RESEARCH FUNDING
Setting limits on NIH grants New policy will cap the number of awards scientists can get Scientists will be restricted in the number early-career researcher, says Sessler, who of grants they can receive from the National has two NIH grants. “The bottom line Institutes of Health under a new policy the seems to be that getting a better dispersed agency released last week. funding mechanism for the chemical The move is an attempt to spread the community” would be worth the cost to wealth to more scientists in the current high-level researchers, he says. hypercompetitive research environment, In the past, NIH focused solely on each where grant award rates hover around their project without examining how many lowest level in history. The agency estigrants any one individual had. But after mates the move will free up 1,600 grants to several calls from the community to level help early- and midcareer scientists, who the playing field, NIH studies showed that have been finding it harder to get grants in per-grant publication levels—a measure recent years. of a scientist’s productivity—decrease The new Grant Support Index will assign after researchers receive more than three a number value to each grant an investigagrants. tor has on the basis of the type of research, “It’s good that they are confronting the type of award, and responsibilities, explains issue of hypercompetition,” says Howard Lawrence Tabak, NIH’s principal deputy Garrison, deputy executive director for poldirector. He says the index is an attempt to icy at the Federation of American Societies estimate how much bandwidth each invesfor Experimental Biology, which has rectigator has to continue doing high-quality ommended a funding limit in past reports. research. The index might put the most pressure Although the agency is still working out on scientists at research centers who the details, it estimates the index will limit are required to pay their full salary with each investigator to three NIH grants and grants, which is not the case at most uniaffect 6% of the agency’s grant holders. versities. Tabak suggests spreading the The policy will go into distribution of grants effect this fall for grant might actually help applications that will be those scientists, espereviewed in the fall of cially those in early- and 2018. Currently, 10% of midcareer. investigators with NIH Although NIH has grants receive 40% of the created programs fo▸ 3: maximum number of grants agency’s funding. cused on early-career any one investigator will likely Chemist Jonathan scientists, midcareer receive Sessler of the University researchers applying for ▸ 1,600: number of grants of Texas, Austin, sustheir first competitive that will likely become available pects few chemists will renewal are also vulnerabecause of the change be impacted by the rule. ble. With the grants freed ▸ 10%: proportion of NIH “Among chemists, we up by use of the index, investigators who receive 40% consider ourselves lucky Tabek says the agency to have any NIH funding,” of NIH funding will prioritize scientists ▸ 1985: year biochemist Bruce he says. who are doing outstandAlberts first called on NIH to But he agrees that ing work but are still on limit the amount of support to the policy is moving the the edge of losing all NIH any one investigator situation in the right difunding. ▸ 54,220: number of research rection. The third, fourth, “The demographics are or fifth grant to one of the grant applications in 2016 such that only the most ▸ 19%: success rate for top scientists is probaexperienced investigaNIH research project grant bly less likely to involve tors are thriving now,” applications in 2016 transformative research Tabak says.—ANDREA Source: NIH than the best idea of an WIDENER
NIH’s new Grant Support Index by the numbers
PUBLISHING
India’s chemistry paper and citation frequency said to lag Chemistry research in India is advancing, but slowly, despite an increase in published articles in recent years, according to meta-analyses by a team of scientists (Curr. Sci., 2017, DOI: 10.18520/cs/v112/i07/1330-1339). The study examines the number of papers published by chemists in India—and how frequently they were cited—in leading multidisciplinary chemistry journals from 1991 to 2015. “India’s chemistry output is far behind China. India accounts for only a small number of papers in the top one percentile of the most highly cited chemistry papers, whereas China leads the world,” says the study led by Subbiah Arunachalam at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. “Only 2.3% of the 2,234 papers published in 2014 that are in the top one percentile is from India compared to 38% from China.” Also, the team found that no chemist working at an Indian institution made the Thomson Reuters list of the world’s top 100 chemists based on the impact of research they published from 2000 to 2010. In contrast, three chemists in South Korea and one each in Brazil and South Africa made the list, the study points out. The team carried out its scientometric analyses using Elsevier’s Scopus, an abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Scientometrics uses databases of information to measure scientific output and impact. India’s share of papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society was 0.7% during the 25 years covered in the study. ACS publishes C&EN.—
K.V. VENKATASUBRAMANIAN, special to C&EN
MAY 8, 2017 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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