Archive for Payline

Pending Payline Pain

July 30, 2009 at 9:30 am · Filed under NIH Advice, Payline, Research News

Update: NIAID has officially announced their interim payline at the 6th percentile (also confirmed by Anthony Fauci at the September 2009 Advisory Council, with the hope that this can be raised to the 8th percentile at the January 2010 Council meeting), with a 10th percentile interim payline for new investigator R01s.

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.

Comments (19)

RC1 Scores & Remaining Review Procedures

July 24, 2009 at 9:28 pm · Filed under NIH Advice, Payline, Research News

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.

Comments (265)

NIAID FY08 Payline Update

December 13, 2007 at 12:14 pm · Filed under Payline

Update: Please see the NIH Paylines & Resources page for the latest information.

FY08 payline at NIAID

Einstein/Yeshiva Payline Table

Comments (4)

Catching Up …

November 20, 2007 at 12:21 am · Filed under NIH Advice, NSF Info, Payline, Research Resource

Let’s see … while I’ve been trying to save the world from bad grantsmanship, last week the NSF released its FY 2006 academic R&D expenditure data … no payline news likely to be forthcoming Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment

Building Academic Legitimacy

November 6, 2007 at 11:29 pm · Filed under Biomedical Research Ethics, Payline, Tobacco "Research"

Update: The reason for these meetings can be better understood in light of the VCU-PM master research services agreement.

Not events I would want or expect to come across on a local calendar …

Nov 7 Philip Morris senior leadership summit (provost and vice presidents only) 3-5 p.m.
Nov 7 Philip Morris reception for deans, PM-funded faculty and DoDs 5-7 p.m.

Aside from their outlandishly inethical practices with regard to manipulating research, publications, and policy, Philip Morris et al. have one product line, and that product line is known to be highly addictive, toxic, and lethal. Profits used to fund tobacco industry grants are earned at the cost of millions of lives and billions of dollars worldwide. Why would any academic health center solicit and accept grants and gifts funded solely and directly through the sale of a product they themselves must counsel each and every patient, employee, faculty, student, and community member to avoid or stop using … an industry in direct conflict with their mission to protect and advance public and personal health.

Instead, an academic legitimacy dream come true: the newly constructed $350+ million Philip Morris USA Center for Research & Technology is the flagship member of Virginia BioTechnology Park, “a joint initiative of Virginia Commonwealth University [which gives PM employees affiliate faculty appointments] and the city of Richmond, situated on 34-acres adjacent to the VCU Medical Center [including the NCI-designated Massey Cancer Center, which lists Philip Morris and Altria among its corporate partners]” and home to the VCU Office of Vice President for Research (with the presidentially appointed VPR on comfortable terms with Philip Morris … also a recipient of NIH funding from ORI’s research on research integrity program).

Update: Science and The Chronicle of Higher Education (which includes a thread of comments) note that Philip Morris ended its PM External Research Program. However, this is not the end of PM funding at Universities.
Read the rest of this entry »

Comments (12)

Paylines, Paylines, Paylines

October 2, 2007 at 10:28 pm · Filed under NIH Advice, Payline

Update: Please see the NIH Paylines & Resources page for the latest information.

Yoiks. Everyone has a score and wants me to read the tarot cards to interpret theirs. FY08 officially began on Oct 1, but please remember that FY07 operated under a continuing resolution for essentially the whole year. The march of the FY08 Continuing Resolutions has begun, with the current one lasting until November 16th.

Some of you might have received the happy call in Sept about grants you’d given up on but are being considered for funding at the last minute as ICs scrambled to spend their remaining FY07 shekels. Otherwise, even though Council has probably met, Council doesn’t know how much they have in the kitty beyond the 2007 levels.

My advice as always is to ask your program officer to read the tea leaves based on what he/she knows of the scoring range in your study section and go from there. Also, please realize you can, assuming you have summary statement in hand to which to respond, resubmit and not lose your current score … no need to wait for final resolution (esp if you’re a new investigator who can benefit from the rapid turnaround option) unless you want to avoid the extra submission work at all costs. It can happen that an A1 application is funded even though an A2 has also been submitted/scored (or A0 version funded after an A1 is submitted).

Update: NIAID leads the way with a commentary on interim payline issues, of course:

“While the federal government remains on a CR, NIAID is funding a limited number of grants. We are awarding competing R01 applications to the 10.0 percentile; in the next few weeks we will post additional information at Paylines and Budget about continuing grants and other policies. Please remember that the 10.0 percentile provisional payline is not a true payline. It is an administrative measure that allows us to fund high-scoring grants while the budget picture is still unclear.”

Wouldn’t count on anything above the 10th percentile at other ICs right now either.

Comments (7)

NIAAA Expedited En Bloc Concurrence Procedures

August 2, 2007 at 1:41 pm · Filed under NIH Advice, Payline

Fascinating. I stumbled across this while researching how NIH ICs interpret-implement the various funding mechanisms (story at 11). The source page hasn’t been updated since 2005, but this seems to offer some insight otherwise unavailable regarding NIAAA payline/funding decisions. In fact, the “NIAAA does not set an overall percentile payline that assures an award if you are at or better than the payline,” so this is as much as you’ll ever have to go on probably. Note that the lowly R03 is not listed here.

