NIH Peer Review begins big changes

NIH Peer Review begins big changes

Recently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) completed a year-long examination of the agency's peer-review processes. At a recent meeting, the NIH's Advisory Committee presented to the Director an implementation plan designed to enhance NIH’s peer-review process. Given that the plan take action to remarks submitted previously by the research community. The NIH announced that it would act quickly to implement the recommendations, which address four major priorities:

Engage the best reviewers by offering better compensation, flexibility, and standardized training;
Shorten and redesign applications to improve the quality and transparency of reviews;
Ensure balanced and fair reviews across scientific fields and career stages; and
Develop a permanent process to continuously evaluate peer review.

As part of the implementation plan, NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, MD, announced the agency's commitment to spend $1 billion over the next five years on investigator-initiated, high-risk, high-impact transformative research. Implementation is expected to occur over the next 18 months.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education, June 9, 2008.