Category: Funding Trends

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End of Fiscal Year 2012 Summary

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At the 150th meeting of our Advisory Council last week, I presented several budget slides that I’d like to share with you. They summarize funding allocations for this fiscal year, which ends on September 30.

Figure 1 shows the $2.429 billion Fiscal Year 2012 NIGMS budget by major component. The biggest portion is for research project grants (RPGs), most of which are R01s. Due to the transfer of programs—predominantly center grants—from the former National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) partway through the fiscal year, the RPG budget as a percentage of the total is less than the estimate I provided earlier, while the centers percentage is greater. About 74%, or just over $1 billion, of the RPG budget goes to fund noncompeting grant commitments and about 25%, or $349 million, is used to fund competing grants.

Figure 1. Breakdown of the Fiscal Year 2012 NIGMS budget into its major components.

Figure 1. Breakdown of the Fiscal Year 2012 NIGMS budget into its major components. About 58% of the budget supports research project grants (RPGs), and of that, 74% is used to pay noncompeting grants, 25% to pay competing grants and 1% to pay supplements.

Below is a closer look at the competing RPGs. It shows that 94%, or about $330 million, is used to pay investigator-initiated research and that the remaining 6%, or about $19 million, funds mainly R01 grants submitted in response to requests for applications (RFAs). At last week’s meeting, the Advisory Council approved one new RFA and the reissue of several other RFAs for funding consideration in Fiscal Year 2014.

Figure 2. Breakdown of the Fiscal Year 2012 competing RPG budget.

Figure 2. Breakdown of the Fiscal Year 2012 competing RPG budget. About 94% of the budget is used to pay investigator-initiated research and the remainder funds mainly R01 grants submitted in response to requests for applications (RFAs).

Another snapshot (Figure 3) shows a historical view of the RPG budget and number of RPGs compared to the total NIGMS budget. The increase in the total budget in Fiscal Year 2012 is due to the addition of NCRR programs. The decline in the number of RPGs is due to increasing grant costs.

Figure 3. RPG budget and number of grants compared to the total budget for Fiscal Years 1998-2012.

Figure 3. RPG budget and number of grants compared to the total budget for Fiscal Years 1998-2012.

As we estimated earlier in the year, the Fiscal Year 2012 success rate is around 24%.

We will provide information on the Fiscal Year 2013 budget when it’s available.

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Continuing Our Commitment to Research Project Grants

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Last September, I posted our funding allocation for research project grants (RPGs) in Fiscal Year 2012. I noted our strong commitment to RPGs—the vast majority of which are investigator-initiated R01 grants—and showed that we expected to spend 67% of our budget on them.

I want to update you on our Fiscal Year 2012 budget, which now includes programs transferred from the former National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), and offer some historical perspective on our RPG funding.

Figure 1 shows the amount NIGMS spent on RPGs compared to the total budget from 1998 to the present. From 2003 through 2011, the total RPG budget increased nearly every year, but not at a pace sufficient to maintain the same number of grants. Nevertheless, we expect to fund 184 more RPGs in Fiscal Year 2012 than we did in Fiscal Year 1998.

RPGs as a Proportion of the NIGMS Budget
Fiscal Years 1998-2012
Figure 1. Comparison of research project grant (RPG) budgets in Fiscal Years 1998-2012, compared to the total NIGMS budget.
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Figure 1. Comparison of research project grant (RPG) budgets in Fiscal Years 1998-2012, compared to the total NIGMS budget.

The increase in the total budget for Fiscal Year 2012 reflects the transferred NCRR programs, many of which are centers. During the 1998-2003 budget doubling period, the proportion of centers rose from 0.6% to 8.6% and remained at about 8% through Fiscal Year 2011. These centers enabled NIGMS to address important scientific opportunities and enhance the basic science infrastructure.

Following the transfer of the NCRR programs, 58% of our budget will support RPGs and 20% will support centers, as shown in Figure 2. Despite the percentage shift, the amount of money spent on RPGs is comparable to that in recent fiscal years, and maintaining RPGs and investigator-initiated R01s will remain our focus.

Figure 2. Fiscal Year 2012 breakdown of the NIGMS budget into its major components. About 58% of the budget will support RPGs and about 20% will support centers.
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Fiscal Year 2011 R01 Funding Outcomes and Estimates for Fiscal Year 2012

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Fiscal Year 2011 ended on September 30, 2011. As in previous years, we have analyzed the funding results (including percentiles and success rates) for R01 grants, shown in Figures 1-5. Thanks to Jim Deatherage for preparing these data.

