How Grant Success Rates Do (Or Do Not) Track With the NIH Budget: A Model of Funding Dynamics

From 2014 to 2018, the NIH budget increased every year, and yet, the Research Project Grant (RPG) success rate remained relatively constant at ~20%. From 2003 to 2006 the NIH budget remained relatively flat, yet the success rate decreased dramatically from 30% to 20%. Why don’t success rates neatly track the NIH budget? While inflation plays a role, there are more fundamental forces at play. Here I present a series of budget and success rate scenarios that are largely based on a Service Science publication by Larson, Ghaffarzadegan, and Diaz. The bottom-line up front: NIH funding dynamics are strongly affected by obligations incurred by grant awards made in previous years – what we call “out-year obligations” – and by responses of the research community to NIH budget increases. As a reminder, Success rates are calculated by dividing the number of awards made in a fiscal year (FY) by the number of applications received (see also our recent By The Numbers post). the calculation includes applications that are peer reviewed and either scored or unscored by an Initial Review Group. Applications having one or more amendments in the same fiscal year are only counted once. Imagine a simplified funding agency that receives an annual budget of $1 Billion (or $1000 million). This budget has been constant for years. The agency only spends money on competing or non-competing grant awards (in other words, there is no overhead for agency management). Each award costs...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - Category: Research Authors: Tags: blog Open Mike Budget Funding data Source Type: funding