For decades, taxpayer investments in the National Science Foundation (NSF) have helped fuel discoveries and technologies that shape everyday American life. From cell phones and weather forecasting to MRI machines, web search, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), NSF-supported research has generated enormous public value. While the outcomes of basic research are never fully predictable, the NSF has built a strong reputation for identifying promising ideas through rigorous expert review. Recently, however, many carefully vetted research projects were abruptly paused or terminated as federal support for science contracted, leaving important work unfinished and researchers searching for alternatives.

In response to these disruptions, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) launched an innovative effort to help rescue high-value economic research projects that lost NSF funding. With funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the six-month initiative sought not only to provide limited emergency funding of between $25K to $250K to promising work, but also to experiment with a new model for evaluating public research priorities. 

Rather than relying solely on academic experts, the SSRC convened a Citizen Review Panel made up of individuals from journalism, education, public service, and business who were not themselves economists but who had some degree of engagement with economics professionally. The goal was to convene a politically and geographically balanced panel that would assess projects based on their potential societal impact and public value.

The process began with an open call for applications from PIs with NSF grants that had been recently paused or terminated. To be eligible, applicants needed to be a PI on an NSF grant with a practicing economist on the research team that had passed NSF review and been funded, and then had that funding paused or terminated. Applicants were asked to write a summary explaining the research and its potential benefits for a non-expert audience. Because all eligible projects had already passed the NSF peer review process, the Citizen Review Panel was able to focus on evaluating the potential public benefit of the research, with their evaluation giving us a window into public priorities for academic research funding.

Eleven eligible applications were ultimately advanced to the Citizen Review Panel. The SSRC recruited nine panelists, each assigned a subset of applications to evaluate through a structured online review system. Panelists assessed proposals on criteria such as societal benefit, creativity, organizational strength, and the qualifications of the research team. To preserve impartiality, reviewers were anonymized using randomly assigned identification numbers, and their evaluations were only submitted to the Sloan Foundation post-anonymization. The process combined quantitative scoring with open-ended feedback, creating a framework that balanced measurable evaluation with personal judgment about public benefit.

Following the Citizen Review Panel’s recommendations, the Sloan Foundation selected eight projects to receive rescue funding. The funded projects covered a broad swath of economic research, from labor economics to housing economics. These projects reflected the panel’s interest in research with clear social consequences and practical relevance to public life.

Although the sample size was small, we believe this experiment demonstrated promise for involving the public more directly in research funding decisions. The initiative suggests that citizen participation can complement traditional academic peer review by bringing broader societal perspectives into conversations about which scientific projects deserve support. As public funding for research faces increasing uncertainty, models like this may offer new ways to sustain important work while strengthening public engagement with science.

The SSRC is guided by the belief that justice, prosperity, and democracy all require better understanding of complex social, cultural, economic, and political processes. We work with practitioners, policymakers, and academic researchers in the social sciences, the humanities, the natural sciences, and related professions. We are grateful to the Sloan Foundation for this opportunity to engage with our community in a new way through the Citizen Review Panel, and we look forward to pursuing more opportunities to do this kind of work in the future.