Key Dates

Related Announcements

None

Issued by

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH (NIH)

Purpose

Background

In November 2025, NIH announced the Unified Funding Strategy, based in the long-standing two-stage system of review NIH uses in making funding decisions. The framework calls for NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices (ICOs) to consider peer review outcomes in the context of their and NIH's priorities, strategic plans, and budgets, instead of relying on funding paylines to develop pay plans, which over-emphasize numerical scores. Core tenets of this funding strategy include that funding policies must "prioritize scientific merit; ICOs should consider peer review information in its entirety." 

Peer review outcomes – current process:

NIH uses a two-stage system of review in developing extramural funding recommendations. In the first stage, scientific experts (peer reviewers) evaluate the scientific and technical merit of grant applications. Each proposal is assigned to a peer review group and is assigned to a minimum of three peer reviewers from that group to prepare written critiques. Each written critique addresses the likely overall impact of the proposed work, as well as strengths and weaknesses guided by the review criteria in Section V of the relevant Notice of Funding Opportunity. The assigned reviewers enter their individual scores from 1-9 reflecting their preliminary assessment of the overall impact of the proposal and criterion/factor scores for the review criteria. Generally, applications with average preliminary overall impact scores in the top 50% of applications assigned to the review group are discussed. After discussion, all reviewers–assigned and not–enter their final individual overall impact scores, which gets averaged into one final overall impact score. 

The review outcome is currently reported as a summary statement which includes a resume of discussion for discussed applications, the written critiques of the assigned reviewers, criterion/factor scores from assigned reviewers, and a final overall impact score averaged from all voting members of the panel.  The principal investigator(s), applicant institution, NIH program staff, and the members of the funding ICO's advisory council have access to these review outcomes. 

NIH program staff examine proposals and consider the final overall impact scores given during the peer review process, percentile rankings (if applicable), and the summary statements, in consideration of the ICO's priorities. Program staff then provide a proposed funding plan to ICO leadership for award decisions. 

Recommendations:

In late 2025, a working group of NIH leaders was charged with recommending changes in how NIH reports out peer review evaluations of scientific merit, to facilitate the Unified Funding Strategy. Considerations for their work included the following: (1) funding decisions rely on qualitative peer review assessments of merit, along with other important programmatic considerations; (2) peer review scores are estimates with imperfect discriminative ability; and (3) peer review outcomes are multifaceted and contain valuable information beyond the overall impact score. The group reviewed literature on the predictive value of peer review scores for scientific outcomes, considered reporting approaches utilized by other funding entities, and examined NIH peer review data. The working group recommended the changes below.

Proposed Changes:

The first-level peer review process is proposed to be modified to place an application in one of three overall impact categories: 

• "Most competitive" (based on the top 25% of final overall impact scores),
• "Competitive" (based on the 26-50% of final overall impact scores), or
• "Not discussed" (scores >50%, or ND)

With the exception of the reporting of final overall impact scores and percentiles, all other initial review group procedures would be retained. As happens currently, all voting members of a peer review group would continue to enter individual overall impact scores for each application discussed. A final overall impact score would still be calculated for each discussed application for purposes of assigning the application to the appropriate category. The category assigned would be communicated to the principal investigator(s), applicant institution, NIH program staff, ICO leadership, and the relevant NIH Advisory Council. However, the final overall impact score or percentile on which the categorization was based would not be released to any of these parties. 

Other reporting procedures would be unchanged. Discussed applications would still receive a resume of discussion and all applications would still receive written critiques from the assigned reviewers, to include individual criterion/factor scores.

Advantages to categorizing review outcomes:

Reporting categorization as "most competitive," "competitive," and "not discussed" in lieu of final overall impact score aligns with the Unified Funding Strategy which encourages ICOs to actively balance many competing and dynamic factors, including peer review, health priorities, scientific opportunities, the workforce, availability of funds, and the wider research portfolio when determining the most meritorious research ideas to support.  Categorizing proposals in this way conveys valuable information about the assessed scientific merit from peer review of without providing over-emphasis on overall impact scores. Omitting a final overall impact score from what is reported will empower program officials to utilize their substantial expertise, portfolio analyses, and good judgment to make award recommendations that better incorporate ICO strategic plans and NIH priorities.  The removal of final overall impact scores also supports a focus on substantive comments from the assigned reviewers and the panel, elevating the role of scientific peer review. Finally, this change would align NIH practices with those followed by other major funders such as the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

60-day Comment Period

Comments must be received by October 13, 2026.

Information Requested:

NIH is specifically requesting public comment on the proposed changes to reporting of peer review outcomes, as described above. Response to this RFI is voluntary.

Submitting a Response

Comments should be submitted electronically to the following webpage at: https://rfi.grants.nih.gov/?s=6a2b1c22c3fcfda46e0badd2

This RFI is for planning purposes only and should not be construed as a policy, solicitation for applications, or as an obligation on the part of the Government to provide support for any ideas identified in response to it. Please note that the Government will not pay for the preparation of any information submitted or for its use of that information.

Please do not include any proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information in your response. Responses will be compiled and a content analysis will be shared publicly after the close of the comment period. The NIH may use information gathered by this Notice to inform future policy development.

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Center for Scientific Review (CSR)
Email: [email protected]