NIH scientists to be limited on grant support

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced May 2 that a new policy will be put in place to restrict the amount of funding an individual scientist can hold at any one time by using a point-based system. The implementation is to create a more equal workforce for all applicants whether they are early, mid-level or more experienced scientists. 

“Because scientific discovery is inherently unpredictable, there are reasons to believe that supporting more researchers working on a diversity of biomedical problems, rather than concentrating resources in a smaller number of labs, might maximize the number of important discoveries that can emerge from the science we support,” said NIH director Francis Collins in an NIH post.

Collins also notes that the policy could improve “returns on taxpayers’ investments.”

The agency will implement a Grant Support Index (GSI), which will assign a point value to each type of grant based on its type, complexity and size. While this approach won't set a hard limit on the number of grants or dollar amount a scientist can recieve, it will limit each individual to 21 points worth of funding. If a researcher has more than 21 points and is seeking another grant, they will need to explain to the NIH how their existing grants can be adjusted to accommodate the new one, while staying under the 21 points.

The GSI limit is estimated to affect about 6 percent of NIH-funded investigators and free up about 1,600 new awards that will broaden the pool of investigators conducting NIH research. NIH will be spending the next few months collecting feedback from the scientific community in regards to the best way to implement the GSI limit.