Abstract:
This paper analyzes 4,488 applications from a grant funding competition held in 2017 in
Kazakhstan. The competition had a two-stage design: first, anonymous subject matter
experts evaluated the applications’ scientific potential; then, open panels of local science
managers made the final decisions. We analyze a range of bibliometric, institutional, and
demographic variables associated with the applications and show that review scores
account for only a small variation in success rates. The most important factor is the organizational closeness to decision-making. Gender also plays a role: we find that, net of
academic merit, men and women investigators receive similar review scores, yet the panelists grant awards to men more often than to women. We further demonstrate that the
gender gap emerges due to decisions made in a specific domain—Natural Resource
Management.
