Can NIH limit the number of awards that a principal investigator (PI) can have?

NIAMS announced that, effective with FY2025 applications, all new and renewal R01 applications in response to the NIH parent R01 Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs) will be considered low program priority if the principal investigator (PI) has three or more active R01-equivalent grants. R01-equivalent grants are defined as activity codes DP1, DP2, DP5, R01, R37, R56, RF1, RL1, U01 and R35, either funded by NIAMS, or another NIH Institute, Office, or Center (ICO).

The policy will apply to R01 applications from Multiple PIs (MPIs) if one of the MPIs has three or more active R01-equivalent grants.  Possible exceptions are:

1. If the R01 is a competing renewal application for a NIAMS funded R01, or
2. If one or more of the existing active grant(s) will expire in < 1 year resulting in two or fewer active R01equivalent awards, or
3. If existing active R01-equivalent awards are all from other NIH ICOs

The purpose behind this initiative is to maximize the breadth of research grants that support NIAMS’ mission. One way to accomplish this is by funding meritorious grants from a wider cohort of researchers.

This is not the first attempt to spread the wealth, so to speak. In 2017, NIH attempted to address funding inequities by instituting the Grant Support Index (GSI). The rationale was that the bulk of NIH funding was held by a small percentage of researchers, many of whom had multiple NIH awards. Additionally, early- and mid-stage investigators were becoming a smaller percentage of NIH awardees.

At that time, NIH sought feedback from the scientific community about how to best implement the GSI. NIH abandoned the initiative after about one month, following an outpouring of concern by scientists. Instead, NIH set aside funds for research projects from early- and mid-stage investigators.That said, from time to time, we have seen individual institutes implement policies like the one that NIAMS just announced. If you are an applicant who holds multiple R01s from the same institute, it is important to keep abreast of the institute’s policies on this topic.