Part 10. Funding Decisions

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Table of Contents

• Are You Ready for This Part?
• How NIAID Determines Which Applications to Fund
• Why You May Not Get Funded Right Away
• NIAID May Approve Special Funding
• Is Your Application Deferred for a Funding Decision?
• Understanding Paylines and Percentiles
  • Paylines Are a Conservative Funding Cutoff Point
  • Percentiles Indicate Relative Rank
  • How Percentiles Are Determined
  • Hypothetical Data From Fall 2009
• How Long to Get the Grant After Application Is Approved?
• Congratulations!

Are You Ready for This Part?

Part 10. Funding Decisions explains what to expect when NIAID determines which applications to fund.

Before reading this page, be sure that you . . .

• Know how to use this tutorial and where to find tools. Read How to Use the NIH Grant Cycle in Start Here. Find helpful Tools: application samples, checklists, timelines, and contacts.
• Understand NIH peer review -- see Part 8. Assignment and Review.
• Have discussed your application's peer review, its funding status, and any bars to award with your program officer. See Know What a Summary Statement Means in Part 8. Assignment and Review.
• Have started preparing your just-in-time information. Read Prepare Your Just-in-Time Information in Part 8. Assignment and Review.
• Know what NIAID's advisory Council does -- see Part 9. Second-Level Review.

How NIAID Determines Which Applications to Fund

At NIAID, the most important determinant of success is scientific merit as judged by peer reviewers at the initial peer review meeting.

Scores Reflect Merit

Each application gets an overall impact/priority score, the numeric representation of its scientific merit.

For investigator-initiated R01s only (for NIAID), NIH converts that score into a percentile. If you want to read more now, see Percentiles Indicate Relative Rank.

Scores Relate to Funding

Funding approaches vary by institute; the information below is specific to NIAID.

• Investigator-initiated. NIAID awards applications in percentile or overall impact/priority score order until we reach a cutoff point, called the payline.
  • For example, when the R01 payline is at the 10 percentile, we automatically fund all applications that have percentile ranks of 10 or lower and no administrative issues.
  • Toward the beginning of the fiscal year, we fund all applications that score within their paylines and defer many others to later in the year. If you want to read more now, see Outcomes of Second-Level Review.
  • Different grant types have different paylines, and they change from year to year.
  • NIAID does not skip applications within a payline (some institutes do).
• In addition to grants within the payline, NIAID funds some R01 applications with percentile rankings that miss the payline. See NIAID May Approve Special Funding for more information.
• Go to our Paylines and Funding page for current paylines.
• RFAs and PAs with set-asides. We fund these applications by overall impact/priority score until we use up the funds set aside (not by a payline).

Do you know your application will be funded? Yes. Skip ahead to Part 11a. Managing Your Grant. No. Continue reading here.

Why You May Not Get Funded Right Away

Many applications do not get funded right away.

Time to Funding Factors

Time from application to award can vary by as much as a year. Here is a partial list of timing factors:

• Whether we have a congressional appropriation. If your application goes to the September or October Council, it would be funded in the next fiscal year. At the start of a fiscal year, funding can be delayed because we do not have a budget. Go to our Paylines and Funding page.
• Whether you are in the funding "gray zone." Many high-quality applications that scored somewhat above the payline are deferred for a funding decision until later in the fiscal year. If you want more information now, read Is Your Application Deferred for a Funding Decision?
• Whether your application undergoes expedited Council review. If you want to read more now, see Second-Level Review Is Faster for Some Applications.
• Whether you are submitting an AIDS application. It will have a later receipt date for the same funding date. See NIH's Standard Due Dates for Competing Applications.
• Whether you are responding to a request for applications. Learn more about this topic in Part 3. Define Your Project at RFA.
• Whether we need a foreign clearance for your application. Contact your program officer.

Is your application on a list for a possible R56-Bridge award or selective pay, or is it deferred for possible end-of-year funding? No. Revising and resubmitting is the next logical step if problems are fixable. Go to Part 11b. Not Funded, Reapply. Yes. For selective pay, R56-Bridge awards, or deferred applications, we advise you to revise and submit your application right away. Get advice on revising at Part 11b. Not Funded, Reapply. To learn more, continue reading here and see the NIAID R56-Bridge Award SOP and the Selective Pay SOP for important details.

NIAID May Approve Special Funding

NIAID has two options for high-quality investigator-initiated applications that missed the payline:

• Selective pay
• R56-Bridge awards

For selective pay and bridge awards, we choose R01 applications based on scientific merit and relevance to our priorities. Applications may be important to further a scientific program or be from new investigators and of high scientific merit.

You can't apply for either program but must be nominated for either or both by an NIAID program officer.

