Kai Ilchmann led a research trip to Germany to engage with a range of science, policy and political actors on the topic of S&T reviews. The trip provided valuable information on the views of leading scientists and policy experts on both the ‘state-of-the-art’ in certain scientific disciplines and proposals for the future of the review process respectively. The material collected will be used to develop thinking on the S&T review process and inform the future outputs designed for academic and policy audiences and we are grateful to participants for giving up their time to talk to us on these topics.