The NIH initial peer review process involves the consistent application of standards and procedures that produce fair, equitable, informed, and unbiased examinations of grant and cooperative agreement applications to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The process, defined in regulation at 42 CFR Part 52h, is extended by policy to other types of applications submitted to the agency.
This announcement provides revised policy for managing conflict of interest (COI), the appearance of COI, prejudice, bias, or predisposition in the NIH initial peer review process. Given the increasingly multi-disciplinary and collaborative nature of biomedical and behavioral research, the revised policy is intended to facilitate reviews that involve multi-site or multi-component projects, consortia, networks, aggregate datasets, and/or multi-authored publications.
From time to time Federal employees participate in the NIH initial peer review process as part of their official duties. At all times, these Federal officials are subject to the comprehensive body of law governing the conduct of Federal employees. The applicable statutes and regulations include 18 U.S.C. §§ 201-216, the government-wide Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, 5 C.F.R. Parts 2634, 2635, and 2640, and agency-specific regulations such as the Supplemental Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Department of Health and Human Services, 5 C.F.R. Part 5501. A Federal employee serving as a member of an NIH Scientific Review Group (SRG) is responsible for complying with all applicable ethical conduct rules and obtaining any clearance for his/her SRG service required by/in his/her employing institute, agency, or office.
To read the full, original article click on this link: NOT-OD-11-120: Revised Policy: Managing Conflict of Interest in the Initial Peer Review of NIH Grant and Cooperative Agreement Applications
