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JUNE/JULY 2008

NIH Enhances Peer Review Process

Ilene Raymond
Editor-in-Chief
15 June 2008

A series of critical changes to enhance the peer review process and to encourage investigator-initiated, high-risk, high-impact research was announced by Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Over five years, NIH will commit $1 billion to prevent a slowdown of transformative research in the face of budgetary tough times.

The announcement marks a year-long effort by collaborative teams of participants who worked to tackle the system and to discover the systems.

“The scientific community became truly engaged in this comprehensive effort to figure out how to make peer review work better for both the reviewers and the applicants,” said Zerhouni.

The Implementation Plan report consists of four main priorities, with highlights noted below:

[1] Engage the Best Reviewers: Increase flexibility of service, formally acknowledge reviewer efforts, further compensate time and effort, and enhance and standardize training.

[2] Improve Quality and Transparency of Reviews: Shorten and redesign applications to highlight impact and to allow alignment of the application, review and summary statement with five explicit review criteria, and modify the rating system.

[3] Ensure Balanced and Fair Reviews Across Scientific Fields and Career Stages.

Support a minimum number of early stage investigators and investigators new to NIH, and emphasize retrospective accomplishments of experienced investigators.

Encourage and expand the Transformative Research Pathway.

Create a new investigator-initiated Transformative R01 Award program funded within the NIH Roadmap with an intended commitment of a minimum of $250 million over five years.

Continue the commitment of — and possibly expand the use of — the Pioneer, EUREKA, and New Innovator Awards. NIH will invest at least $750 million in these three programs over the next 5 years.

Reduce the burden of multiple rounds of resubmission for the same application, especially for highly meritorious applications.

[4] Develop a Permanent Process for Continuous Review of Peer Review

Fundamental principals of the changes include a need “to ensure that any changes to the peer review system bring significant value and outweigh costs” and to “continue to maximize the freedom of scientists to pursue high-risk, high-impact research,” said Zerhouni. “Moreover, we want to cultivate a sense that we continuously re-evaluate the peer review system to ensure that it is the best that it can be."

For more information about enhancing peer review at NIH and to learn about the implementation plan, please visit:
http://enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov

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