The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has released a tentative plan to change how its research grant applications are scored, with the aim of reducing bias and lowering the burden on reviewers. Under the new system, reviewers would no longer rate researchers’ expertise or their institutions’ access to resources, and there would be fewer scoring criteria overall.
The NIH’s Center for Scientific Review (CSR), which organizes the peer-review groups that evaluate more than 90% of the research grants awarded by the agency, announced these proposed changes at a meeting on 8 December attended by Lawrence Tabak, acting NIH director, and a panel of his advisers. The revamp has not yet been finalized, and any changes would not be implemented until 2024 at earliest.
