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Submission and Review of Your Application
Applications should be submitted to the Center
for Scientific Review (CSR), at the NIH, on the appropriate
application form (usually PHS
Form 398), which is available at your institution's Office of
Sponsored Research or you may download it from the World Wide Web.
The CSR assigns your application to an Institute (for example, NHLBI)
or Center (for example, NCRR) and to an Initial Review Group (IRG)
such as Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Note: You may request,
in a cover letter, the assignment of your application to a particular
Institute and/or IRG. (The CSR usually honors such requests and
consider them helpful.)
If you have been in contact with program staff in the process of
developing your application, mention this by providing the person's
name and telephone number. You should also indicate on the face
page of the application that it is in response to a particular program
announcement or an RFA when this is appropriate. The assignment
to an Institute and an IRG is the first official step in the 9-month
review process. You can obtain preliminary feedback about 4 to 5
months after the submission of your application by contacting program
staff. In addition, a summary of critiques of your application will
be routinely sent to you as soon as it is available.
The IRGs are the main evaluating groups for your application and form the core
of the peer review system. A secondary review is conducted by the
respective Institute's Advisory Council. IRGs review applications
for scientific merits in terms of novelty, originality, and feasibility
of the approach; the training, experience, and research competence
of the investigators; the adequacy of the research design; the suitability
of the facilities; and the appropriateness of the requested budget
to the proposed work. For those applications they judge to be competitive,
they assign a priority score ranging from 100 to 500, which is converted
into percentile scores based upon the voting pattern of the IRG.
(The lower the number, the better the percentile). In addition to
assigning a score, the IRGs prepare the written critique. This summary
statement consists of a synopsis of the review as well as the verbatim
evaluations prepared by each of the reviewers.
Commencing October 1994, the IRGs has employed a procedure in which
the applications are subjected to a streamlining process. Reviewers
are asked to identify applications that they judge noncompetitive
and to designate these applications as "non-scored." This means
that with limited funds available, applications so designated are
not competitive for funding when compared to other applications.
While a summary statement is still prepared, it is only a compilation
of reviewers' comments without significant modification or editing
on the part of NIH staff, and without budget recommendations. There
is no further review at the level of Advisory Council. Applicants
are free to revise and resubmit their application after taking into
account the reviewers' comments. Only applications that are deemed
to be competitive are discussed by the review group and assigned
priority scores. These applications will be percentiled against
all of the applications assigned to the review group, not just ones
actually reviewed. The Institutes' decision to fund or not to fund
an application is based primarily on the evaluations of the scientific
merit made by the IRGs.
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Planning Your Application
Some key points to consider prior to, during, and after your application is prepared:
- The standard deadlines for new NIH grant applications are February 1,
June 1, and October 1; the deadlines for Request for Applications
(RFAs) may differ. The review and award process of applications
submitted to NIH takes, in general, about 9 months.
- Read the program announcement or RFA in detail. Before you start writing your grant application, read the pertinent instructions (for example, PHS 398) carefully and become thoroughly familiar with all the requirements and certifications necessary. If needed, find someone who can assist you, based on his/her experience, in understanding and completing the requirements. Incomplete applications are returned without review.
- Establish investigators' own deadlines for the preparation of the grant application, particularly when collaborating investigators are involved. Be aware of institutional deadlines that could delay your application. Allow time for equipment failures, support personnel shortages, etc.
- Do not hesitate to request technical assistance from the funding agency or your institution. Contact the scientific review administrator who will coordinate the peer review process or the program officer who will manage your award for advice on scientific and technical issues. Seek advice from the NIH grants management specialist on administrative issues.
- Reread your application. Have someone else read and comment on it. Proofread it. Make sure someone has final editing responsibilities.
- If available, have senior scientists (for example, successful grantees, objective experts) review your application. Professional colleagues or close associates may not be as critical as the scientific reviewers at NIH.
- Inquire about funding priorities of funding agencies, and ascertain from the program officer whether your application falls within the scope of set priorities.
- When submitting a revised application that originally responded to an RFA, keep in mind that the application will need to provide all scientific rationale, significance, potential contribution, etc., because it will go to a different review group than the one that originally reviewed the application. Some aspects of the original RFA may not be acceptable to the new review group.