Figure 1. Competing R01 applications reviewed (open rectangles) and funded (solid bars) in Fiscal Year 2011.
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Figure 1. Competing R01 applications reviewed (open rectangles) and funded (solid bars) in Fiscal Year 2011.

Figure 2. NIGMS competing R01 funding curves for Fiscal Years 2007-2011. For Fiscal Year 2011, the success rate for R01 applications was 24%, and the midpoint of the funding curve was at approximately the 19th percentile.
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Figure 2. NIGMS competing R01 funding curves for Fiscal Years 2007-2011. For Fiscal Year 2011, the success rate for R01 applications was 24%, and the midpoint of the funding curve was at approximately the 19th percentile.

Although the number of competing R01 awards funded by NIGMS in Fiscal Year 2011 was nearly identical to those in the previous 2 years (Figure 3), the success rate declined in 2011. Factors in this decline were a sharp increase in the number of competing applications that we received in 2011 (Figure 4) along with a decrease in total funding for R01s due to an NIH-wide budget reduction. For more discussion, read posts from Sally Rockey of the NIH Office of Extramural Research on NIH-wide success rates and factors influencing them.

Figure 3. Number of R01 and R37 grants (competing and noncompeting) funded in Fiscal Years 1997-2011.
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Figure 3. Number of R01 and R37 grants (competing and noncompeting) funded in Fiscal Years 1997-2011.

Figure 4. Number of competing R01 applications (including revisions) received during Fiscal Years 1998-2012.

Figure 4. Number of competing R01 applications (including revisions) received during Fiscal Years 1998-2012.

Below are the total NIGMS expenditures (including both direct and indirect costs) for R01 and R37 grants for Fiscal Year 1995 through Fiscal Year 2011.

Figure 5. The upper curve shows the overall NIGMS expenditures on R01 and R37 grants (competing and noncompeting, including supplements) in Fiscal Years 1995-2011. The lower curve (right vertical axis) shows the median direct costs of NIGMS R01 grants. Results are in actual dollars with no correction for inflation.

Figure 5. The upper curve shows the overall NIGMS expenditures on R01 and R37 grants (competing and noncompeting, including supplements) in Fiscal Years 1995-2011. The lower curve (right vertical axis) shows the median direct costs of NIGMS R01 grants. Results are in actual dollars with no correction for inflation.

In Fiscal Year 2012, we have received about 3,700 competing R01 grant applications (including revisions) and anticipate funding about 850 of these with the Fiscal Year 2012 appropriation. We expect the R01 success rate to be between 24% and 25%.

Because the competing application numbers and the total R01 budgets for Fiscal Years 2011 and 2012 are similar, the funding trends will likely be comparable.

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Webinar on Transformative Research Awards, Managing Science in Fiscally Challenging Times

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Extramural NexusI want to highlight two items from the monthly digest of postings from NIH’s Office of Extramural Research.

On November 8 from 1:00 to 2:45 p.m. Eastern time, NIH will host a webinar on a new high-risk, high-reward program, the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Awards. It’ll provide an overview of the program and details about the application process. You can access the webinar at https://webmeeting.nih.gov/hrhr. Submit questions in advance or during the program by e-mailing Transformative_Awards@mail.nih.gov or by calling 1-800-593-9895, passcode 10699.

You may have already read the post from OER Director Sally Rockey on managing science in fiscally challenging times or tried out NIH’s interactive data graphs. The post has generated more than 175 comments, including this one from our former director Jeremy Berg that discusses NIGMS’ approach:

I think it is a very good idea to make these data and the interactive slides available to the scientific community. However, some key points deserve clarification. On slide 2, it is stated that the current way of managing is to “bottom out success rates (doing nothing but letting the system correct itself)”. I do not think that this correctly represents the situation. As Director of NIGMS for 7 1/2 years, we used a number of the degrees of freedom shown in the slides to manage success rates. For example, awards sizes were often reduced below the requested amount to increase the number of new and competing awards that could be made. We realized that these reductions had implications for the funded investigators, but in periods of constrained appropriations, these were deemed to be less problematic than further decreases in the number of awards that could be made. In addition, NIGMS has had a long-standing policy of scrutinizing potential awards to well-funded laboratories, defined as laboratories hav[ing] annual direct costs from all sources of over $750,000. Note that this is not a cap, but rather a process involving program staff and the advisory council to ensure that such potential awards are carefully considered with respect to alternative awards to less well-funded laboratories. Thus, some of the approaches described have already been utilized. Furthermore, we have attempted to analyze scientific output in the context of these policies. Some trends are indicated but there are, of course, many challenges to measuring scientific output in a meaningful way. Furthermore, as one might anticipate, there are large variations at any given level of support. NIH and the scientific community need to work together to use the available data to develop policies that can best sustain the biomedical research enterprise in the long run.

