Part 10. Funding Decisions

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Table of Contents

• Are You Ready for This Part?
• How NIAID Determines Which Applications to Fund
• Why You May Not Get Funded Right Away
• NIAID May Approve Special Funding
• Is Your Application Deferred for a Funding Decision?
• Paylines Are a Conservative Funding Cut Point
• Percentiles Indicate Relative Rank
• How Percentiles Are Determined
• Score Clustering Distorts Percentiles
• How Long to Get the Grant?
• Congratulations!

Are You Ready for This Part?

Part 10. Funding Decisions explains what to expect when NIAID determines which applications to fund.

Before reading this page, be sure that you . . .

• Know how to use this tutorial and where to find tools. Read How to Use the NIH Grant Cycle in Start Here. Find helpful Tools: application samples, checklists, timelines, and contacts.
• Understand NIH peer review -- see Part 8. Assignment and Review.
• Have discussed your application's peer review, its funding status, and any bars to award with your program officer. See Know What a Summary Statement Means in Part 8. Assignment and Review.
• Have started preparing your just-in-time information. Read Prepare Your Just-in-Time Information in Part 8. Assignment and Review.
• Know what NIAID's advisory Council does -- see Part 9. Second-Level Review.

How NIAID Determines Which Applications to Fund

At NIAID, the most important determinant of success is scientific merit as judged by peer reviewers at the initial peer review meeting.

Scores Reflect Merit

Each application gets a priority score, the numeric representation of its scientific merit.

For investigator-initiated R01s only (for NIAID), NIH converts that score into a percentile. If you want to read more now, see Percentiles Indicate Relative Rank.

Scores Relate to Funding

Funding approaches vary by institute; the information below is specific to NIAID.

• Investigator-initiated. NIAID awards applications in percentile or priority score order until we reach a cutoff point, called the payline.
  • For example, when the R01 payline is at the 12 percentile, we automatically fund all applications that have percentile ranks of 12 or lower and no administrative issues.
  • Toward the beginning of the fiscal year, we fund all applications that score within their paylines and defer many others to later in the year. If you want to read more now, see Outcomes of Second-Level Review.
  • Different grant types have different paylines, and they change from year to year.
  • NIAID does not skip applications within a payline (some institutes do).
• In addition to grants within the payline, NIAID funds some R01 applications with percentile rankings that miss the payline. See NIAID May Approve Special Funding for more information.
• Go to our Paylines and Budget page for current paylines.
• RFAs and PAs with set-asides. We fund these applications by priority score until we use up the funds set aside (not by a payline).

Do you know your application will be funded? Yes. Skip ahead to Part 11a. Managing Your Grant. No. Continue reading here.

Why You May Not Get Funded Right Away

Many applications do not get funded right away.

Time to Funding Factors

Time from application to award can vary by as much as a year. Here is a partial list of timing factors:

• Whether we have a congressional appropriation. If your application goes to the September or October Council, it would be funded in the next fiscal year. At the start of a fiscal year, funding can be delayed because we do not have a budget. Go to our Paylines and Budget page.
• Whether you are in the funding "gray zone." Many high-quality applications that scored somewhat above the payline are deferred for a funding decision until later in the fiscal year. If you want more information now, read Is Your Application Deferred for a Funding Decision?
• Whether your application undergoes expedited Council review. If you want to read more now, see Second-Level Review Is Faster for Some Applications.
• Whether you are submitting an AIDS application. It will have a later receipt date for the same funding date. See NIH's Standard Due Dates for Competing Applications.
• Whether you are responding to a request for applications. Learn more about this topic in Part 3. Define Your Project at RFA.
• Whether we need a foreign clearance for your application. Contact your program officer.

Is your application on a list for a possible R56-Bridge award or selective pay, or is it deferred for possible end-of-year funding? No. Revising and resubmitting is the next logical step if problems are fixable. Go to Part 11b. Not Funded, Reapply. Yes. For selective pay, R56-Bridge awards, or deferred applications, we advise you to revise and submit your application right away. Get advice on revising at Part 11b. Not Funded, Reapply. To learn more, continue reading here and see the NIAID R56-Bridge Award SOP and the Selective Pay SOP for important details.

