Understanding the Capacity of NIH’s Peer Review System

My office devotes a lot of effort to evaluating its grants policies and practices. Since the introduction of the Enhancing Peer Review changes, NIH has sponsored an ongoing evaluation of peer review, involving formal surveys about the peer review process, as well as other types of analyses. We are keenly interested in your responses to our surveys, so if you receive an invitation to take a peer review survey, I hope you can find the time to respond. The importance of participating in these surveys is nicely illustrated by a recent study completed by my office, evaluating peer review. NIH’s peer review system relies upon the service of well-qualified reviewers from the biomedical research community, most of whom are NIH grantees. We are grateful for the service of NIH peer reviewers, and we know there are concerns about the burden this imposes on those who are simultaneously submitting applications and serving as reviewers. There also are concerns that NIH’s demand for peer reviewers may have exceeded the capacity of our current grantees to support it. Therefore, over the past two years my office has been evaluating the level of service that most peer reviewers are willing and able to provide, and how peer review service fits within the scope of reviewers’ other professional responsibilities. We looked at peer review participation among PIs who have had active R01 or other RPG funding within the past five years. Since nearly half of the applications NIH reviews are for ...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Rock Talk Enhancing Peer Review Source Type: funding