For additional details, see the NIGMS funding policies page.

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Funding Allocation for Research Project Grants in Fiscal Year 2012

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In this 200th Feedback Loop post, I’d like to share budget slides I presented earlier this month during the open session of our National Advisory General Medical Sciences Council meeting. The session also included updates on several of our initiatives as well concept clearances for two new ones, which are briefly described in the meeting summary.

As part of my acting director’s report, I presented our Fiscal Year 2012 funding plan and focused specifically on our budget for research project grants (RPGs), which includes mostly R01s. The figures below are based on a budget estimate for Fiscal Year 2012, which begins on October 1. Since NIH has not yet received an appropriation for the next fiscal year, the estimate assumes that the budget will be at approximately the Fiscal Year 2011 level.

Figure 1 breaks down the total NIGMS budget of about $2.034 billion into its major components and shows that 67% of the budget will support RPGs. Of that portion, we will use around 76% to pay noncompeting grants (commitments on grants already awarded). This leaves about 23% for competing grants and 1% for supplements.

Figure 1. Fiscal Year 2012 Breakdown

 

Figure 1. Fiscal Year 2012 breakdown of the estimated NIGMS budget into its major components. About 67% of the budget will support research project grants (RPGs), and of that, 76% will be used to pay noncompeting grants, 23% to pay competing grants and 1% to pay supplements.

Figure 2 breaks down the competing RPG budget. It shows that 93% will be used to pay investigator-initiated research and that the remaining 7% will fund mainly R01 grants submitted in response to requests for applications (RFAs), which have been carefully considered by NIGMS staff in consultation with the scientific community and have been approved by our Advisory Council during the concept clearance process.

Figure 2: NIGMS FY 2012 Breakdown of Estimated Competing RPG Budget

 

Figure 2. Fiscal Year 2012 breakdown of the estimated competing RPG budget. About 93% of the budget will be used to pay investigator-initiated research, and the remainder will fund R01 grants submitted in response to RFAs.

The final figure shows that the portion of the competing RPG budget spent on investigator-initiated research during the last 8 years has varied between 87% and 94%, further indicating that NIGMS commits a relatively small amount of RPG funds to grants that are not investigator-initiated.

Figure 3. Comparison of RPG Budgets in Fiscal Years 2004-2011

 

Figure 3. Comparison of RPG budgets in Fiscal Years 2004-2011 for investigator-initiated research versus set-asides for grants in response to specific RFAs. During this period, the portion spent on investigator-initiated research has varied between 87% and 94%.
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Fiscal Year 2011 Funding Policy

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As you may be aware, the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act of 2011 (Public Law 112-10) enacted on April 15 provides Fiscal Year 2011 funds for NIH and NIGMS at a level approximately 1% lower than those for Fiscal Year 2010.

NIH has released a notice outlining its fiscal policy for grant awards. This notice includes reductions in noncompeting awards to allow the funding of additional new and competing awards.

For noncompeting awards:

  • Modular grants will be awarded at a level 1% lower than the current Fiscal Year 2011 committed level.
  • Nonmodular grants will not receive any inflationary increase and will be reduced by an additional 1%.
  • Awards that have already been issued (typically at 90% of the previously committed level) will be adjusted upward to be consistent with the above policies.

For competing awards:

  • Based on the appropriation level, we expect to make approximately 866 new and competing research project grant awards at NIGMS, compared to 891 in Fiscal Year 2010.
  • It is worth noting that we received more new and competing grant applications this fiscal year—3,875 versus 3,312 in Fiscal Year 2010.

The NIGMS Fiscal Year 2011 Financial Management Plan (link no longer available) has additional information, including about funding of new investigators and National Research Service Award stipends.

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Fiscal Year 2010 R01 Funding Outcomes and Estimates for Fiscal Year 2011

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Fiscal Year 2010 ended on September 30, 2010. We have now analyzed the overall results for R01 grants, shown in Figures 1-3.

Figure 1. Competing R01 applications reviewed (open rectangles) and funded (solid bars) in Fiscal Year 2010.