Selective pay. Program officers nominate a small number of programmatically important R01 applications beyond the payline for review and ranking by our advisory Council. If Council approves, we fund some applications right away.

Our Advice: Don't Bet on Selective Pay

If you are on a list for possible selective pay funding at the end of the fiscal year, we advise you to revise and submit your application right away. Read more about revising at Part 11b. Not Funded, Reapply.

For several reasons you should not count on selective pay funding:

• Even if your application is nominated, Council may not approve it.
• Even if Council approves it, we may not fund it right away.
• Even if we might pay it at the end of the fiscal year, you should not count on it.

R56-Bridge. An R56-Bridge provides limited, interim support so you can improve an R01 application that missed getting an award.

If you get a Bridge award, read the NIAID R56-Bridge Award SOP and start revising -- see If Your Application Was Not Fundable or Not Scored for help and information.

Is Your Application Deferred for a Funding Decision?

Your application may be at the payline border -- called the gray zone -- for possible funding at the end of the fiscal year.

NIAID typically defers decisions for those applications until after the third review cycle in June or July.

We do this because paying too many applications at the beginning of the fiscal year could leave us without money to fund highly meritorious applications later in the year.

At that time, we first fund selective pay and then deferred applications in the gray zone in percentile or overall impact/priority score order until we use up the monies in our budget.

Our Advice: Move Ahead, Don't Wait for Possible Year-End Funding

If your application is deferred for potential funding at the end of the fiscal year, revise and resubmit based on your summary statement and feedback from your program officer. Go to Part 11b. Not Funded, Reapply for details.

Start Preparing Just-in-Time

Even before you know whether you will get an award, prepare your just-in-time information ahead of time. If you want to read more now, see Prepare Your Just-in-Time Information.

Understanding Paylines and Percentiles

Paylines Are a Conservative Funding Cutoff Point

The next topics discuss how percentiles, paylines, and success rates work at NIH.

Paylines are funding cutoff points NIAID sets around the beginning of the fiscal year. We set them for each grant type by balancing the amount of funds we have to spend with an estimated number of grant applications we expect study sections to recommend for funding.

Recognizing the diversity of our large grant portfolio, we use paylines as the fairest way to make funding decisions. A numerical value lets us cut across disciplines and fund the best science as determined by initial peer review.

Each fiscal year, we establish paylines using an NIH formula and historical data including:

• Number of applications reviewed by NIAID-relevant study sections.
• Amount of grant money in the budget.
• Average grant costs.

Every major grant type has its own payline.

We set paylines conservatively to make sure we will have enough funds to pay grants throughout the year.

• A conservative payline also lets us meet out year payments for existing grants as well as any new congressional mandates, for example, for biodefense or AIDS.
• At year's end when we have a clearer budget picture, we award some grants that scored beyond the payline.

Paylines vary among NIH ICs, so a percentile or overall impact/priority score that is not fundable in one institute may be fundable in another. See Assigning an Overall Impact/Priority Score. Find NIAID's Paylines and Funding.

Percentiles Indicate Relative Rank

For unsolicited R01s reviewed by the NIH Center for Scientific Review, NIH converts the overall impact/priority score into a percentile.

• A percentile ranks your application relative to the other applications reviewed by your study section at its last three meetings, except at the start of the new peer review processes as follows:
  • First new review cycle in spring 2009: calculation uses only applications submitted for that cycle.
  • Second new review cycle in fall 2009: calculation uses applications submitted for that and previous cycle.
• A percentile roughly translates to the percentage of applications receiving a better overall impact/priority score from the study section during one year.
• Percentiles range from 1 to 99 in whole numbers. Rounding is always up, e.g., 10.1 percentile becomes 11.
• In contrast to usual mathematical practice, a lower number indicates a better score.

Why does NIH do this?

• NIH is countering a phenomenon called score creep: study sections increasingly give applications better scores so they are clustered in the exceptional range.
  • Skewed score distributions can result in scores with little meaning, giving institutes no basis for making rational funding decisions.
  • Read more at How Percentiles Are Determined.
• Each study section can apply the review criteria differently, scoring either more harshly or more favorably.
• Percentiles counter these trends by ranking applications relative to others scored by the same study section.
• Percentiling enhances fairness to applicants.

Also see NIAID Funding Decisions questions and answers.

How Percentiles Are Determined

Percentiles roughly translate to the percentage of applications receiving a better overall impact/priority score during a one-year time period (with the exception noted in Percentiles Indicate Relative Rank).

Applications take these steps to proceed from review to a percentile ranking:

Step 1 -- Following the discussion led by the primary reviewer, all reviewers rate the overall impact of an application, assigning a whole number from 1 to 9.

