2026: Science for ME reviewer nomination project, in conjunction with WWTF and WE&ME

One last reminder and a clarification.

The reviewers we are looking for will be nominated to evaluate proposals for a followup funding round for research teams awarded funding in 2024 (I believe the funding was from both WWTF and WE&ME). It is not the same funding round as the 2026 WE&ME international call.

The forum has two separate projects with WWTF and WE&ME, in relation to two separate research funding rounds:

1. the 2026 international research fund - with patient jury members nominated by the forum committee. The 2026 jury will assess proposals.​
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2. the followup research fund for research teams that were awarded funds in 2024 - with some of the reviewers nominated by the forum committee. The reviewers will provide evaluations that help the jury formed in 2024 assess the followup proposals​

So, if you are part of a research team working on a proposal for the 2026 WE&ME funding call (Project #1), that does not create a conflict of interest for being a reviewer for the 2024 followup funding (Project #2).
 
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We received an excellent collection of applications and were able to nominate eleven well-qualified applicants to WWTF as reviewers for the 2026 followup funding round. The sub-committee was very impressed with the quality of the applicants and the resilience, achievement and commitment in each person's story.

Ben Missbach of WWTF has informed us that they have accepted all of our nominations. We are delighted about this. The eleven reviewers, all members of S4ME, are diverse in terms of demographics, disease status and duration, and fields of expertise. WWTF has committed to supporting the reviewers as needed and to providing feedback to them.
Ben wrote:
Thank you very much for sending along the S4ME reviewer recommendations. This is such a great list. I’m blown away by the in-depth knowledge of all applicants and the inspiring individual stories behind each applicant.
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I think what we are doing here will be the gold-standard for many future calls in ME/CFS research.
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WE&ME is a co-funder of the WWTF 2026 followup funding round. Christoph of WE&ME sent the following letter to the committee, commenting on the collection of reviewer applications that was sent through:
Thank you very much for this. It is exceptionally well done.
My sincere thanks, on behalf of my family and the WE&ME Foundation, to everyone at the Science for ME forum involved in this effort, including the proposed reviewers, the committee, and the subcommittee.

The reviewer dossier and matching framework you've put together are outstanding. The level of thought, structure, and detail is remarkable, and it's obvious how much work has gone into identifying the right people and matching them to the projects where they can contribute the most.

I'm sure this will be another very valuable exercise that will help improve our reviewer and allocation process.
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The committee sees this as an important step forward in ensuring that well-informed, highly motivated reviewers contribute to ME/CFS research funding decisions. We thank WWTF and WE&ME for having faith in Science for ME and in our nominated reviewers, and for continuing to deliver on their commitment to patient involvement and good science.

Thanks also to the sub-committee of Forestglip, Hutan and Trish for their work on this, and particular thanks to all applicants for putting themselves forward.
 
Another fantastic initiative. Really good to see.

Reviews are incredibly important in most funding rounds. Here I’m sure we have a panel which will look at all the information available. But something I have heard from researchers elsewhere is that in a lot of funding rounds, the proposals that they spend ages writing and which they pin their hopes and careers and labs on often aren’t even read by panels making the decisions on funding. It’s just the reviews that are. That’s how influential they can be.
 
This is such a fantastic endevour. It makes me feel really hopeful to know that some of the knowledgeable and incisive people on here are going to be providing their expertise to help steer MECFS research in the right direction.
 
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Responding to a deleted post

I think they are intended to be independent reviews, not group efforts. We have permission for the 3 of us on the forum subcommittee who received, selected and passed on our nominations to help people if they ask us. We don't have permission for group discussions and those invited to review are supposed to keep them confidential..
 
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Benjamin Missbach said:
Just a quick clarification on the reviewing activities for the consolidation call. In addition to our jury panel, prior to our final jury meeting we always search for domain experts reviewing the proposals in the final round. In this case, we have six proposals coming from our preliminary batch of ME/CFS projects we funded in our exploratory call. In total we will have around 4-5 reviews per proposal. Usually this is enough to provide enough to inform the panel discussion on specific questions addressed by the projects. So our goal is to cover all the aspects from these large (up to 1 Mio) ME/CFS focused projects. For us, having patient representatives on board in this exercise is very important, as this call has also been co-developed in resonance with local patient representative communities in Austria + we have Keith in our panel as this was mentioned above, etc. So having patient representatives as part of the reviewing process, is the next logical step for us.
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Benjamin Missbach said:
reviews serve the purpose to assess projects from many different perspectives, with different levels of expertise and domain knowledge, including atypical expertise and expertise by experience. That's why i suggested to do this in teams.
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So each review is meant to be done by different people to give different perspectives. They will be appointing other subject expert reviewers as well as our mainly patient perspective reviewers. These will all then go to the selection panel for their decision on which projects to fund. Our members are not on the selection panel.
 
I don't know if this comment will be useful or not, I'm not involved in this initiative at all so I may have the wrong idea of what is wanted.

Even if I have, I think there is value in explaining that something that I had to get my head around in my patient representation roles is that it is not my role to be an expert on the science, but to offer my opinion based on my own experiences as a patient.

Now those experiences can certainly include and be informed by all that I have read and discussed on the forum, and I believe that the same applies with this initiative.

So I'd encourage all those involved to have confidence in your own opinion, which is probably better informed than you think it is, and to give your opinion, as a patient and a forum member, because, ultimately, that is what you have been asked to do.

Anyway, I hope that helps at least one person in some way.
 
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