The Endocrine Society opposes NIH’s proposed changes to the first level of the peer review process, in particular the proposal to withhold an investigator’s final overall impact score. Peer review is a well-established process to evaluate research proposals for scientific rigor and merit. Our members report that the impact score, coupled with comments from reviewers, collectively provides an important service to applicants to understand how their application was scored and prioritized relative to other applications. Withholding the impact score from applicants will reduce transparency, devalue peer review, and significantly disadvantage applicants, especially those early in their career who need guidance on improving their proposals or understanding if their idea is in line with agency or institute priorities. We urge NIH to reconsider the changes proposed in NOT-OD-26-088 and to maintain a process where impact scores are reported to applicants.
