The Center for Scientific Review (CSR), National Institute of Health are working to improve awareness of the NIH policy (NOT-OD-17-050) that encourages citation of preprints in grant applications and reports.
In response to feedback submitted by ASAPbio on May 30, Kristin Kramer, Ph.D., at the Office of Communications for the CSR, stated (June 11, 2019):
“We appreciate that you’ve taken the time to share your concerns with us. We are fully aware that preprints are allowable material and can be cited in a proposal in any place one would typically site references (biosketch, progress report, etc.). In response to concerns about preprints being routinely ignored by reviewers, this review cycle we have emphasized the preprint policy in our ‘all hands’ meeting with scientific review officers. SROs have been asked to reiterate NIH’s preprint policy in pre-meeting teleconferences with reviewers and again at the time of review meetings. We agree that this is an important issue and SROs are emphasizing the policy that preprints are allowed not only to ensure that the review process is fair and consistent across study sections, but also so that reviewers (who are frequently PIs submitting proposals themselves) are aware and can take advantage of this policy and include citations to preprints in their own grant submissions.”
