Peer Review in the new Millennium

Source: NIH Eyes Sweeping Reform of Peer Review. Science 286(5) 1074-1076

The National Institute of Health (NIH) is considering whether to refurbish or to update of their existing peer review system. It has been argued that the foundation of NIH’s success has been its peer review system. The current system consists of small committees of nongovernment scientists, known as study sections, that judge the scientific merit of about 40,000 grant applications per year.

Bruce Albert, President of the National Academy of Sciences is head of the latest reform proposal. Albert proposes expanding the more than 100 Center for Scientific Review (CSR) study sections that are now clustered into 19 Integrated Review Groups (IRG) into 21 IRGs. The panel suggests that 16/21 IRGs would be centered on disease or organ systems, and five would focus on basic research areas whose application to specific disease areas cannot be predicted. This proposal would allow enough overlapping expertise so than any one grant could be reasonably reviewed by more than one study section.

The scientific community has responded to this proposal with more than 700 e-mailed responses. Most were in favor of the reform. However, several researchers were skeptical. The AIDS researchers proposed that they retain their own IRG, rather than being integrated among several study sections. Other research areas that would be slighted by being folded into a broader IRG included toxicology, kidney and urologic research, pharmacology, organic chemistry, developmental biology, aging, nutrition, epidemiology, and environmental health sciences.

This panel’s proposal is only the latest in a series of peer review changes that have been set in place or proposed over the past few years. In fact, CSR has already gathered neuroscience and behavioral research into four new IRGs composed of 37 restructured study sections to complete the merger between the between the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism into NIH. NIH has also created another new IRG with eight study sections to centralize review of AIDS research applications, as well as added a special study section for vaccine research. Furthermore, the CSR has implemented new study sections to accommodate applications that don’t seen to fit anywhere else, such as bioengineering collaborations, as well as applications from clinical researchers who feel they don’t get treated fairly in panels dominated by laboratory researchers.

By:  Arlene L. Weiss, MS, DABT,  Contributing Editor