Step 2 -- Raw reviewer scores are averaged and rounded mathematically to one decimal place to create the overall impact/priority score, e.g., a 1.34 average yields 1.3.

Step 3 -- Percentiles are determined by matching an application's overall impact/priority score against a table of relative rankings containing all scores of applications assigned to a study section during the three last review cycles (with the exception noted above).

Step 4 -- NIH calculates percentiles using the following formula:

(The 0.5 percent is a standard mathematical procedure used for rounding.)

These numbers are then rounded up, e.g., 10.1 becomes 11, to create a whole number percentile ranging from 1 to 99. NIH includes unscored applications in the percentile calculation.

Hypothetical Data From Fall 2009

In October 2009, we developed hypothetical data to illustrate the two factors that can skew results and even create mathematical imprecision:

• a clustered distribution of overall impact/priority scores
• the shifting cohort of applications for each review cycle

We simulated scores and percentiles over three peer review cycles to illustrate how percentiles relate to scores and how clustering may work for the new scoring system.

These data depict three scenarios representing three study section meetings NIH normally uses to calculate percentiles.

Table 1 shows the effect of score distribution. In cycle 1, only 2 grants got an overall impact/priority score of 15 or lower, which became a percentile of 3.

Contrast that result with the numbers in cycles 2 and 3. The study section clustered scoring towards the lower end: 7 and 15 applications scored 15 or lower resulting in percentiles of 8 and 13, respectively, for an overall impact/priority score of 15. 

When scores are converted to percentiles, percentiling can spread out scores across a broader range. This happened in cycle 3 where scores of 15 and 20 became percentiles of 13 and 24.

Table 1. Overall Impact/Priority Score Distribution for Study Section A

Table 2 further shows the effect of score distribution and illustrates the impact of the moving three-review-cycle window on percentiles.

In cycle 1, 10 applications scored 15 or below, and a score of 15 ranked at the 17 percentile. Compare that figure to cycle 3, in which 15 applications -- one-third more -- had a score of 15 or better.

You would expect the larger number of applications to result in a significantly higher percentile as seen in Table 1. Yet in cycle 3, a score of 15 ranked at the 18 percentile -- only one point higher than in cycle 1 -- because it was calculated using a different cohort of applications.

Tables 1 and 2 also highlight the different scoring behaviors of study sections. Compared to the study section in Table 1, the study section in Table 2 consistently judged more applications in the top range, resulting in very different percentiles.

Table 2. Overall Impact/Priority Score Distribution for Study Section B

Percentiling spreads out scores across all possible rankings. But the more scores are bunched together, the more percentiling exaggerates their differences. Although this illustration shows scores in five-step intervals, in reality, there could be scores at each integer.

The second factor that skews results -- the entry of a new cohort of applications and dropping off of an old one for each review cycle -- makes the system fluid.

One-third of the base used to calculate percentiles turns over at each study section meeting, while percentiles for the earlier two meetings are fixed, contributing to a lack of mathematical precision.

For more information, see If Your Application is Unscored, How NIH Review Criteria Affect Your Score, and the Review Criteria SOP.

How Long to Get the Grant After Application Is Approved?

After you are approved for funding, a number of administrative steps must take place at both NIAID and your institution.

Our grants management specialists make sure your application complies with all NIH policies and regulations. For example, they see that all your animal and human subjects documentation is in place.

You need to resolve any problems with either your grants specialist or program officer. Find both names on your summary statement. If you have a bar to award, see Know What a Summary Statement Means, Read Your Notice of Award, Know Your Terms, and the Bars to Grant Awards SOP.

Even after we plan to fund your application, you may still have to wait because it is early in the fiscal year and the Institute does not have a budget, or you have administrative issues to resolve. We explained this in more detail above at Why You May Not Get Funded Right Away.

For an R01 application, you will receive your Notice of Award within six to eight weeks of the advisory Council meeting or earlier if it underwent expedited second-level review. Other grant types may take longer.

See the R01 Application to Award Timeline for Initial Submission and Resubmission and Timeline by Review Cycle for more timing information.

Congratulations!

Your first application is usually the most challenging, so celebrate your successful submission!

To continue, proceed to Part 11a. Managing Your Grant or Part 11b. Not Funded, Reapply. Or return to the index of NIH Grant Cycle: Application to Renewal.

	<< previous · NIH Grant Cycle · next (funded) or next (not funded) >>
	The next part of the NIH Grant Cycle: Application to Renewal is Part 11a. Managing Your Grant or Part 11b. Not Funded, Reapply.

Help us improve our outreach to you by emailing deaweb@niaid.nih.gov.