NIH releases Peer Review Self-Study Final Draft; public comment period ends March 17

NIH releases Peer Review Self-Study Final Draft; public comment period ends March 17

The Final Draft of the NIH 2007-08 Peer Review Self-Study is in the hands of NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni, marking the end of the diagnostic phase of the peer review enhancement effort. The public comment period extends through Monday, March 17, 2008. To access the full report and learn how to submit comments, visit the Enhancing Peer Review at NIH web site at http://enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov/.

Members of the MUSC research community will have the opportunity to discuss the findings and recommendations of the Peer Review Self-Study with Dr. Cheryl Kitt, Deputy Director of the Center for Scientific Review (CSR) at NIH, when she visits our campus on March 20-21 (see related news item in this issue).

In June 2007, 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, the 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 draft report includes the working groups' recommendations to address the most significant challenges facing the peer review system; however, details of implementation were purposefully omitted at this stage. Dr. Zerhouni is considering the recommendations and will 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.

Listed below are the challenges the report identified with summaries of recommendations for addressing them. The full draft report is available as a pdf download from the Enhancing Peer Review at NIH web site at http://enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov/.

Reduce Administrative Burden on Applicants, Reviewers, and NIH Staff
Recommendations: Reduce application length but emphasize 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 include 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.