The National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a statement on Nov. 21, 2025 about implementing the Leveraging Funding Policies Framework, which will be effective January 2026 and significantly changes how institutes and centers make award funding decisions. NIH is moving away from the long-standing practice of using and publicly posting “paylines” which served as a primary cutoff for  funding decision process (see NIH announcement: Implementing a Unified NIH Funding Strategy to Guide Consistent and Clearer Award Decisions). Above this payline or cutoff nearly all proposals were funded. This shift will affect how faculty interpret peer review outcomes as funding can no longer be predicted based on a peer review score and the posted payline. A strong percentile score will help but will not serve as the only factor.

What Is Changing?

Historically, many NIH institutes published annual funding trends in so-called paylines. These served as a transparent benchmark: if an application’s percentile score was better than the stated payline, it was highly likely to be funded.

Under the new framework:

  • NIH Institutes and centers will no longer publish paylines.
  • A strong percentile score no longer guarantees funding. Even top-scoring applications (e.g., 1–5%) may not be selected.
  • Funding decisions will incorporate programmatic and strategic criteria, including portfolio balance, public health needs, support for early-stage investigators, and alignment with institute priorities.

Peer review itself has not changed — scientific merit is still assessed through scores and percentiles — but the link between a score and a funding outcome is now less direct.

Why This Matters

The removal of clear paylines introduces less transparency and greater uncertainty for investigators and for institutional planning:

  • Reduced clarity after review: Investigators will no longer be able to predict funding likelihood solely from the summary statement.
  • More variable timing: Additional internal review at the institutes and centers level may extend the time between review results and funding decisions.
  • Impact on workload and planning: Departments may need to account for a broader range of possible outcomes when planning for personnel, graduate student support, and effort commitments.
  • While NIH’s intention is to support more strategic and equitable funding decisions, the shift reduces the transparency that paylines previously provided.