NIAID May Approve Special Funding

NIAID has two options for high-quality investigator-initiated applications that missed the payline:

• Selective pay
• R56-Bridge awards

For selective pay and bridge awards, we choose R01 applications based on scientific merit and relevance to our priorities. Applications may be important to further a scientific program or be from new investigators and of high scientific merit.

You can't apply for either program but must be nominated for either or both by an NIAID program officer.

Selective pay. Program officers nominate a small number of programmatically important R01 applications beyond the payline for review and ranking by our advisory Council. If Council approves, we fund some applications right away.

Our Advice: Don't Bet on Selective Pay

If you are on a list for possible selective pay funding at the end of the fiscal year, we advise you to revise and submit your application right away. Read more about revising at Part 11b. Not Funded, Reapply.

For several reasons you should not count on selective pay funding:

• Even if your application is nominated, Council may not approve it.
• Even if Council approves it, we may not fund it right away.
• Even if we might pay it at the end of the fiscal year, you should not count on it.

R56-Bridge. An R56-Bridge provides limited, interim support so you can improve an R01 application that missed getting an award.

If you get a Bridge award, read the NIAID R56-Bridge Award SOP and start revising -- see If Your Application Was Not Fundable or Not Scored for help and information.

Is Your Application Deferred for a Funding Decision?

Your application may be at the payline border -- called the gray zone -- for possible funding at the end of the fiscal year.

NIAID typically defers decisions for those applications until after the third review cycle in June or July.

We do this because paying too many applications at the beginning of the fiscal year could leave us without money to fund highly meritorious applications later in the year.

At that time, we first fund selective pay and then deferred applications in the gray zone in percentile or priority score order until we use up the monies in our budget.

Our Advice: Move Ahead, Don't Wait for Possible Year-End Funding

If your application is deferred for potential funding at the end of the fiscal year, revise and resubmit based on your summary statement and feedback from your program officer. Go to Part 11b. Not Funded, Reapply for details.

Start Preparing Just-in-Time

Even before you know whether you will get an award, prepare your just-in-time information ahead of time. If you want to read more now, see Prepare Your Just-in-Time Information.

Paylines Are a Conservative Funding Cut Point

The next topics discuss how percentiles, paylines, and success rates work at NIH.

Paylines are funding cut-off points NIAID sets around the beginning of the fiscal year based on the number of grants we expect to fund.

Recognizing the diversity of our large grant portfolio, we use paylines as the fairest way to make funding decisions. A numerical value lets us cut across disciplines and fund the best science as determined by initial peer review.

Each fiscal year, we establish paylines using an NIH formula and historical data including:

• Number of applications reviewed by NIAID-relevant study sections.
• Amount of grant money in the budget.
• Average grant costs.

Every major grant type has its own payline.

We set paylines conservatively to make sure we will have enough funds to pay grants throughout the year.

• A conservative payline also lets us meet out year payments for existing grants as well as any new congressional mandates, for example, for biodefense or AIDS.
• At year's end when we have a clearer budget picture, we award some grants that scored beyond the payline.

Paylines vary among NIH ICs, so a percentile or priority score that is not fundable in one institute may be fundable in another.

Find NIAID's on Paylines and Budget.

Percentiles Indicate Relative Rank

For unsolicited R01s reviewed by the NIH Center for Scientific Review, NIH converts the priority score into a percentile.