Figure 1. Competing R01 applications reviewed (open rectangles) and funded (solid bars) in Fiscal Year 2010.
Figure 2. NIGMS competing R01 funding curves for Fiscal Years 2006-2010. The thicker curve (black) corresponds to grants made in Fiscal Year 2010. The success rate for R01 applications was 27%, and the midpoint of the funding curve was at approximately the 21st percentile. These parameters are comparable to those for Fiscal Year 2009, excluding awards made with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Figure 2. NIGMS competing R01 funding curves for Fiscal Years 2006-2010. The thicker curve (black) corresponds to grants made in Fiscal Year 2010. The success rate for R01 applications was 27%, and the midpoint of the funding curve was at approximately the 21st percentile. These parameters are comparable to those for Fiscal Year 2009, excluding awards made with funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The total NIGMS expenditures (including both direct and indirect costs) for R01 grants are shown in Figure 3 for Fiscal Year 1996 through Fiscal Year 2010.

Figure 3. Overall NIGMS expenditures on R01 grants (competing and noncompeting, including supplements) in Fiscal Years 1995-2010. The dotted line shows the impact of awards (including supplements) made with Recovery Act funds. Results are in actual dollars with no correction for inflation.

Figure 3. Overall NIGMS expenditures on R01 grants (competing and noncompeting, including supplements) in Fiscal Years 1995-2010. The dotted line shows the impact of awards (including supplements) made with Recovery Act funds. Results are in actual dollars with no correction for inflation.

What do we anticipate for the current fiscal year (Fiscal Year 2011)? At this point, no appropriation bill has passed and we are operating under a continuing resolution through March 4, 2011, that funds NIH at Fiscal Year 2010 levels. Because we do not know the final appropriation level, we are not able at this time to estimate reliably the number of competing grants that we will be able to support. We can, however, estimate the number of research project grant applications in the success rate base (correcting for applications that are reviewed twice in the same fiscal year). We predict that this number will be approximately 3,875, an increase of 17% over Fiscal Year 2010.

UPDATE: The original post accidentally included a histogram from a previous year. The post now includes the correct Fiscal Year 2010 figure.

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Another Look at Measuring the Scientific Output and Impact of NIGMS Grants

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In a recent post, I described initial steps toward analyzing the research output of NIGMS R01 and P01 grants. The post stimulated considerable discussion in the scientific community and, most recently, a Nature news article Link to external web site.

In my earlier post, I noted two major observations. First, the output (measured by the number of publications from 2007 through mid-2010 that could be linked to all NIH Fiscal Year 2006 grants from a given investigator) did not increase linearly with increased total annual direct cost support, but rather appeared to reach a plateau. Second, there were considerable ranges in output at all levels of funding.

These observations are even more apparent in the new plot below, which removes the binning in displaying the points corresponding to individual investigators.

A plot of the number of grant-linked publications from 2007 to mid-2010 for 2,938 investigators who held at least one NIGMS R01 or P01 grant in Fiscal Year 2006 as a function of the total annual direct cost for those grants. For this data set, the overall correlation coefficient between the number of publications and the total annual direct cost is 0.14.

A plot of the number of grant-linked publications from 2007 to mid-2010 for 2,938 investigators who held at least one NIGMS R01 or P01 grant in Fiscal Year 2006 as a function of the total annual direct cost for those grants. For this data set, the overall correlation coefficient between the number of publications and the total annual direct cost is 0.14.
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Measuring the Scientific Output and Impact of NIGMS Grants

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A frequent topic of discussion at our Advisory Council meetings—and across NIH—is how to measure scientific output in ways that effectively capture scientific impact. We have been working on such issues with staff of the Division of Information Services in the NIH Office of Extramural Research. As a result of their efforts, as well as those of several individual institutes, we now have tools that link publications to the grants that funded them.

Using these tools, we have compiled three types of data on the pool of investigators who held at least one NIGMS grant in Fiscal Year 2006. We determined each investigator’s total NIH R01 or P01 funding for that year. We also calculated the total number of publications linked to these grants from 2007 to mid-2010 and the average impact factor for the journals in which these papers appeared. We used impact factors in place of citations because the time dependence of citations makes them significantly more complicated to use.

I presented some of the results of our analysis of this data at last week’s Advisory Council meeting. Here are the distributions for the three parameters for the 2,938 investigators in the sample set:

Histograms showing the distributions of total annual direct costs, number of publications linked to those grants from 2007 to mid-2010 and average impact factor for the publication journals for 2,938 investigators who held at least one NIGMS R01 or P01 grant in Fiscal Year 2006.

Histograms showing the distributions of total annual direct costs, number of publications linked to those grants from 2007 to mid-2010 and average impact factor for the publication journals for 2,938 investigators who held at least one NIGMS R01 or P01 grant in Fiscal Year 2006.

For this population, the median annual total direct cost was $220,000, the median number of grant-linked publications was six and the median journal average impact factor was 5.5.

