Peer review / Integrity / Multi-year
MEDICAL &HEALTH RESEARCH.
Peer review only means something if the process protects it. Backed runs blind review, enforces declared conflicts by removing access rather than flagging it, and tracks fellowships and multi-year projects through milestones that actually gate the money.
The status quo
HOW THIS RUNSTODAY
None of this is anyone’s fault. Each of these is a sensible response to a real constraint, and together they produce a record that cannot answer the question it will eventually be asked.
01
Conflicts held by one person
Reviewer conflicts are managed by a coordinator who knows the field, which works until they are on leave.
02
Anonymity by PDF edit
Anonymising an application means someone edits a PDF, and institutional identity leaks through the methods section anyway.
03
Scores re-typed by hand
Scores arrive by email in three formats and are re-typed into a ranking sheet.
04
Milestones in a calendar
Fellowship milestones are tracked in a calendar, and a missed report is discovered when the next payment is queried.
05
Outcomes minuted elsewhere
Panel meeting outcomes are minuted separately from the applications they concern.
06
Variations lost in correspondence
A five-year grant changes chief investigator, and the variation exists only in correspondence.
With Backed
WHAT CHANGESAND WHY
The same six pressure points, answered by the system rather than by somebody remembering. Each of these is a control, not a convention.
01
Conflicts that remove access
Conflicts are declared per round against configured rules, and a declared conflict removes access outright.
02
Anonymity built into the view
Blind review suppresses applicant and institutional identity in the reviewer’s view as a system behaviour.
03
Scores that aggregate themselves
Scores are entered against the published rubric and aggregate automatically, with the spread visible to the convenor.
04
Milestones that hold the money
Milestones carry due dates and reminders, and the tranche behind them does not release until the report is approved.
05
Rationale beside the decision
Panel outcomes are recorded against the application, so the rationale sits with the decision.
06
Variations on the record
A variation (investigator, timeline or amount) is a formal event with its own approval and trail.
How it works
ONE AUDITABLEWORKFLOW
From round configuration through to the final accountability report.
Configure the review model
Stages, panels, rubrics and weightings. A triage stage, an external review stage and a committee stage can each carry different criteria and different reviewers.
Recruit and declare
External reviewers get their own portal and complete a structured declaration before assignment. The conflict rules you configure are enforced at assignment, not at review.
Review blind
Identity suppression is applied by the system to the reviewer’s view of the application, including uploaded documents where the configuration requires it.
Moderate and rank
Aggregate scores, reviewer variance and moderation notes in one view, against the criteria you published to applicants.
Award with conditions
Offers carry conditions and a milestone schedule from the moment of award, including ethics and governance approvals where they are prerequisites to payment.
Track the years that follow
Progress reports, variations, changes of institution and final acquittal: each an event on the record rather than a thread in someone’s mailbox.
Capabilities
What you get
- Blind review with applicant and institutional identity suppressed
- Conflict declarations per round, enforced by removal of access
- Weighted rubrics with per-stage criteria and weightings
- Panels with aggregated scores and visible reviewer variance
- Multi-stage review chains: triage, external review, committee
- External reviewer portal with assignment-scoped visibility
- Structured reviewer feedback, releasable to applicants after decision
- Multi-year awards with tranches gated on milestone approval
- Formal variations for investigator, timeline, institution and amount
- Condition tracking, including prerequisites that block payment
- Read-only API for the analytics stack and the annual return
- Complete audit trail across every review action
Common questions
Before you ask
How thorough is the blind review?
Applicant name, organisation and nominated identifying fields are suppressed in the reviewer’s view, and the configuration decides whether uploaded documents are included. It is worth being honest about the limit: a methods section can still identify a lab to someone who knows the field. What the system guarantees is that the process did not hand the reviewer the identity.
Can a reviewer be blocked from a whole institution?
Yes. Conflict rules can be set at the organisation level as well as the application level, so a reviewer with an institutional conflict is excluded from every application attached to that organisation in the round.
How are multi-year fellowships handled?
As one award with a milestone schedule and payment tranches. Each tranche is blocked until the milestone it depends on is approved, so an overdue progress report stops the money rather than being discovered by it.
What happens when a chief investigator moves institution?
It is a formal variation: approved, dated, attributed, and kept alongside the original agreement with the document as signed. The contract history shows both states.
Can we feed our reporting stack?
There is a read-only, versioned API using OAuth 2.0 client credentials, intended for exactly this: the BI tool, the annual return and any institutional reporting obligation.