• A percentile ranks your application relative to the other applications reviewed by your study section at its last three meetings.
• In contrast to usual mathematical practice, at NIH lower numbers indicate better scores.
  • They range from .1 (best) to 99.5 (worst).
  • A percentile roughly translates to the percentage of applications receiving a better priority score from the study section during one year.
• Why does NIH do this?
  • NIH uses percentiling to counter a phenomenon called priority score creep, in which study sections were increasingly giving applications better priority scores to the point where the scores had little meaning.
  • Percentiles counter this trend by ranking applications relative to others scored by the same study section.
  • Even with percentiling, priority scores continue to cluster in the outstanding range.
  • Historically, reviewers have typically given as many as two-thirds of their applications priority scores between 100 and 200. You can find more information on this subject at Score Clustering Distorts Percentiles.

Also see NIAID Funding Decisions questions and answers.

How Percentiles Are Determined

Applications take three steps to proceed from review to a percentile ranking:

Step 1 -- Following discussion led by the assigned reviewers, all reviewers who are present rate the scientific merit of the application, using a two-digit modifier (e.g., 2.1) ranging from 1.0 (outstanding) to 5.0 (acceptable).

Step 2 -- Individual ratings are averaged and multiplied by 100 to become the priority score.

Step 3 -- The percentile is determined by matching an application's priority score against a table of "relative rankings" containing all priority scores of applications assigned to the study section during the three most recent review cycles. NIH calculates percentiles by the following formula (the 0.5 percent is a standard mathematical procedure used for rounding):

NIH includes unscored applications in the percentile calculation. Since the number of unscored applications varies by study section, including them affects the percentile distribution and makes percentiling fair across study sections.

Percentiles range from 0.1 (best) to 99.5 (worst). They roughly translate to the percentage of applications receiving a better priority score during that timeframe.

NIH determines the relative rank by simply listing all the applications from the three reviews by priority score. The formula is then applied to create the percentile.

You can see what relative rankings look like in this theoretical list of rankings. Our table is an illustration only; it is not designed to be mathematically accurate.

Score Clustering Distorts Percentiles

Percentiling spreads out priority scores across the entire spectrum of about 1,000 possible percentile rankings.

As you can imagine, the more that priority scores are bunched together, the more the difference among them is exaggerated as percentiling spreads them out.

From the perspective of judging scientific merit, score clustering reflects the difficulty reviewers have in making fine distinctions between the many high-quality applications NIH receives.

Applications with the same priority score can receive different percentiles if reviewed at different meetings of the same study section. Since percentiles are based on the scores of a study section's three rounds of reviews, including the current one, two-thirds of the base used to calculate percentiles turns over at each study section meeting.

Further, percentiles for the earlier two meetings are fixed, contributing to a lack of mathematical precision. The table below shows how the same priority score may result in different percentiles based on how scores cluster in reviews.

How Long to Get the Grant?

After you are approved for funding, a number of administrative steps must take place at both NIAID and your institution.

Our grants management specialists make sure your application complies with all NIH policies and regulations. For example, they see that all your animal and human subjects documentation is in place.

You need to resolve any problems with either your grants specialist or program officer. Find both names on your summary statement. If you have a bar to award, see Know What a Summary Statement Means, Read Your Notice of Award, Know Your Terms, and the Bars to Grant Awards SOP.

Even after we plan to fund your application, you may still have to wait because it is early in the fiscal year and the Institute does not have a budget, or you have administrative issues to resolve. We explained this in more detail above at Why You May Not Get Funded Right Away.

For an R01 application, you will receive your Notice of Award within six to eight weeks of the advisory Council meeting or earlier if it underwent expedited second-level review. Other grant types may take longer.

See the NIAID R01 Application to Award Timeline for more timing information.

Congratulations!

Your first application is usually the most challenging, so celebrate your successful submission!

To continue, proceed to Part 11a. Managing Your Grant or Part 11b. Not Funded, Reapply. Or return to the index of NIH Grant Cycle: Application to Renewal.

	<< previous · NIH Grant Cycle · next (funded) or next (not funded) >>
	The next part of the NIH Grant Cycle: Application to Renewal is Part 11a. Managing Your Grant or Part 11b. Not Funded, Reapply.

Help us improve our outreach to you by emailing deaweb@niaid.nih.gov.