A plot of the median number of grant-linked publications and median journal average impact factors versus grant total annual direct costs is shown below.

A plot of the median number of grant-linked publications from 2007 to mid-2010 (red circles) and median average impact factor for journals in which these papers were published (blue squares) for 2,938 investigators who held at least one NIGMS R01 or P01 grant in Fiscal Year 2006. The shared bars show the interquartile ranges for the number of grant-linked publications (longer red bars) and journal average impact factors (shorter blue bars). The medians are for bins, with the number of investigators in each bin shown below the bars.

A plot of the median number of grant-linked publications from 2007 to mid-2010 (red circles) and median average impact factor for journals in which these papers were published (blue squares) for 2,938 investigators who held at least one NIGMS R01 or P01 grant in Fiscal Year 2006. The shared bars show the interquartile ranges for the number of grant-linked publications (longer red bars) and journal average impact factors (shorter blue bars). The medians are for bins, with the number of investigators in each bin shown below the bars.

This plot reveals several important points. The ranges in the number of publications and average impact factors within each total annual direct cost bin are quite large. This partly reflects variations in investigator productivity as measured by these parameters, but it also reflects variations in publication patterns among fields and other factors.

Nonetheless, clear trends are evident in the averages for the binned groups, with both parameters increasing with total annual direct costs until they peak at around $700,000. These observations provide support for our previously developed policy on the support of research in well-funded laboratories. This policy helps us use Institute resources as optimally as possible in supporting the overall biomedical research enterprise.

This is a preliminary analysis, and the results should be viewed with some skepticism given the metrics used, the challenges of capturing publications associated with particular grants, the lack of inclusion of funding from non-NIH sources and other considerations. Even with these caveats, the analysis does provide some insight into the NIGMS grant portfolio and indicates some of the questions that can be addressed with the new tools that NIH is developing.

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Fiscal Year 2009 R01 Funding Outcomes

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Fiscal Year 2009, which ended on September 30, was a time of unprecedented opportunities for NIH due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As I noted previously, NIGMS used Recovery Act resources to support a variety of funding mechanisms.We have now analyzed the overall results for R01 grants using both our regular appropriation and Recovery Act funds. These results are shown in Figures 1-3.

Figure 1. Competing R01 applications reviewed (open rectangles) and funded (solid bars) in Fiscal Year 2009. The thicker bars (blue) correspond to applications supported using regular appropriated funds, while the thinner bars (red) correspond to applications supported using Recovery Act funds (2-year awards).

Figure 1. Competing R01 applications reviewed (open rectangles) and funded (solid bars) in Fiscal Year 2009. The thicker bars (blue) correspond to applications supported using regular appropriated funds, while the thinner bars (red) correspond to applications supported using Recovery Act funds (2-year awards).
Figure 2. NIGMS competing R01 funding curves for Fiscal Years 2005-2009. For Fiscal Year 2009, two curves are shown. The thicker curve (black) corresponds to grants made with regular appropriated funds, while the thinner curve (red) includes grants made with both regular appropriated and Recovery Act (ARRA) funds.

Figure 2. NIGMS competing R01 funding curves for Fiscal Years 2005-2009. For Fiscal Year 2009, two curves are shown. The thicker curve (black) corresponds to grants made with regular appropriated funds, while the thinner curve (red) includes grants made with both regular appropriated and Recovery Act (ARRA) funds. The success rate for R01 applications paid with regular appropriated funds was 27%, and the midpoint of the funding curve was at approximately the 22nd percentile. This percentile is slightly lower than that for Fiscal Year 2008. The success rate for R01 applications paid with regular appropriated and Recovery Act funds in Fiscal Year 2009 was 32%, with a midpoint on the funding curve near the 30th percentile. The curve including Recovery Act-funded awards is fairly broad because NIGMS considered additional factors in making funding decisions for Recovery Act awards.

The total NIGMS expenditures (including both direct and indirect costs) for R01 grants are shown in Figure 3 for Fiscal Year 1995 through Fiscal Year 2009.

Figure 3. Overall NIGMS expenditures on R01 grants (competing and noncompeting, including supplements) in Fiscal Years 1995-2009. The dotted line shows the impact of awards (including supplements) made with Recovery Act funds. Results are in actual dollars with no correction for inflation.

Figure 3. Overall NIGMS expenditures on R01 grants (competing and noncompeting, including supplements) in Fiscal Years 1995-2009. The dotted line shows the impact of awards (including supplements) made with Recovery Act funds. Results are in actual dollars with no correction for inflation.

We are analyzing additional data on NIGMS funding trends and will be posting these results on the NIGMS Funding Trends Web site.