In these days of tight money for research, it’s nice to see some positive news out of Washington. This week the NIH announced it has changed its resubmission policy, backing off a bit from the 2009 decision to allow only one resubmission application of an unfunded grant proposal.
With that change in 2009, the NIH instituted a requirement that if the resubmission was not funded, it would need a major overhaul to both content and scope to be eligible for another try as a new submission.
This week the agency announced that proposals that didn’t get funded on resubmission will no longer need to be significantly redesigned to be submitted as a new application. However, the one-resubmission limit remains in effect.
It’s not easy to predict exactly how this will play out, but I’m hopeful it will mean more competitive submissions from IUSM research faculty as we struggle to maintain our funding levels. Now that good idea that didn’t quite make it on the first two attempts may get over the top with another tweak or two as a new submission.
What the change won’t produce, of course, is more money for NIH-funded research; hopefully, it will mean fewer good science proposals left on the table (or the floor) for policy reasons.
As for the tight money situation, well, that’s mostly another battle for another branch of government.
For more details about the change and the thinking behind it, have a look at the Extramural Nexus blog post by Sally Rockey, the NIH deputy director for extramural research.
For the details, you can read the actual policy notice.