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NIAMS Grant Funding Decisions

Updated February 6, 2007

The decision to fund or not to fund a particular application is based on the assessment of scientific merit by a peer review group and on the relevance of the proposed work to the Institute's scientific and health priorities. Peer reviewers' judgments of scientific merit are expressed in "priority scores" and in percentile rankings derived from these priority scores. At any point in a given fiscal year, budgetary projections are based on awarding funds to all applications with rankings better than a certain percentile, sometimes referred to as the "pay-line." However, applications that address subjects of particular relevance to the Institute's scientific and health priorities may be considered for awards even if their assigned scores and percentile rankings would not qualify for funding under the current pay-line. Normally, a small portion of each year's budget is reserved for such "discretionary" or "select pay" awards. Projects to be funded on this basis are selected by the Director, NIAMS, following staff discussion. The NIAMS is committed to providing resources for new investigators to perform their research and makes special efforts to assure that they are not disadvantaged during the review and award process.

Decision-makers at NIH seek advice from many sources when setting research priorities:

• the scientific community, including both individual researchers and professional societies;
• patient organizations and voluntary health associations;
• Institute and Center Advisory Councils;
• the Congress and the Administration;
• the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director (ACD);
• the NIH Director's Council of Public Representatives (COPR); and
• the NIH staff.

In general, Institute priorities reflect public health needs, scientific opportunities, and congressional and administration mandates, among other factors. For grants, the principal public expressions of Institute priorities are Requests for Applications (RFAs) and Program Announcements (PAs), as published in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts. Applications received in response to an RFA generally compete only with other applications received in response to the Request. Applications received in response to PAs compete with all other approved applications assigned to the Institute. However, applications that are responsive to Program Announcements are candidates for discretionary funding as described above. Investigators may not request or apply for discretionary funding. Responsiveness to Program Announcements will be determined by Institute staff based on the scientific content of the application.