From Inside Higher Ed: Two major federal research funding agencies are altering their grant review processes. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is scaling back its reviews of grant proposals, according to a Dec. 1 internal memo that Science obtained and published, while STAT reported that the National Institutes of Health distributed guidance Friday ordering staff to use a “text analysis tool” to search for certain phrases. The NSF memo says the government shutdown, which ended in November, hampered its progress toward doling out all its funding by the end of the new fiscal year. It said “we lost critical time” and “now face [a] significant backlog of unreviewed proposals and canceled review panels. In parallel, our workforce has been significantly reduced.”
The memo said the changes “enable Program Officers to expedite award and decline decisions,” including by moving away from the “usual three or more reviews” of proposals. It said that, now, “full proposals requiring external review must be reviewed by a minimum of two reviewers or have a minimum of two reviews. An internal review may substitute for one.” ...
As for the NIH guidance, while it instructs program officers on how to review and possibly terminate grants, STAT reported that “some outside experts said the guidance is a positive step, making future terminations more of a dialogue that researchers can push back on.” But another media outlet, NOTUS, published a more critical article on the guidance, saying the “Trump administration is pausing new funding for National Institutes of Health grants that include terms like ‘health equity’ and ‘structural racism,’ pending review.” ...
Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/12/17/nsf-lowers-grant-review-requirements-nih-hunts-phrases.
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