The NIAAA National Advisory Council has agreed upon the parameters for applications eligible for expedited concurrence:

1) Mechanism: R01, R21, R13, R15, R24, R25, K (all), T32, R41, R42, R43, R44

2) Percentile Score: 15.0 or better

3) Priority Score for non-percentiled applications: 150 or better

4) Maximum Direct Cost in any year: $500,000

5) Foreign Applications: exclude

6) Applications with a Human Subjects Concern, Animal Welfare Concern,
Unacceptable code for minorities, gender, or children are excluded.

On the NIH New Investigators resource page, NIAA further clarifies this policy as it applies to new PIs: “NIAAA is very much committed to assuring that new investigators are included among those successful in obtaining grant awards. To achieve this goal, NIAAA has established a procedure of affording the opportunity to allow all new investigators receiving scores within a minimum of 5 percentile points of the pay line (or the equivalent priority score) to respond to reviewer critiques in a letter to program officials. The responses are reviewed internally by NIAAA staff who may make a recommendation for award to the Institute Director. This procedure expedites the process for award for first time grant applicants and facilitates their entry into alcohol research. This accelerated rapid response and award procedure is in place for R01 and R21 mechanisms, as well as at the training level for all fellowship applications.”

Comments (7)

Payline Update – NIAID T32 update

July 17, 2007 at 3:07 pm · Filed under Payline

Update: Please see the NIH Paylines & Resources page for the latest information.

Criminey. Can’t get half of these ICs to cough up anything resembling a payline, and the folks at NIAID seem to update theirs on an hourly basis.

Comments (1)

Payline Update – Final #s from NIAID

April 3, 2007 at 10:16 am · Filed under NIH Advice, Payline

Unlike most of its IC brethren, NIAID always gives very timely, precise information on its funding strategy, including paylines and percentiles. They’ve even taken the trouble to update the last few interim paylines, as shown below. Incredibly, they are also fully funding competing grants – with a 3% inflationary escalation for future years. I’m sure all you who experienced 25% budget cuts are thinking you’re in the wrong IC.

R01 – 12th percentile (new investigators, 14th percentile)
R03 – 135
R15 – 142 (AREA)
R21 – 135
R41/42 – 159 (STTR)
R43/44 – 180 (SBIR)
F31 – 140 (predoc)
F32 – 133 (postdoc)
K – 159 (other than K99)
T32 – not available

Now if we could only get NCI, NIDA, NIAAA, NICHD, et al. to cough up some guidance on their funding “strategies”.

Update: The priority scores for R03, R15, R21, and STTR proposals were bumped up just a tad.

Update 2: The T32 priority score cut-off has been set at 131.

Comments (2)

Bridge Funding (not talking pork barrel here)

March 11, 2007 at 5:03 pm · Filed under Funding Opportunities, NIH Advice, Payline, Research Resource

Before those of you with competing R01 renewals that just missed the payline head for that fifth of whatever your drinking these days, might I recommend that you touch base once more with your program officer? Although you as a PI cannot apply for these funds, many ICs sign on to the R56 (high-priority, short-term project award) mechanism as a means of providing bridge support until your A1 goes in and gets funded. As the description says, “Program administrators may identify creative and innovative approaches within the pool of applications that fall just beyond the established payline. Such applications will be considered for conversion to an R56 award by the IC.”

Who’s in? NIA, NIAAA, NIAID, NIAMS, NCCAM, NCI, NIDCR, NIEHS, NIDA, NIDDK, NIMH, and NLM. Actually, this covers new R01s (not just competing renewals) in the same boat.

Update: Does the Great Zerhouni read this blog or what? Check out the NIH Director’s Bridge Awards notice. The new news is that $91 million has been set aside for such bridge funding, and that FY06 applications could be considered for these R56 awards. Get on the blower to your program officer, damn it!

NIGMS has their own internal program of interim funding:

“The National Institute of General Medical Sciences has implemented a policy to provide interim support to some unfunded R01 applicants whose competing continuation applications generally fall within about 10 percentile points beyond the range at which NIGMS is funding grants during that Council round. Selection of competing continuation applicants who will receive interim funding will be based on several factors, including an applicant’s other support, presence of an unobligated balance in the current grant, programmatic considerations, and the availability of funds.”

Very interesting & encouraging statistic used to back up this offer: “Between 55% and 65% of investigators whose renewal applications fall within 10 percentile points of the proposed funding range will receive funding within a year of the time their grants lapse.”

So, take heart, dear competing renewer.

Plus, the NLM offers a special interim funding option to new investigators seeking their first competitive renewal: “NLM will consider a request for interim support from grantees who were new investigators for their current award and are seeking their first competing renewal. This option is available only in cases where the original competing renewal application falls near but beyond the general payline. The goal of bridge funding is to help successful new investigators maintain basic resources until review of a revised application is complete.”

As does the NIBIB: Brand new starting in FY07, bridge funding is available for the first competing renewal of an investigator’s first R01 if the application is within 3 percentile points of the normal NIBIB R01 payline and if the application has at least one more opportunity for revision (ie, cannot be A2).

Leave a Comment

Older Posts »