On May 2, 2017, the National Institutes of Health announced a new approach to grant funding: the Grant Support Index (GSI). This index will assign points to individual researchers or labs based on the funding they receive from the NIH, with the aim to cap funding to one researcher or lab at 21 points. The purpose of this approach is to allow the NIH to fund more, and more diverse, researchers, and is based on a number of reports and findings, e.g., 40% of their funding is going to 10% of NIH-funded investigators and "greater degrees of funding may not generate as much additional scientific output as expected due to the impact of diminishing returns" (Mike Lauer, Open Mike blog). The NIH estimates that the new GSI may only affect about six percent of NIH-funded investigators.
For more information, please see the Open Mike blogpost, "Implementing Limits on Grant Support to Strengthen the Biomedical Research Workforce" and The NIH Director's website article, "New NIH Approach to Grant Funding Aimed at Optimizing Stewardship of Taxpayer Dollars".
