Why are individual review criteria being scored?
It is hoped that by giving explicit ratings to each of these five criteria, applicants and NIH staff making funding decisions will have an easier time understanding the basis of the overall score that an application received. The goal is to provide more information about the strengths and weaknesses of each application and so each reviewer’s criterion scores will be reported on the summary statement. Having reviewers add a numerical score to each of five core criteria is intended to aid in interpretation of their written comments. For example, a reviewer may have a number of criticisms, but these may be considered minor and easily fixed. The words alone might not indicate this intent, but assigning a good score would provide additional clarity. Likewise, one major weakness could outweigh several areas of strengths and a score in the poorer range would indicate that this weakness was considered major. The reasoning is that providing more and clearer information to the applicant, NIH sta
