The move aims to speed up grant delivery, currently a painfully slow process that can take as long as 18 months to go through the system. The situation is further exacerbated as proposals are placed in a queue as older applications go back and forth to the applicants for rewrites and amendments before final approval.
The process began in the summer of last year, when NIH Director Elias Zerhouni called on researchers to air their gripes and share ideas about how to make the system better. The formal list of recommendations is expected to be complete by April.
In a preliminary report documented by the NIH, a list of challenges and recommendations has already been compiled in collaboration with internal and external working groups. These groups mainly comprises of researchers, advocacy groups, professional society groups, and NIH staff.
Broad strategies mentioned include reducing the administrative burden of applicants, reviewers, and NIH staff; enhancing review and reviewer quality; optimising support at different career stages and types and for different scientific approaches; and the need for continuing to review the peer review system in the future.
"The fine details of implementation were purposefully not considered during this phase of the project and it would be premature to consider issues of this type today," NIH stated in the report, titled A Self-Study by the NIH in Partnership with the Scientific Community to Strengthen Peer Review in Changing Times.
The proposals are not without its critics who believe the changes may make things worse. The fears are the system will reward superficiality at the expense of solid, critical work.
The response section of resubmissions, a part of the process threatened with the axe, is considered the most meaningful part of the grant and researchers believe its absence will not give the applicant a chance to explain why a criticism is wrong.
However, feedback from scientists suggest that a review of the process is long overdue, with many believing the process too conservative, time-consuming, spotty in quality, and insufficiently supportive of young scientists and clinical research.
"One goal is to focus on the merit of the science as presented in the application and not on the 'potential improvements' realised following additional rounds of review," the NIH commented.
"To deal with that, the NIH may recommend removing the 'special status' of amended applications and consider all applications as being 'new.'"
In removing the application's special status, researchers would be allowed to re-apply without revising, allowing reviewers to develop more concise reviews.
Other areas of concern on the agenda include improving the rating system and review and reviewer quality. Shortening the application (to an as-yet-unspecified length) was also mentioned as is reducing the emphasis on preliminary data and methodological details.
The report recommended engaging at least four reviewers per application, giving reviewers incentives for participating.
