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 Dear Extramural Community Members,
With the recent release of NIH's
much-anticipated final draft report on peer
review and the public comment period closing
on March 17, we bring you this special edition
of the Nexus to ensure your timely
access to the latest news on this important
issue.
The "peer review enhancement" effort
is part of NIH's longstanding commitment to
supporting promising and meritorious biomedical
and behavioral research using diverse approaches,
strategies and mechanisms. We will keep you
abreast of developments in future editions of
the Nexus.
Look for a full issue of the March
Nexus later this month.
— Norka Ruiz Bravo
OER Director and NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research
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The
NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni is mulling the
final draft of the "NIH 2007-2008 Peer Review
Self-Study" submitted Feb. 28, 2008, marking
the end of the diagnostic phase of the peer
review enhancement effort. The public comment
period is open through Monday, March 17, 2008.
To access the full report and for details on
submitting comments please visit the Enhancing
Peer Review at NIH Web site.
Last year, Dr. Zerhouni established two working
groups (the Advisory Committee to the Director
and the NIH Steering Committee) to examine the
peer review system NIH uses to support biomedical
and behavioral research. The groups were charged
with identifying the most significant challenges
and proposing recommendations that would enhance
this system in the most transformative manner.
During the summer and fall of 2007, both working
groups embarked on an in-depth evaluation of
peer review that included soliciting input from
NIH internal and external communities and extensively
deliberating about challenges and recommendations.
The final report reflects the outcome of the
diagnostic phase and includes the working groups'
recommendations to the most significant challenges
facing the peer review system (details of implementation
were purposefully omitted during this phase
of the project). Dr. Zerhouni will carefully
consider the recommendations and work with the
Steering Committee Peer Review Implementation
Group to develop an implementation plan. NIH
will formally announce the new initiatives it
plans to implement in the spring of 2008.
Below are the challenges the report identified
with some of the recommendations for addressing
each of them:
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.
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