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Investigator and Environment stopped receiving a numerical score in January 2025. Under NIH notice NOT-OD-24-010, applications with due dates on or after January 25, 2025 are reviewed under three factors.¹ NIH has confirmed that both frameworks "use the review criteria required by regulation of Significance, Innovation, Approach, Investigator(s), and Environment."² The five were regrouped rather than replaced.

Factor 1, Importance of the Research, covers Significance and Innovation and is scored from 1 to 9.¹ Factor 2, Rigor and Feasibility, covers Approach and is scored the same way.¹ Factor 3, Expertise and Resources, covers Investigator and Environment, and it is not scored.¹

The stated reason for the change

NIH says what the third factor is for. Assessing expertise and resources as a binary choice is "intended to reduce the potential for general scientific reputation to have an undue influence" on review.³ The framework applies to most research project grants, and the activity codes listed include R01, R03, R15, R21, R33, R34, U01, and others.³

Where the score comes from

The reviewer guide is specific about how the factors combine. A reviewer's "Factor 1 score should set a limit for the best possible overall impact score."⁴ Factors 2 and 3 "should both be thoroughly considered in arriving at the overall impact score and can either reinforce the score set by the Factor 1 limit or worsen it."⁴ Where there are gaps in expertise or resources, the reviewer is told to explain how those gaps affected the overall impact score.⁴

Factor 3 produces text only when something is wrong. A reviewer selects either "additional expertise and/or resources needed," with comments describing the gaps, or "appropriate."⁴ The guide adds that "If Factor 3 is rated as appropriate, no comments should be included."⁴ Where a reviewer finds the expertise and resources appropriate, the Factor 3 field carries no written comment.

The attachment headings already carry the two scored factors

The Research Strategy runs under three headings in a specified order, Significance, Innovation, and Approach, unless the notice of funding opportunity says otherwise.⁵ Those three are the contents of Factor 1 and Factor 2. Investigator and Environment have no heading of their own in that attachment, and the material supporting them is distributed across the biosketch, the facilities statement, and the rest of the application.

The Specific Aims attachment is one page.⁶ Its instruction asks the applicant to "State concisely the goals of the proposed research and summarize the expected outcome(s)."⁵ The same sentence continues, "including the impact that the results of the proposed research will have on the research field(s) involved."⁵ Impact on the research field is Factor 1 language.

The regulation was not rewritten

The criteria in regulation are unchanged. 42 CFR 52h.8 still directs a peer review group to assess overall impact "taking into account, among other pertinent factors" eight items.⁷ Two of the eight are the qualifications and experience of the principal investigator and the scientific environment.⁷ The three-factor framework is sub-regulatory, and it governs how reviewers score rather than what the regulation lists.

Formatting is checked before any of that

Six rules govern the physical page. Type density must be "no more than 15 characters per linear inch (including characters and spaces)," and line spacing "no more than six lines per vertical inch."⁸ Font must be 11 points or larger, margins at least half an inch on all four sides, paper no larger than letter size, and every attachment a PDF.⁸ Applications with attachments that do not conform "may be withdrawn from consideration."⁸

Three documents can set a page limit, and they rank. An NIH Guide notice comes first, the notice of funding opportunity second, and the general application guide third.⁹ The page limits table puts Specific Aims at one page and Research Strategy at twelve for an R01 and six for an R03 or R21, while noting that funding opportunity instructions "always supersede these instructions."⁶

What the investigator settles

Study design, the choice of aims, and whether a project is significant belong to the investigator and the review group, and those matters reach us decided. We do not tell an applicant how a reviewer will score a page. Where a draft names a factor, it names one NIH has published.

Everything a client sends us is held in confidence. What is left is reading the application against itself. That means the aim numbered in the Specific Aims against the aim discussed in the Research Strategy, and the abbreviation defined on page one against its use on page eleven. It also means the figure cited in the text against the figure in the table.

Editing an application for length is also editing it for pagination. Cutting a sentence can free a line, and freeing a line can move a heading onto the previous page. On an attachment with a hard limit those are one job rather than two.