The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) plans to centralise peer review of its research grant applications. The move has alarmed many in the country’s research community, which is still reeling from the Trump administration’s directives that have frozen research grant reviews and slashed the workforce at the NIH and other science agencies.
The proposed approach involves consolidating peer review of all applications for grants, cooperative agreements as well as research and development contracts within the biomedical research agency’s Center for Scientific Review (CSR). The NIH, which has an annual budget of nearly $48 billion (£37 billion), estimates that the measures will save more than $65 million each year by eliminating duplicative efforts and making the review process more efficient.
Currently, CSR manages the review of more than 66,000 grant applications each year – 78% of the NIH’s total submissions. The other 22% are reviewed in study sections at the agency’s 27 institutes and centres, each of which operates separately with its own administrative and support overhead. ‘The proposed consolidation would eliminate the [institute and centre]-based study sections so that CSR conducts all first-level review,’ the agency explained in its 6 March announcement.
The NIH points to data from last year indicating that grant reviews at its institutes cost around three times as much on average than those conducted at the CSR. ‘Centralised peer review will mitigate the potential for bias by entirely separating the peer review and funding components of NIH,’ stated CSR’s director, Noni Byrnes.
NIH’s acting director, Matthew Memoli added that centralising the agency’s peer review process will improve ‘the quality, consistency and integrity of review’, and ‘maximise competition of similar science across the agency’.
At the agency, grant applications undergo an initial review by panels commonly known as study sections, which are comprised of external, volunteer scientists from relevant fields and managed by scientific review officers (SROs) at the agency. These SROs assess proposed research projects and score them based on scientific and technical merit.
A second-level review for mission relevance is then conducted by advisory councils for the NIH institutes and the NIH Office of the Director. The final funding decisions rest with institute directors, who take into consideration the priorities of their institutes and centres in the context of their existing research funding portfolio.
Cutbacks and mission control
There is considerable concern among NIH grantees and other stakeholders that the move will mean a significant reduction in staffing, making it harder for the agency to accomplish its job of conducting and supporting the best biomedical research. Reports have circulated that up to 300 SRO positions at across the agency could be cut as part of the effort.
This reorganisation at the NIH seems to have been under discussion during the previous administration, around last autumn or earlier, according to Jeremy Berg, a biochemist who served as director of the NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences for almost eight years.
‘The reasoning behind the plan matters, but so does the implementation,’ Berg tells Chemistry World. ‘If it were to be phased in slowly and thoughtfully, that might be fine,’ he says, noting that the $65 million in savings referenced by the agency ‘almost certainly reflects’ reductions achieved by terminating SROs from the NIH’s institute review offices. Berg estimates that the figure corresponds to at least 150 terminations of employees in this category, which he says would represent ‘a substantial loss of expertise and review capacity over a short period of time’.
Patrick Fueger, an associate professor of molecular and cellular endocrinology at City of Hope cancer research centre in California, would also like to see the financials and hard data on exactly how this plan would save money at the NIH.
‘It’s just scary when you hear about these cuts without more details because the total number of grants isn’t going to change,’ Fueger says. ‘Are they just going to eliminate all those scientific review groups, the study sections, that actually do the peer review of the grants … and then reallocate the grants to existing study sections?’ he asks.
‘If they’re just going to redistribute them into a different job with the same title, same position, under a different organisational structure then I’m okay with that to some extent,’ Fueger adds. However, he says the NIH institutes have the right to protect their missions, noting concern in the research community that the centralisation of the agency’s peer review system could be a way for the Trump administration to gain control over the NIH’s research priorities.
But Laurie Parker, a chemical biologist at the University of Minnesota, isn’t too worried. ‘I’m not as freaked out about this as I am about all the other things going on at NIH,’ she stated in a post on the social media platform Bluesky. ‘I actually don’t think this will make a huge difference or be a big problem, in principle,’ she adds. ‘Most standing study sections are already centrally run by CSR and operate via the way we all know and understand NIH peer review to work.’
Implementation of the NIH proposal will depend on the outcome of external reviews by the US Department of Health and Human Services and the White House Office of Management and Budget. Following these, the agency will issue a public notice and provide Congress with a 15-day notification period before the changes take effect.
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