Usually, dependent citations are referred to as self-citations in the scientometric literature, and independent citations are the citations without self-citations. This terminology is used on page 9 and should be used throghout the manuscript. Note that not all self-citations are illigitemate. A more open discussion should be provided.

- Page 4, section "Publication and citation data": "To increase simplicity, the average of the three percentiles is computed (in this, the number of publications has a double weight), and this final score is transformed into deciles between D1 and D10, where D1 is the best." Why was the average of the percentiles used? Usually, the median would be used.

The manuscript should be proofread more carefully, see for example:

- Page 4, section "Publication and citation data": "The number of publications is determined differentially in each scientific discipline ... ." --> "The number of publications is determined differently in each scientific discipline ... ."

- Page 5, section "Reviewer feedback": "In additional to general data ... ." --> "In addition to general data ... ."

- Page 5, section "Statistical analysis": "... submitted and founded applications." --> "... submitted and funded applications."

- Page 10: "... as least ..." --> "... at least ..."

- Page 10: "In science, the citations and journal rankings thus have similar role to that of the GDP-figures when discussing the country’s economic performance." --> "In science, the citations and journal rankings thus have a similar role to that of the GDP-figures when discussing the country’s economic performance."

- Page 10, plural-singular issue: "With the easily available ranking, a higher proportions of grant applicants with higher score received funding."

L. Bornmann & H.-D. Daniel, Convergent validation of peer review decisions using the h index: Extent of and reasons for type I and type II errors, Journal of Informetrics 1(3), 204-213, DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2007.01.002

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #3: No

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PLoS One. 2023 Jan 20;18(1):e0280480. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0280480.r004

Author response to Decision Letter 1


9 Dec 2022

>Reviewer #1: Thanks for addressing my comments not sure why I need to write 100 characters here change this feature

We thank Reviewer #1 for the positive acceptance of our previous edits.

>Reviewer #3: The manuscript "Supporting grant reviewers through the scientometric ranking of applicants" presents the Hungarian portal www.scientometrics.org and its usage in grant decisions. The manuscript is very descriptive, maybe too desciptive. Bornmann and Daniel (2007) proposed to calculate type I and type II errors for measuring (dis-) agreement between bibliometric values and peer review decisions. Such calculation of type I and type II errors would be interesting for this dataset.

L. Bornmann & H.-D. Daniel, Convergent validation of peer review decisions using the h index: Extent of and reasons for type I and type II errors, Journal of Informetrics 1(3), 204-213, DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2007.01.002

This is an excellent suggestion, and we have now computed both type I and type II errors for all applicants. The Abstract, the Methods, and the Results sections were extended and a new Table was added to the manuscript with the results. The suggested reference is cited in both the manuscript text and at the table description.

>The authors mention that the portal www.scientometrics.org presents discipline- and time- normalized indicators. The details of the normalization procedure are not presented. Which discipline delineation was used? How were tied researchers handled? How large (in terms of number of researchers) are the groups of discipline and time groups? How do the distributions of the values look like? Normalizations are only useful if the entitied to be normalized are numerous enough. For percentiles and deciles, it is additionally important to have a rather well distribution of the values.

We agree with the reviewer and have now extended the manuscript at multiple locations. The disciplines were set up using the classification of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. We added a link to a publication where we describe the disciplines in detail. Ties were handled by using the median rank for each included researcher. We have added two new figures (Figure 2C and Figure 2D) showing the distribution of the researchers in the different scientific disciplines and across the different publication ages. Note that the age distribution is for the first publication, and a researcher is included in the analysis in all subsequent years.

>From Figure 2c I think that handling of ties is problematic: More than two thirds of the researchers in this example discipline and age seem to have not a single first/last Q1 article. Why is this example researcher positioned around rank 900? All researchers between ranks 300 and 1500 seem to have not a single first/last Q1 article. This researcher seems to be in the top deciles in two of the three measures and tied with two third of the other researchers in the third measure. It is strange that the average result is the fourth decile.

Yes, this researcher is in the top deciles in two categories but had no papers in the last five years. Therefore, the overall rank will not be in the top decile. On the online portal, ties are handled by using the median rank for each included researcher. We extended the manuscript to increase clarity.

>The h index has been heavily criticized. Composite scores also have been criticized. The manuscript lacks a thorough discussion of the problems of the indicators employed in the portal www.scientometrics.org.

We added additional text to the discussion about the limitations of the H-index. In our previous publications (see last paragraph of the introduction and references #3, #4, and #5) we have already extensively analyzed the benefits, problems, and advantages of the different scientometric parameters in different cohorts of researchers. Here, our aim was not to analyze and discuss the indicators used by the portal but to discuss the utility of a decision support tool for grant reviewers. Therefore, here we have not repeated our previous discussions.

>Some more specific comments are listed below:

- Page 4, section "Publication and citation data": "... the citation data in MTMT is catalogued to list dependent and independent citations for each publication." Usually, dependent citations are referred to as self-citations in the scientometric literature, and independent citations are the citations without self-citations. This terminology is used on page 9 and should be used throghout the manuscript. Note that not all self-citations are illigitemate. A more open discussion should be provided.

We have edited the manuscript to adhere to a uniform terminology. Furthermore, the Discussion now also elaborates on the issue of the self-citations.

>- Page 4, section "Publication and citation data": "To increase simplicity, the average of the three percentiles is computed (in this, the number of publications has a double weight), and this final score is transformed into deciles between D1 and D10, where D1 is the best." Why was the average of the percentiles used? Usually, the median would be used.

We have only used three parameters, and the H-index and the yearly citation count are both based on the number of citations. Therefore, these two parameters are closely related. If we used the median value, it would result in using the H-index or the citation rank in most cases. We used the average to avoid this “overfitting to citation count”.

>The manuscript should be proofread more carefully, see for example:

- Page 4, section "Publication and citation data": "The number of publications is determined differentially in each scientific discipline ... ." --> "The number of publications is determined differently in each scientific discipline ... ."

- Page 5, section "Reviewer feedback": "In additional to general data ... ." --> "In addition to general data ... ."

- Page 5, section "Statistical analysis": "... submitted and founded applications." --> "... submitted and funded applications."

- Page 10: "... as least ..." --> "... at least ..."

- Page 10: "In science, the citations and journal rankings thus have similar role to that of the GDP-figures when discussing the country’s economic performance." --> "In science, the citations and journal rankings thus have a similar role to that of the GDP-figures when discussing the country’s economic performance."

- Page 10, plural-singular issue: "With the easily available ranking, a higher proportions of grant applicants with higher score received funding."

We thank the reviewer for notifying these errors, and we have re-checked and corrected the manuscript at multiple locations.

Decision Letter 2

Fausto Cavallaro

3 Jan 2023

Supporting grant reviewers through the scientometric ranking of applicants

PONE-D-22-24996R2

Dear Dr. Győrffy,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Fausto Cavallaro, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments: On the base ot the reviewers comments the paper can be accepted.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #3: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #3: The authors have addressed my comments appropriately. Stuff to complete the 100 characters minimum.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

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Reviewer #3: No

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Acceptance letter

Fausto Cavallaro

11 Jan 2023

PONE-D-22-24996R2

Supporting grant reviewers through the scientometric ranking of applicants

Dear Dr. Győrffy:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Professor Fausto Cavallaro

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Associated Data

    This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

    Data Availability Statement

    All relevant data are within the paper.


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