Scientists could soon face limits on the number of research grants they can have at any one time from the US National Institutes of Health, according to a policy proposal announced on June 8 by the agency.
Under the policy, the NIH would distribute research funding to a greater number of researchers, “allowing more ideas to be explored and eventually leading to more breakthroughs,” the proposal states.
The policy would free up between 1,900 and 5,230 grants a year for early- and midcareer researchers, according to the NIH, depending on the ultimate level of the cap. The agency is considering a two-, three-, or four-grant cap per researcher.
A similar proposal, released in 2017, was ultimately pulled by the agency after facing criticism in the scientific community.
“There are many outstanding investigators all around the country who are not getting the support that they deserve, and we are concentrating too many resources in the hands of too few people,” says Lawrence A. Tabak, the former deputy director at the NIH who pushed for the 2017 policy on grant restrictions. A grant-cap policy could remedy that, he adds.
Investigators seeking funding from the NIH had less success across career stages in fiscal year (FY) 2025 compared with FY 2024, according to a February blog post by the agency. Only 19% of grant applications from early-career investigators were awarded in FY 2025, down from 26% in FY 2024. And NIH grant terminations in 2025 had a larger effect on women and early-career researchers than advanced researchers, an analysis published in March found.
The agency vowed in the blog post to “closely monitor challenges faced by early career investigators and implement programs and other initiatives targeting barriers to career progression.”
Currently, around 11% of NIH grant awardees are supported by three or more NIH research grants, according to the proposal. The grant restriction would introduce a single hard cap on the number of grants allowed at the same time for each investigator.
The current proposal doesn’t account for the size and type of different grants. This differs from the 2017 proposal, which would have used a grant-support index to capture differences in grant type, though Tabak says the intended effects will be the same. The restrictions include grants with multiple principal investigators.
“My strongest hope is that if the agency goes through with this, that whatever resources are freed up, they preferentially direct those toward early-stage investigators,” Tabak says, which includes women and people from underserved communities. He also hopes that resources will be distributed to institutions that don’t typically get NIH support. “But until we have a chance to actually see how these resources are being used, it’s hard to be supportive or critical.”
The NIH did not respond to questions from C&EN about who the agency would prioritize for research spending. The NIH is soliciting public comments through Aug. 3.
