Tell NIH to Preserve Transparency and Accountability in Scientific Peer Review

NIH is considering changes that would limit access to peer review scores and percentiles that are currently available to applicants, NIH staff, and advisory councils. SfN believes these changes could decrease the role of scientific judgment in funding decisions and reduce transparency and accountability by limiting access to information that is currently available to applicants and others involved in the funding process.

View SfN Statement

To help you navigate this action alert, the sections below provide an overview of NIH's proposal, explain SfN’s key concerns with the proposal, outline recommended messages for commenters, and include instructions for submitting comments to NIH. Use the links below to jump directly to the information most relevant to you, and return to the top of the page at any time using the navigation links provided throughout the alert.

• NIH’s Proposed Changes to Peer Review
• Concerns With the Proposed Change
• Submit Personalized Comments to NIH by October 13, 2026

NIH’s Proposed Changes to Peer Review

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a Request for Information (RFI) on a proposal that would fundamentally change how peer review outcomes are reported and used in funding decisions. Although SfN supports efforts to strengthen NIH decision-making, SfN is concerned that the proposed approach would decrease the role of scientific judgment in funding decisions and reduce transparency and accountability by limiting access to information that is currently available to applicants and others involved in the funding process. Therefore, SfN urges scientists, research institutions, professional societies, patient advocates, and other members of the biomedical research community to submit comments opposing the proposal in its current form.

Under NIH's proposal, peer review panels would continue to review and score grant applications, and NIH would still calculate final overall impact scores and percentiles. However, that information would no longer be broadly available to applicants, NIH staff, Institute and Center leadership, or advisory councils.

Instead, applications would be grouped into three broad categories:

• Most Competitive: Top 25% of applications
• Competitive: Next 25% of applications
• Not Discussed: Remaining applications

NIH officials would then make funding recommendations without access to the detailed scores and percentiles that currently help distinguish applications within those broad categories.

Back to Top

Concerns With the Proposed Change

Peer review scores are not currently, and should not be, the sole determinant of funding decisions. NIH has long considered programmatic priorities, emerging scientific opportunities, workforce needs, and portfolio balance alongside scientific review. However, peer review remains the foundation of NIH's funding process. The proposed change raises several concerns:

1. Decreases Role of Scientific Information in Funding Decisions
   • The proposal would reduce the amount of detailed scientific information available by replacing cores, percentiles, and reviewer feedback, which reflect peer reviewers' assessments of scientific merit, with broader categories. As a result, less information from the scientific review process would be available to distinguish among highly rated applications.
2. Reduced Transparency and Accountability
   • Removing overall impact scores and percentiles would make it more difficult for applicants, advisory councils, Congress, and the public to understand when and why funding decisions differ from peer-review assessments.
3. Limited Information Provided to and Increased Burden for Advisory Councils
   • NIH advisory councils play a critical oversight role during second-level review. Restricting access to peer-review information could make it more difficult for councils to effectively evaluate funding recommendations.
4. Less Information for Applicants
   • Applicants rely on scores, percentiles, and reviewer feedback to understand how their applications were evaluated and whether resubmission is warranted. Broad categories may not provide enough information to guide future submissions, potentially increasing uncertainty, delay, and cost.
5. Increased Discretion Without Clear Safeguards
   • The proposal would expand the role of administrative and programmatic discretion, but it does not explain what safeguards would ensure transparency, consistency, and accountability when funding decisions depart from peer-review rankings.

Back to Top

Submit your personalized comments to NIH by October 13, 2026, and encourage your colleagues to do the same. Importantly, personalize your comments to describe how scores and percentiles have helped you decide whether to resubmit, interpret reviewer feedback, advise investigators, or participate in NIH review. Encourage NIH to focus on improving how peer-review information is interpreted and used rather than reducing access to information that supports transparency and accountability in the funding process.

Comments of up to 5,000 characters can be submitted through NIH's online RFI webform. Additional documents may also be attached for longer responses.

SfN encourages commenters to urge NIH to:

• Preserve meaningful peer-review information
  • Continue reporting final overall impact scores and percentiles to applicants, NIH staff, Institute and Center leadership, and advisory councils.
  • Preserve advisory councils' access to complete first-level peer-review information.
• Strengthen transparency and accountability
  • Release information about the working group's membership, analyses, evidence, and recommendations
  • Explain why limiting access to review information is preferable to improving how scores are interpreted and used.
  • Establish transparent standards for decisions that diverge from peer-review rankings and commit to public reporting that can identify inappropriate or inconsistent decision-making.
• Demonstrate that the proposed approach will improve NIH decision-making
  • Provide evidence that the proposal would improve scientific quality, fairness, efficiency, or accountability.
  • Pilot and independently evaluate any major changes before implementing them across NIH.

Submit Comments

Back to Top