How Would You Measure and Reward Scientific Impact and Replicable Research Practices?

What does scientific impact look like today?

For decades, measures such as publication counts, citation rates, and grant funding have been primarily used to assess the success of researchers. Yet biomedical research has become increasingly collaborative, interdisciplinary, and data-intensive. Progress often depends on teams of investigators, shared datasets and software, rigorous validation of findings, and sustained mentorship and training efforts.

As NIH continues efforts to strengthen rigor, reproducibility, and public trust in science, we are seeking input from the research community on an important question: Are we measuring and rewarding the activities that matter most for advancing biomedical discovery? Your feedback will help inform NIH's long-standing and ongoing efforts to strengthen rigor, reproducibility, and trust in biomedical research. They also align with implementing our Replication and Reproducibility Initiative, Plan to Drive Gold Standard Science, and a recently released Highlighted Topic.

Whether you are conducting research, mentoring trainees, early in your research career/training, managing research programs, or supporting scientific infrastructure, NIH wants to hear your perspectives on how scientific impact and rigorous research should be measured and rewarded (NOT-OD-26-087). Comments will be accepted electronically here through our Request for Information (RFI) by August 19, 2026.

Maybe you have thoughts on how to incentivize collaborative research in modern biomedicine or strategies that support reproducing or replicating existing findings? Ever opined on approaches that could encourage data sharing and reuse while strengthening confidence in scientific findings?

Perhaps you are in the early stage of embarking on a research career and figured out ways to quantify the impact of your training? Seen what has worked well or not so well when collaborating across disciplines?

If so, then these are exactly the perspectives we would like to hear. In addition, NIH is also interested in perspectives on topics such as: 

• Spurring innovation and entrepreneurship and recognizing these efforts
• Furthering foundational scientific endeavors, including basic and high-risk, high-reward research (see also this Nexus article on NIH’s continued commitment)
• Recognizing the broader impact of NIH-supported science on improving public health and trust
• Incentivizing collaborative research and recognizing contributions to team science
• Considerations for feasibility across career stages, disciplines, and institution type
• Rigor, including with regard to defining causal research

Input is welcome from investigators, trainees, research administrators, institutional leaders, patient advocates, and others with perspectives on how scientific contributions can be measured and incentivized across today's research ecosystem. Your experience with specific indicators, incentives, implementation approaches, and lessons learned will help inform our future approaches that recognize scientific contributions that advance discovery, improve health, and strengthen the biomedical research enterprise.

Questions: [email protected]