Center for Scientific Review

Basic Information

The Center for Scientific Review (CSR) resides within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is charged with the review of the scientific merit of NIH grant applications. The mission of CSR is to ensure that investigators’ applications receive fair, constructive, and timely feedback, resulting in the goal of NIH to fund sound yet innovative research. A primary responsibility of CSR is to convene experts in the field to conduct peer review of grant applications. The CSR receives all grant applications for NIH and some applications from the US Department of Health and Human Services, resulting in well over 110,000 applications per year. In 2009, CSR worked with 25,000 peer reviewers. The CSR consists of the director, referral officers, integrated review group chiefs, scientific review officers, and related administrative personnel.

When an application arrives at NIH, a CSR referral officer examines the application and routes it to the integrated review group that...