ups and downs. NIH research grant applications, prices and success rates.
NIH
last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that research funding success rate, a closely watched indicator of how whose investigators are doing in the fight for funds, fell to a low in 2011: 18%. At first glance, the decline appears to be due to increased competition, as evidenced by a sharp increase in applications last year. But many other factors are involved, including budgetary decisions made years ago, said the head of the extramural NIH Sally Rockey.
The success rate is the number of grants funded divided by the applications considered. 18% success rate, announced by Rockey on his blog, is down 3% compared to 2010 and is slightly higher than a preliminary estimate from last fall. It continues a rate of about 30% success ten years ago when the NIH budget has been growing. Part of the explanation is that the denominator is greater: the investigators sent a record number of grant proposals for research at NIH 49592 last year, an increase of 8%.
But not the whole story, Rockey said in a blog post today. Much of the increase is explained by a 17% increase in proposals for a specific category of R21-short-term financing grants. The mainstay of most laboratories are the largest R01, individual grant conducted at the NIH initiative, for which the success rate slipped from 22% in 2010 to 18% in 2011. Applications were up 3% R01. Another reason for the slip rate of success is that the NIH funded grants R01 copmpeting less than in 2010. This is partly because the size of the average grant increased slightly because the NIH had less to spend on global R01 (its budget was cut 1% last year).
But the most important factor, accounting for 1.5% of the decline in success rates is that most of R01 money than usual has been attached to previous grants. Because most NIH grants last 3-5 years every price creates several years of future unfunded liabilities. The amount of money needed for these ongoing grants increased from $ 189 million in 2011, reports Rockey. "This shows how careful we have to manage our funds since funding decisions in a given year have implications for years on," she wrote. She displayed a graph showing how the share of R01 NIH money committed to ongoing grants fluctuates from year to year. In 2011 it jumped to 78%, the highest level in 4 years.
A careful observer NIH, Howard Garrison of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, said the management of the off-year commitment is a delicate balancing act for the agency. If NIH gets a generous increase in a year and does not fund more grants, "People like me go mad because money does not go in the street," he said. Yet if Congress reduced the budget of the NIH few years later and NIH's commitment has increased, "You're toast," and success rates plunge
Rockey bottom line. "The success rate is complicated and it is not enough of a single factor "that animates it, she said Science Insider. She added that the success rate does not reflect "the amount of science" NIH is funding. The funded researchers basin has remained relatively stable in recent years, she said.
Although the NIH has received a modest increase of 0.8% in 2012, the agency seems to be girding for a period of austerity. Review reports today that the continuous subsidies will receive no inflationary increase in 2012 and new rewards will not receive inflationary increases in the coming years.
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