The following information was posted on the NIH website.
Notice Number: NOT-OD-09-024
Key Dates
Release Date: December 2, 2008
Issued by
National Institutes of Health (NIH), (http://www.nih.gov)
The new scoring system will be effective for all applications for research grants and cooperative agreements that are submitted for funding consideration for fiscal year 2010 (FY2010) and thereafter. The first standing due date for FY2010 is January 25, 2009; the new scoring system will be used for applications submitted in response to Parent Announcements and Program Announcements, including PARs and PASs published before or after this Guide Notice. An important aspect of the implementation of the new scoring system is to use it in a consistent manner for applications considered in a given fiscal year. Therefore, some RFAs and PARs for funding consideration in FY2010 have due dates before January 25, 2009, and responses to those will be evaluated using the new scoring system. Likewise some RFAs and PARs for FY2009 have due dates after January 25, 2009, and responses to those will be evaluated using the present scoring system.
The new scoring system will utilize a 9-point rating scale (1 = exceptional; 9 = poor). Although a 7-point scale was planned initially, a 9-point scale was selected based on the desire for a scale with sufficient range. The NIH also has prior experience with the distribution of scores from a 9-point scale, based on data on the 1-5 scale when only 0.5 increments were allowed. Moreover, prior recommendations from measurement and decision science experts regarding the scoring system suggested that an 8 to 11 point scale is appropriate.
Inquiries
Questions should be directed to EnhancingPeerReview@mail.nih.gov.
For more information on NIH’s Enhancing Peer Review effort visit http://enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov/.