Eileen Bradley, D.Sc., Chief of CSR’s Surgical Sciences, Biomedical Imaging
and Bioengineering Integrated Review Group, chaired the Trans-NIH Committee to
Shorten the Review Cycle.
To interview NIH’s CSR Director Scarpa, please contact the CSR press office
at 301-435-1111.
Details of the proposed pilot study have been posted in the NIH Guide to Grants
and Contracts: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-06-013.html
The Center for Scientific Review organizes the peer review groups that evaluate
the majority of grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of
Health. CSR recruits over 15,000 outside scientific experts each year for its
review groups. These scientific “peers” volunteer their free time to evaluate
applications and then, typically, meet to discuss and score them. (They get
travel expenses and a small honorarium for these meetings.) CSR also receives
all NIH and many Public Health Service grant applications — about 80,000
a year — and assigns them to the appropriate NIH Institutes and Centers
and PHS agencies. CSR’s primary goal is to see that NIH applications receive
fair, independent, expert, and timely reviews that are free from inappropriate
influences so NIH can fund the most promising research. For more information,
visit http://www.csr.nih.gov.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's Medical Research
Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of
the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary Federal
agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical
research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common
and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.
Fact Sheet
Features of the Pilot Program for Shortening the Review Cycle:
- Days and weeks will be cut from the different internal steps involved in assigning
applications to the appropriate CSR study section and the appropriate NIH Institute
or Center for possible funding.
- Reviewers will be given four weeks instead of the usual six weeks to review and
critique R01 applications from new investigators.
- All study section meetings in the pilot will be held earlier.
- Applicants for research grants will be able to get the evaluation of their applications
within a week of their peer review panel’s discussion. As usual, the material to
be made available includes a summary of the discussion and the written evaluations
by the panel members. (The accelerated release of this information will apply to
applications from all new investigators, not only those in the pilot study. In the
past, they often waited over a month for these appraisals.)
- New researchers in the trial will be given a special 20-day delay of the deadline
for resubmitting revised applications for the next review cycle, thereby reducing
the time for resubmission by four months.