- Feel free to consult NIH staff with specific questions.
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Preparation of Your Application
Remember that you are writing primarily to an IRG when you submit a grant application. Given this fact, what can you do to improve your chances of a favorable review? While there are no substitutes for good ideas and well-planned studies, IRGs are obviously influenced by how these ideas and plans are presented. Much of the following advice may appear to be self-evident, but it is astounding how many applications run into difficulties because they do not follow these simple principles:
Contact Institute program staff. They can help in the
proposal phase. They should be your first and primary contact
point with the Institute during the review process and after an
award is made. They are most likely to understand your perspective
and needs, since they have research experience themselves as well
as knowledge and understanding of how the NIH system works.
Follow the directions provided with the grant application
kit. The instructions call for a particular organization of
the materials, and reviewers are accustomed to finding information
in specific places. Avoid antagonizing them by forcing them to
hunt through your proposal for some elementary facts. Do not exceed
the specified page limits or type sizes. Otherwise, CSR will return
your application without its being reviewed.
Be brief, concise, and clear. Make your points as directly
as possible. Use diagrams to help the readers understand complex
models, relationships among variables, or design features.
Be organized and logical. Many applications fail because
the reviewers cannot follow the thought process of the applicant
or because parts of the application do not fit together. For example,
an outstanding literature review may not lead logically to the
hypotheses and design of the study. Similarly, provide an analysis
plan that relates the research questions to specific data and
appropriate analytic techniques.
Show how your work goes beyond previous research. What
contribution will your study make to the field? State this as
clearly as possible.
Be complete. Don't leave out vital information. In part,
state what appears to be implicit or obvious, provide an adequate
literature review and details of the study design, sampling procedure,
and data analysis. Do not assume that all reviewers are experts
in your field, especially since they need to be convinced that
you are! For instance, if a t-test is "obviously" the appropriate
statistic, still indicate that you will use a t-test. In many
instances, you may have struggled with a crucial design question
and arrived at a satisfactory solution. Don't just present your
solution. The reviewers may wonder why you chose a particular
route, since they won't have the benefit of your months of thought.
Therefore, you should provide a rationale for your decision and
discuss rejected alternatives. Similarly, if you are aware of
a problem it is wisest to admit that you do not have a solution.
Failure to mention this will lead the reviewers to assume that
you are unaware of that problem.
Provide background on pilot instruments and data whenever
possible. Such information helps to convince the reviewers
that you know what you are doing and that it is feasible.
Be careful in the use of appendices. Given the slightly
contradictory advice to be concise and complete, it is tempting
to rely heavily upon appendices to provide the required details.
However, you should be aware that only the two primary reviewers
of your application receive both the main body and the appendices.
The remaining members of the IRG receive only the main text. Thus,
you should not place essential information in an appendix, since
most of the reviewers will not receive it and will be forced to
rely solely on the comments of the primary reviewers. A possible
compromise is to provide some information, for example, about
an attitude scale in the main body, but then provide the full
details in the appendix. This gives the secondary reviewers some
sense of the scale, and provides the primary reviewer with adequate
information. Be sure to follow the instructions regarding the
permissible content and length of appendices.
Consider dual assignment of your application. You may
request that your application be assigned to more than one Institute
as potential funders (for example, NIMH and NCI). While this does
not influence the review of your application by an IRG, it does
provide you with a second chance for funding at no cost to you.
If the primary Institute is unable to fund your approved application,
then the other may be able to.
Submit your application to other potential funders such as
private foundations. Be sure to inform them of such multiple
submissions and of funding offers by another agency.
Be prepared to revise and resubmit. Given the competition
for funds, it is usual to submit a revised application. In revising,
first contact program staff for their interpretation of the summary
statement, and then give careful consideration to the critique.
Be sure to address each criticism in your revision, either by
making appropriate changes or by indicating that you consider
it invalid and why. Don't ignore any criticism or give it cursory
attention. You need to show that you learned from the critique
or (in a nondefensive manner) that you considered it inappropriate.
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