A New Way to Distribute Research Seed Funding: Peer Review without Formal Review

As some of the most stable and important structures in society, colleges and universities are rarely described as nimble. Yet, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020, institutions across the globe not only shifted within days to online instruction, but many academic researchers also immediately launched efforts to understand the virus, identify treatments, produce medical supplies, and study its impacts. While some investigators managed to make progress, other talented researchers lacked timely access to funding for key personnel, lab supplies, and incentives for study participants--the needed fuel for discoveries. Even as researchers have long called for low-barrier processes to accelerate time-sensitive research contributions, the pandemic has painfully underscored the need for rapid responses to pressing societal needs. Experimental programs offer models of the funding mechanisms needed to heighten efficiency, whether in the face of COVID or other ongoing crises. In this article, the authors discuss the shortcomings of the current, widely used peer review process and suggest that Mcubed, a novel token-based review and funding program developed at the University of Michigan (U-M), may offer significant advantages. This article describes the operation of Mcubed over an 8-year period on U-M's three campuses and details the positive results that were obtained, hoping to motivate others to engage in comparable endeavours.