FundScience Blog

Update: NIAID has officially announced their interim payline at the 6th percentile.

So, for those non-ARRA applications submitted last February-March or thereabouts, what might your expectations be for the initial FY10 paylines?

Think low. Painfully low, at least at the outset.

First, we still don’t have an FY10 budget, though Congress probably will have something in place by October for a change. What will be in place for the NIH will be a minimal increase (~1.5%) in the base appropriation, so nothing to get excited about. {Don’t forget to ask your Congressional delegation to support an increase in NIH funding}

However, in addition to uncertainty about funding levels, ICs are also struggling with the changes in scoring and the lack of a percentile base on which to make award decisions. Plus, they realize hundreds or perhaps thousands of RC1s will come back this fall, swelling the pool later in the fiscal year … and then all the lucky ARRA awardees will start submitting their competing renewals soon after, particularly those with bridge awards or one-year administrative supplements essentially serving as bridge awards.

With a set (and limited) amount of money and uncertainty as to what scores will truly reflect the most highly meritorious applications and how many such submissions might come in, ICs will be erring on the side of caution to avoid setting a payline that cannot be sustained for the entire fiscal year – again, especially since they anticipate so many competitive applications in the pipeline. Imagine them subsequently reducing a payline mid-year … whereas it is possible to go back and pick up applications if the payline is relaxed.

So, how painful will these initially conservative paylines be?

The tentative interim FY10 R01 payline at one IC will likely be at the 6th percentile (which includes everything up to the 6.9th percentile in the new system), with the anticipation that this will move up to the 8-9th percentile once the NIH has its final appropriation and once data from at least 2 rounds of review are in. Program will have a smidge of wiggle room for discretionary awards such as bridge and select pay.

Now, if you have found it difficult to get clear advice in the past from your POs about whether to resubmit should your score be on the bubble, you can imagine how noncommittal they will be in the months to come.

Have fun and good luck.

I thought I would add a post in which to consolidate & commiserate over RC1 scores and remind folks of the remaining phases of review.

First, for calibration purposes, some scores previously posted at MWEG (feel free to continue adding scores in the comments here – I’ll move some scores up to this list as they come in) and mentioned to me in the hallways at BICO (impact score/percentile):

15/1st
19/1st
20/2nd
22/1.5th
28/5th
30/2nd
32/3rd
32/6th
34/7th
35/6th
36/6th
36/9th
37/8th
38/7th
39/7th
43/12th
44/8th
46/8th
49/6th
49/12th
50/10th
50/12th
54/12th
57/9th
58/13th
60/11th
66/17th
77/11th

So what happens next?

If the process continues as previously described to me, the third stage of review will be conducted by the ICs, each of which will prioritize their assigned applications for each Broad Challenge Area (n=15) and write brief summaries of the top 10% of the applications for each Broad Challenge Area (this can include applications assigned to one IC but that meet a high priority for another IC).

In early August, a group of IC directors will conduct the fourth stage of review and rank applications across all Broad Challenge Areas. These recommendations go to the NIH director for the final decision on the 200 applications to be supported by OD ARRA funds. Applications not selected for funding with OD ARRA funds will go back to ICs for funding consideration.

Finally, all applications selected for ARRA support will still need to go through the standard “secondary” peer review by Council of the IC that will be responsible for oversight of the application in time to obligate funds in FY09.

Oh, and then really finally, off to the Executive Branch for final approval of each requested award.