- GRANTS
Study Section Service: An Introduction
(^1) http://www. csr.nih.gov/.
Responding to the NIH Summary Statement
(^1) As soon as possible after the receipt date, usually within 6 weeks, the PHS will send the
Principal Investigator/Program Director and the applicant organization the application’s
assignment number; the name, address, and telephone number of the Scientific Review
Administrator of the Scientific Review Group (SRG) to which the application has been
assigned; and the assigned Institute contact and phone number. If this information is not
received within that time, contact the Division of Receipt and Referral, Center for Scientific
Review (CSR), National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892-7720 (301-435-0715). If there
is a change in the assignment, another notification will be sent.
(^2) Most applications submitted to the Public Health System, which includes NIH, are reviewed
through a two-tier system. The first level of review is performed by the Scientific Review
Group (SRG), which is often called the study section or review committee and is managed by
the Scientific Review Administrator (SRA). The purpose of the SRG is to evaluate the scientific
and technical merit of applications. The SRG does not make funding decisions. The second
level of review usually is performed by the Advisory Council or Board of the potential award-
ing component (Institute, Center, or other unit). Council or Board recommendations are based
not only on considerations of scientific merit, as judged by the SRGs, but also on the relevance
of the proposed study to an Institute’s programs and priorities. Program Officers, on the other
hand, are NIH officials in the various Institutes and Centers responsible for presenting appli-
cations to the Advisory Council or Board.
(^3) The review of most research applications includes a process called streamlining, in which
only those applications deemed to be amongst the top half of those being reviewed are
discussed and assigned a priority score. The remainder are generally not discussed and
not scored. Each scored application is assigned a single, global score that reflects the overall
impact that the project could have on the field based on consideration of the five review
criteria (significance, approach, innovation, investigator, and environment), with the emphasis
on each criterion varying from one application to another, depending on the nature of the
application and its relative strengths. The best possible priority score is 100 and the worst is
- Individual reviewers mark scores to two significant figures (e.g., 2.2), and the individual
scores are averaged and then multiplied by 100 to yield a single overall score for each scored
application (e.g., 220).
(^4) http://www.csr.nih.gov/review/policy.htm.
- EFFECTIVE PRESENTATION
Do’s and Don’t’s of Poster Presentation
Based on an article by the author that appeared in Biophysical Journal71: 3527–3529 (1996).
Reprinted with permission.
You Don’t Have to Shout to Be Heard(^1) Virginia Valian. Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women.(MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999).
ENDNOTES 227
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR CELL BIOLOGY