 |
NBER: Comments on NIH Peer Review Report, including a new proposal requiring investigators to devote at least 20% of their effort to each grant?
Comments on NIH Peer Review Report, including a new proposal requiring investigators to devote at least 20% of their effort to each grant?
Dear researchers:
Comments are invited through March 13 on the report "Enhancing
Peer Review", which contains a number of recommendations for changes to the
current NIH system of reviewing applications. Please see the link below,
as well as the text of a Science article outlining some of the
changes. Note that one of the recommendations is that PIs be required to
devote at least 20% effort to each grant; potentially a problem for people
who have multiple awards plus teaching responsibilities.
Sincerely, --Joan Stillwell
>
>Big Changes Coming in NIH Peer Review - comments invited on Final Draft
>on "Enhancing Peer Review" due March 13th
>
>The report will be posted on the peer review website:
>http://enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov/ and there will be a two-week
>period for public comment via a secure mailbox. Here is what Science had
>to say:
>
>Science 29 February 2008:
>Vol. 319. no. 5867, p. 1169
>DOI: 10.1126/science.319.5867.1169
>
>News of the Week
>
>PEER REVIEW:
>NIH Urged to Focus on New Ideas, New Applicants
>
>Jocelyn Kaiser
>
>Advisers to the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Bethesda,
>Maryland, outlined a near-final plan to rescue the overburdened NIH
>peer-review system last week. They want NIH to go for a sweeping
>overhaul--one that would speed reviews, make the system more inviting,
>and nudge it to favor new ideas. One way to do this, they say, is to
>streamline a process that now encourages scientists to keep revising
>grant applications until they wear down resistance. Researchers seem to
>like the proposed changes, although some say NIH ought to test them
>first.
>
>This analysis began last summer when NIH Director Elias Zerhouni asked
>for ideas to help NIH cope with system overload and reviewer burnout.
>The agency is receiving a record number of applications--about 80,000
>are expected in 2008--at a time when its budget is stagnant. Zerhouni
>formed two advisory committees, one internal at NIH and the other
>external, and asked them to figure out how to fund "the best science ...
>with the least administrative burden," he said last week at a
>teleconference meeting of his Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD).
>Many of the ideas adopted by the two groups were described in a
>preliminary report last year (Science, 14 December 2007, p. 1708
><http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/318/5857/1708b> ).
>
>One of the combined panel's fundamental recommendations is to avoid
>having proposals routinely revised and resubmitted as many as two times.
>These "amended applications" tend to be put in the queue in front of new
>applications, and there is a sense that "last chance" applications may
>be favored, the panel found. "It's a system that awards persistence over
>brilliance sometimes," Zerhouni said. "We really want to change that."
>
>Instead, the panel says study sections should stamp some applications
>"not recommended for resubmission" during the first review. These quick
>rejections might run about 20%, external group co-chair Keith Yamamoto
>of the University of California, San Francisco, told Science. Proposals
>that make it past this first barrier but are not ranked among the best
>could also face tougher scrutiny. The panel would do away with the
>category of "amended" applications and have all submissions considered
>as "new." A study section now devoted to rebuttals of reviews would be
>eliminated; instead, the grant writer would simply incorporate any
>responses into a fresh application.
>
>In addition, the panel recommends specific tweaks of review criteria and
>procedures. NIH should shorten its 25-page application, the advisers
>say, and focus more on impact and innovation and de-emphasize methods
>and preliminary data. Study sections should rate all proposals, even
>rejected ones, on five criteria such as impact so that people will know
>where they stand. The panel also suggests another way to reduce
>ambiguity: In addition to giving scores, study sections should rank all
>applications from first to last. For better quality, the number of
>reviewers for each proposal should be doubled from two to four or more.
>
> <http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5867/1169/F1> New
>order. Two working groups proposed changes that would streamline NIH
>peer review.
>
>SOURCE: NIH
>
>The panel's charges included helping NIH spend its money more
>effectively. Noting that a small fraction of investigators hold multiple
>grants, the panel says NIH should "ensure optimal use of NIH resources"
>by requiring investigators to devote at least 20% of their effort to
>each grant. This might limit most researchers to three or four grants.
>
>Zerhouni has said that a top objective is to give more help to new
>investigators. The panel suggests that NIH consider putting first-timers
>on a separate track, using generalists rather than specialists to review
>their proposals. To encourage more high-risk science, the panel suggests
>that NIH devote at least 1% of its basic investigator research grants to
>mechanisms such as the Pioneer Award, which is based on an
>investigator's track record rather than a specific research project.
>That could mean 300 to 400 awards per year for these risk takers, more
>than five times the current number, Yamamoto says.
>
>Some ideas did not make it into the final report, such as whether to set
>a maximum length for applications. This was "hotly discussed and
>debated," said Lawrence Tabak, director of the National Institute of
>Dental and Craniofacial Research, who co-chaired both the internal and
>external working groups; the panel decided to let NIH figure it out. The
>panel also scrapped some ideas for motivating reviewers, such as
>extending the length of their grants, which could have led to a
>"stampede," Yamamoto says. Instead, the aim is to attract reviewers by
>"making the process better."
>
>These ideas drew mostly positive reactions from the full ACD during last
>week's telephone call, although panel member Mary Beckerle of the
>University of Utah, Salt Lake City, cautioned that NIH needs to try some
>experiments first. The panel has "come up with lots and lots of good
>ideas," agrees Yale University cell biologist Thomas Pollard, who was
>not part of the meeting. "The question is which will work in practice."
>The panel planned to submit its final report this week, and Zerhouni
>says he will form an NIH implementation team within 4 to 6 weeks.
Joan P. Stillwell
Program Administrator
Economics of Aging, NBER
617-588-0363
Received on Tue Mar 04 2008 - 13:17:19 EST
|
