New Grant Snooping
February 4, 2014
As usual, I like to keep and eye on RePORTER and SILK to see what the various ICs of my own dearest interest are up to with regard to grants that were supposed to fund Dec 1, 2013. Per usual, there was no budget and the more conservative ICs wait around to do anything. Some of the less-conservative ones do tend to start funding new grant awards in December and Jan so there is always something to see on SILK.
I noticed something interesting. NIAID has 44 new R01s listed that were on the A1 revision and 19 that were funded on the “first” submission. RePORTER notes that 30 funded in Dec, 12 of these funded in Jan and 17 on or after 2/1/2014 (not sure if I miscounted totals on SILK or RePORTER hasn’t caught up or what).
My ICs of dearest concern are still waiting, only a bare handful of new R01s are listed.
NCI has 36 new R01 apps funded on A1, 21 on the A0. DK is running 15/13.
Scanning down the rest of the list of ICs, it looks like DK is about as close to even as it gets and that a 2:1 ratio of A1 to A0 being funded is not too far off the mean.
I still think we’d be a lot better off if something like 2/3rd of grants were awarded on first submission and the A1s were only about a third.
DrugMonkey 
February 4, 2014 at 9:47 am
Interesting data. I think the general misconception is that nothing is being accepted as an A0. I must be living under a rock or something because I have never heard of SILK before this post.
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February 4, 2014 at 10:25 am
For the mechs that I am interested in right now, DK certainly awards more A1s than A0s, at least from eyeballing SILK in the past. Since this is 90 day data, though, it’s hard to reach firm conclusions without compiling the data for the whole year.
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February 4, 2014 at 10:26 am
@boehninglab: http://report.nih.gov/budget_and_spending/index.aspx
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February 4, 2014 at 11:09 am
SILK separates the real grant geeks from the normal people. Welcome to the club.
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February 4, 2014 at 11:52 am
Damn right, or maybe we’re just creepers.
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February 4, 2014 at 12:38 pm
that too.
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February 4, 2014 at 8:32 pm
I think we’d be much better off if there were no such thing as “A0, “A1”, etc.
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February 5, 2014 at 6:19 am
In my experience on two study sections, the R01s funded as A0s tend to be from big-shot scientists doing big-shot stuff. Also, an A0-funded grant could be a heavily reworked version of an A1. And then there are RFA grants that are funded as A0s. So it’s hard to say anything meaningful about the A0:A1 ratios without drilling down.
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February 5, 2014 at 6:41 am
Also, an A0-funded grant could be a heavily reworked version of an A1
Good point, and it’s nearly impossible to quantify this across the board. A colleague of mine re-worked a triaged R01 and submitted it as a new grant that was funded first shot with a 2%ile score. It was not a “new” grant by any means.
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February 5, 2014 at 3:22 pm
Agreed that some fraction of the “A0s” must be stealth A1s or A2s. Anecdotally, one of my buddies also had her stealth-A2 A0 get funded.
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February 6, 2014 at 5:43 am
Just remember this the next time NIH officialdom claims a decreased time-to-award from the initial proposal. It’s dishonest.
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