Scarpa Solicits Senior Scientists for Grant Review

A letter Dr. Scarpa, Director of the CSR, has been circulating to the heads of academic professional societies. I got ahold of this on a society email list. The Society president didn’t want to supply an official Society list and solicited volunteers from the membership.

Dear [SocietyPresident],

As you know, the quality of NIH's peer review process depends mightily on
the quality of the reviewers serving on our study sections. Several of your
fellow society presidents have sent us screened lists of volunteers from
their membership who they recommend as reviewers. We greatly appreciate
their help and are writing to ask for your assistance in identifying
senior, experienced members of your society willing to volunteer to serve
as NIH reviewers. 

Our criteria are straightforward.  We seek reviewers who are experienced
senior scientists, who have received major peer-reviewed grants either from
NIH or an equivalent agency, who understand the grant award process, and
most importantly, who are willing to serve for four years as study section
members. By providing CSR with a selected list of senior scientists who
volunteer to be study section members, you are ensuring that CSR's SRAs
consider your members when they select reviewers.

We would like this to be an ongoing process in which you send us names of
volunteer reviewers, and at the end of the year we provide you with
information on how many of your volunteer reviewers actually served on
study sections. 

We would appreciate any help you can provide in asking your colleagues if
they are interested in serving as reviewers. We have attached a template
that indicates the type of information we are seeking, including name,
Institution, email address, web address, area of expertise, the most
appropriate study section or Integrated Review Group, if known, and recent
funding sources.

Any help you can provide in assembling a list of qualified, senior-level,
volunteer reviewers would be greatly appreciated.  Please send the
annotated template to Diane Stassi, the Chair of our Reviewer Database
Committee, at RecruitReviewers@csr.nih.gov

Thank you and best wishes,
Toni Scarpa and Diane Stassi

toni scarpa
national institutes of health
center for scientific review
office of the director
6701 rockledge drive
bethesda, md 20892-7776
voice: 301 435 1109
email: scarpat@csr.nih.gov
website: www.csr.nih.govwww.

Diane Stassi, Ph.D.
Center for Scientific Review
National Institutes of Health
6701 Rockledge Dr.
Room 3202, MSC 7808
Bethesda, MD 20892-7808
Voice: 301-435-2514
Email: RecruitReviewers@csr.nih.gov.

I’ve talked before about how whatever “problems” there are with grant review aren’t going to be solved with recruiting “more senior scientists”. Not the least of which because “senior” sometimes means “out of touch”. Also, about the absurdity of the underlying premise that there are “too many junior scientists” reviewing grants. If you agree, for goodness sake write Scarpa a note, would ya?