The new face of peer review

Over the past few months, NIH has begun rolling out changes to the peer review process that were proposed after a year of "peer review review." Many of the changes focus on creating more opportunities for early stage investigators.

Not everyone in the academic community is pleased, though: A letter signed by 10 researchers in last week’s Science, for example, raises concerns about halving the length of R01 applications, requiring researchers with three or more grants to act as reviewers, and forcing researchers to justify funding above $1 million.

Now that the peer review rollout has begun, do you see it is a positive change?

-Alla Katsnelson, news and Lab Tools editor, The Scientist

I personally think RO1 grant number should be limited to no more then 2 per lab. I have a real problem with labs that have 3 or more. The concentration of wealth doesn't just occur in areas outside of science. If money is so limited, and the NIH is truly concerned about new investigators they would limit how many RO1s or total Federal money a lab would receive, thus spreading the wealth out to other equally as deserving NEW Labs.

Pursuant to your topic, I feel anyone with an RO1 grant, especially with 2 or more, should made to serve on study section sooner or later. The idea of just receiving, and not giving back to a system that has been good to you, reinforces the entire "ME" oriented thinking that is so prevalent in the USA, as a citizen of the USA people should give more back in some capacity. Serving on study section would be 1 of them.