And Science Ground to a Halt While Reviews Were Underway

May 06, 2009

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At the Medical Writing, Editing & Grantsmanship blog, this post notes the rising estimates of Challenge Grant applications. "Although the dust has not settled as yet, the NIH has currently accepted more than 18K RC1 applications, with another 11K in the error correction queue," according to the blogger. "CSR expects to engage 10K - 15K reviewers" -- which explains why you've probably gotten more than a few invitations already. As a point of comparison, the MWEG blogger says that "for all of 2008, CSR used 16,000 reviewers." Note to NIH: call it a "jamboree" and you might get better response to those reviewer requests.

The RC1 program is going to

Submitted by jlboore on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 12:47.

The RC1 program is going to burden the scientific community to review 29,000 grants, each one 12 pages of project description (that's 348,000 pages) plus another 30 pages or so of other material (another 870,000 pages). If each grant review requires 4 hours on the part of 3 reviewers (as is typical) that's about 350,000 person-hours. Considering salary, fringe benefits, and overhead, on average these scientists are at about $95 per hour, for a total of over $33 million. All that to distribute $200 million in grant funds to stimulate the U.S. economy by about 65 cents per person.

I can help here but it's been

Submitted by wassja on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 12:56.

I can help here but it's been about 4 years since I was an NIH reviewer (computational genomics). Does anyone have the site for volunteering? My address has changed in 4 yrs so it's probable that they do not have the current email.

RCI should invite young

Submitted by mdhar on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 12:57.

RCI should invite young investigators to serve as reviewers.

JW - you can contact your

Submitted by mlk39 on Wed, 05/06/2009 - 13:11.

JW - you can contact your usual program officer or an appropriate SRO at CSR. In your case, I would assume this to be:

Barbara Thomas, Ph.D.
Division of Basic and Integrative Biological Sciences

Scientific Review Officer
Genes, Genomes and Genetics (GGG)
Genomics, Computational Biology and Technology (GCAT)

Email: bthomas@csr.nih.gov
Phone Number: 301-435-0603

She could send along your offer to the appropriate individual if she is not the best point of contact for you.

Anyone who is interested in serving as a reviewer (either for the RC1s or in general) should identify and contact the most appropriate SRO in terms of reviewer expertise.

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