ArticleeLife2016
NIH peer review percentile scores are poorly predictive of grant productivity.
Article in eLife, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Article
- A framework for assessing the trustworthiness of scientific research findings.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- A peer-review decision support tool for research funding decision-making using the analytic hierarchy process.PloS one · 2026Article
- Threats to grant peer review: a qualitative study.BMJ open · 2025Article
- Alternative models of funding curiosity-driven research.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Arturo Casadevall Speaks on Curiosity, Resilience, and Scientific Integrity.Pathogens & immunity · 2025Article
- The costs of competition in distributing scarce research funds.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Advancing longevity research through decentralized science.Frontiers in aging · 2024Article
- Rethink funding by putting the lottery first.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
- Article
- Introduction to the special section "Reducing research waste in (health-related) quality of life research".Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation · 2022Article
- Fund behavioral science like the frameworks we endorse: the case for increased funding of preliminary studies by the National Institutes of Health.Pilot and feasibility studies · 2022Article
- Machine learning in scientific grant review: algorithmically predicting project efficiency in high energy physics.European journal for philosophy of science · 2022Article
- 'Science by consensus' impedes scientific creativity and progress: A simple alternative to funding biomedical research.F1000Research · 2022Article
- Getting funded in a highly fluctuating environment: Shifting from excellence to luck and timing.PloS one · 2022Article
- Clinical trials proposed for the VA Cooperative Studies Program: Success rates and factors impacting approval.Contemporary clinical trials communications · 2021Article
- Article
- A retrospective analysis of the peer review of more than 75,000 Marie Curie proposals between 2007 and 2018.eLife · 2021Article
- Can Oncologists Predict the Efficacy of Treatments in Randomized Trials?The oncologist · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Peer review is widely used to assess grant applications so that the highest ranked applications can be funded. A number of studies have questioned the ability of peer review panels to predict the productivity of applications, but a recent analysis of grants funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US found that the percentile scores awarded by peer review panels correlated with productivity as measured by citations of grant-supported publications. Here, based on a re-analysis of these data for the 102,740 funded grants with percentile scores of 20 or better, we report that these percentile scores are a poor discriminator of productivity. This underscores the limitations of peer review as a means of assessing grant applications in an era when typical success rates are often as low as about 10%.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.