What Researchers Can Do

Researchers who use nonanimal methods can play a crucial role in addressing animal methods bias. In addition to following the advice in our Author Guide for Addressing Animal Methods Bias in Publishing to prevent and address animal methods bias during the review of manuscripts for publication, researchers can implement the recommendations below to address animal methods bias in the review of grant applications. These recommendations emerged from a 2024 COLAAB workshop titled “Workshop to Explore Animal Methods Bias in Biomedical Research Funding.” Workshop proceedings and action steps for not just researchers but also funders can be found in this COLAAB publication. Recommendations for researchers are summarized here and expanded on below.

Recommendations for Researchers to Mitigate Animal Methods Bias in Grant Peer Review

1. Raise awareness of animal methods bias and the value of NAMs
2. Select appropriate funding sources
3. Provide robust justifications for your chosen method
4. Play an active role in review groups
5. Engage in and promote open science practices
6. Engage in advocacy efforts

1. Raise awareness of animal methods bias and the value of NAMS

Panelists at our workshop highlighted the hesitancy of certain reviewers to embrace animal-free technology, despite growing evidence of the poor clinical translation of animal studies. Funders must play a role in addressing such biases, but researchers can play an important role too, helping to raise awareness of animal methods bias and promote education in the scientific community about the value of NAMs. 

Raise awareness of animal methods bias within your institution and scientific community. Reviewers may be unaware of their own scholarly biases—the favoring of perspectives, theories, or methods that align with their own. Although the NIH has indicated it will soon be training reviewers to identify such biases and intervene, researchers interested in helping to mitigate animal methods bias should also contribute to awareness efforts.

Educate and train the scientific community in nonanimal research methods and their value in translational success. Workshop participants shared stories about grant reviewers insisting on employing animal-based methods for the validation of in vitro findings, preferring animal-derived data over more clinically relevant patient-based research, or rejecting the proposed NAM-based study outright. Educating the scientific community about the value of NAMs can help reviewers to embrace these new technologies.

2. Select appropriate funding sources 

Biomedical research stakeholders should be interested in addressing peer review biases—including animal methods bias—to ensure the most rigorous and impactful science is funded. If grant review groups fail to recognize the value of proposals using NAMS, it may affect their ability to impartially assess quality and impact, potentially resulting in such proposals to be overlooked. Until more review panels include nonanimal expertise, researchers looking to avoid the harmful effects of animal methods bias can be more selective by identifying funding opportunities with reviews who have relevant expertise or with method specifications that support NAMs.  

Ensure funding opportunities have an appropriate scope before applying and tailor your proposals to the funding opportunity. Certain funding sources may be less inclined to support nonanimal methods. Researchers should ensure that funding opportunities have an appropriate scope before applying and should tailor their proposals to the funding opportunity. Most funders provide contact information where inquiries can be directed, and researchers should take advantage of this to ensure their project is a good fit and to ask any questions they might have about the application materials or process. 

Ensure funding opportunities have appropriate specifications and reviewer expertise. While it is crucial for funders to specify method specifications and review criteria and to ensure appropriate expertise in review groups, researchers can seek funding from opportunities with such qualities. Researchers should check the method specifications and review criteria of funding opportunities before applying, and may also be able to check who the reviewers are and determine if their expertise is appropriate.  

Consider seeking funding from private sources supporting NAMs or that have a 3Rs focus. Many government programs are now explicitly supporting efforts to advance the 3Rs, including NAMs development or use, but to supplement government-funding, researchers should consider applying for grants from private foundations and non-profits. Many such organizations exist with a focus on animal replacement, including Alternatives Research & Development Foundation, Centre for Human Specific Research, Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, International Foundation for Ethical Research, and Replacing Animal Research. These grants can be especially helpful for generating pilot data and building momentum for nonanimal research labs.

3. Provide robust justifications for your chosen method

Reviewers who prefer or expect to see animal-based methods will need to be convinced by robust justifications for nonanimal methods, including how it’s better to answer the specific research question than animals and its translational potential to improve human health. Thus, researchers using NAMs and other nonanimal methods can preempt biased reviewer comments by providing such justifications in their grant applications.

Researchers should also consider using complementary methods to corroborate their findings, ensuring reproducibility through transparent and detailed methodologies and data, and drawing accurate conclusions from the evidence provided. 

See our Author Guide for more details about framing your nonanimal studies! 

4. Play an active role in review groups

The best way researchers can address some reviewers' insistence on the need for animal-based methods is to participate in review groups themselves! Researchers with expertise in NAMs and other nonanimal approaches can help diversify review groups and push back against biased comments.

Volunteer for reviewer positions and make yourself available to review staff. It’s important for researchers with nonanimal expertise to participate in review groups so that nonanimal proposals can get fair and appropriate evaluations.

Identify and address biased comments of fellow reviewers. While participating in review groups, it’s important for researchers to identify and address comments from other reviewers reflecting animal methods bias. If available, they should do so through official bias reporting mechanisms. During review discussions, they should vocally identify biased comments and support and defend nonanimal approaches. 

5. Engage in and promote open science practices

Open science fosters transparency, rigor, and reproducibility. As confidence in NAMs and other nonanimal methods is still being established, open science practices like systematic reviews, data sharing, preregistration, and open access publishing may help with research quality, transparency, and reproducibility. Over time, this can help increased trust in NAMs and may address the hesitancy of some reviewers to embrace animal-free methods.

6. Engage in advocacy efforts

Supporting policies and initiatives that promote the development and use of nonanimal methods is crucial for reducing and replacing animal use, improving the translational efficiency of biomedical research, and mitigating animal methods bias. Through advocacy efforts, researchers can drive policy changes and new initiatives that raise awareness of the value of NAMs, improve the fairness of reviews, and bolster NAMs infrastructure and use. 

As NAMs continue to advance, it is important for researchers to recognize their key stakeholder position and paramount role in advocacy. Researchers with expertise in NAMs and first-hand experience with bias can provide funders and policymakers with crucial perspectives and input. Researchers should seek out advocacy opportunities to comment on the advantages of nonanimal methods over animals, champion their broader development and use, and encourage measures to overcome barriers like animal methods bias. 

Advocacy opportunities include:

• Providing public comments
• Responding to requests for information
• Providing testimony to lawmakers
• Publishing perspectives, letters to the editor, and op-eds 

The COLAAB has developed an Advocacy Toolkit and Template Letter to facilitate researchers in advocacy efforts with their funding bodies.