Enhancing Peer Review

NIH has announced changes to its peer review system that will reduce the proposal preparation time for grantees and ease the overall process for reviewers. The new framework also includes $1 billion over the next five years for high-risk, high-reward research.

The changes, which will be implemented over the next 18 months, are the culmination of a yearlong review of the peer review system that included input from grant reviewers and applicants. "The results of this collective effort are concrete solutions that will maximize flexibility, remove any unnecessary burden, stimulate new innovation, and promote transformative research," NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni said in a statement.

Broken into four priorities, the implementation plan includes providing more flexibility to reviewers and formally acknowledging their efforts. The plan also aims to improve the quality and transparency of reviews by shortening and redesigning applications. To provide fair reviews across all fields and career stages, the plan removes the multiple rounds of resubmission for the same application. And the plan calls for a process to monitor the peer review system.

Complete details of NIH's implementation plan are available online at enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov.