Excellence in research depends on the quality of the procedures used to select the proposals for funding. Public and private funding organisations at the national and international levels face the challenge of establishing and maintaining the best procedures to assess quality and potential. This is a demanding task as each proposal is scientifically unique and originates from varying research cultures. As a result, many different systems and criteria are currently in use in European countries. In order
to address the issue of peer review collectively, the common needs have to be specified first. The needs then have to drive development of policies that are both convergent and complementary, whereafter coherent procedures can be conceived, promoted
and implemented.

The Heads of the European Research Councils (EUROHORCs) and the European Science Foundation (ESF) recognised in their Vision on a Globally Competitive ERA and their Road Map for Actions the need to develop common peer review systems that are useable, credible and reliable for all funding agencies. To identify the good practices of peer review, the governing bodies of both organisations invited the ESF Member Organisation Forum on peer review to compile a Peer Review Guide to be disseminated to their members and other interested stakeholders in Europe and beyond. The Forum
included over 30 European research funding and performing organisations from 23 countries, with the partnership of the European Commission and the European Research Council. The Forum established dedicated working groups, ran workshops
and undertook a comprehensive survey on the peer review systems and practices used by research funding and performing organisations, councils, private foundations and charities. The results served to identify good practices across Europe on the evaluation
of grant applications for individual and collaborative research projects.

Consequently, this Peer Review Guide illustrates practices currently in use across the members of ESF and EUROHORCs, while also reflecting the experiences of the European Commission in its Framework Programmes. It describes good practices by setting a minimum core of basic principles on peer review processes commonly accepted at a European level.

In addition to the quality of the basic procedures, peer reviewers and organisations face other challenges such as assessing multidisciplinary proposals and defining the appropriate level of risk inherent in frontier research. The management of peer review
of proposals by large international consortia poses yet another challenge, and this is why the Guide has been designed to address the assessment procedures of large scale programmes such as Joint Programming.

This Guide should serve to benchmark national peer review processes and to support their harmonisation, as well as to promote international peer review and sharing of resources. It should be considered as a rolling reference that can be updated and
revised when necessary.