University of Rochester
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Office of Research and Project Administration

NIH has made the Final Draft of the NIH 2007-2008 Peer Review Self Study available for review. The Draft Report is available at: http://enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov/meetings/NIHPeerReviewReportFINALDRAFT.pdf

NIH invites public comment. The public comment period is open through Monday, March 17, 2008.

Comments should be directed to:

Electronically: PeerReviewRFI@mail.nih.gov
 
OR United States Mail:
 
Penny Wung Burgoon, Ph.D.
Senior Assistant to the Deputy Director
Office of the Director, NIH
One Center Drive,
Building 1, Room 114
Bethesda, MD
20892-0183

NIH has provided a summary of the challenges the report identified with some of the recommendations for addressing each of them below:

Reduce Administrative Burden on Applicants, Reviewers, and NIH Staff

  • Recommendations: Reduce application length but emphasize their impact/uniqueness/originality; consider all applications as new, eliminating special status of amended applications; establish "Not Recommended for Resubmission (NRR)" to help applicants make faster, more informed decisions to either refine an existing application or develop a new idea.

Enhance the Rating System

  • Recommendations: Provide unambiguous feedback to applicants by modifying the rating system to provide an independent overall score and ranking; rate multiple, explicit criteria individually.

Enhance Review and Reviewer Quality

  • Recommendations: Enhance training for reviewers, study sections and Scientific Review Officers; create more flexible service and deadlines for reviewer grant submissions; analyze patterns of participation by clinician scientists in peer review and provide more flexibility to ensure their continued involvement in review.

Optimize Support for Different Career Stages and Types

  • Recommendations: Continue to fund more R01s for early-career investigators to be on par with established investigators in application success rates; enhance productivity of the most accomplished investigators by refining mechanisms, such as MERIT/Javits, etc.; pilot the review of early-career investigators using generalists as reviewers to encourage risk-taking and innovation or uniqueness among applicants.

Optimize Support for Different Types and Approaches of Science

  • Recommendations: Use award programs, such as Pioneer, New Innovator and EUREKA, as starting points to invite, identify and support transformative research; ensure participation of adequate numbers of clinician scientists by providing more flexible options for review service; employ editorial board models for the review of interdisciplinary research that includes content experts and big-picture thinkers.

Reduce the Stress on the Support System of Science

  • Recommendations: Establish a "minimum-percent effort" for investigators on research project grants to ensure optimal use of NIH resources; analyze the NIH contribution for optimal biomedical workforce needs.

Meet the Need for Continuous Review of Peer Review

  • Recommendations: Establish a periodic, data-driven, NIH-wide assessment of the peer review process; capture appropriate current baseline data; develop new metrics to track key elements of the peer review system.

 

Please contact your ORPA Research Administrator with any questions.

 

Anthony Beckman - x5-1502

Donna Beyea - x5-8037

Marlene Boutet - x3-3960

Brenda Kavanaugh - x5-1504

Jane Tolbert - x5-4210

Cheryl Williams - x5-1503

 

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Jane Tolbert
Research Administrator
Office of Research & Project Administration
University of Rochester
503 Hylan Building
RC Box 270140
Rochester, NY 14627
Phone: 585-275-4210
Fax: 585-275-9492
Email: jtolbert@orpa.rochester.edu