Results of the September 2012 Operating Grants Competition

(2013-01-30) On behalf of CIHR, I am pleased to announce the results of the September 2012 Open Operating Grants competition, in which CIHR approved the investment of $240.7 million over six years. As with previous competitions, we met our ongoing commitment to the research community to fund at least 400 grants from the core competition budget and to maintain or increase the average value of these grants. This was only possible by applying an across-the-board cut of 24%. For funded grants, the average (mean) annual core competition grant size was $600,176 (median grant size of $438,018) with an average duration of 3.9 years.

As well, approximately 84 full-term and bridge grants will be funded through Priority Announcements and other sources for a maximum total of 485 grants approved from the Operating Grant 2012-2013 (September) competition.

The September 2012 competition marked the fifth time that the Open Operating Grants competition dedicated a part of the Open Operating Grants budget to a specific funding envelope - worth approximately $12.5 million - for large grants, including large RCTs. Large grants were defined as those within the top 1.3% of the average annual grant budgets recommended within the competition; these were ranked together and funded from the top down within the available funding envelope. Five large grants with an average total grant size of $2.4 M were funded in this competition. Other facts and frequently asked questions relating to the Open Operating Grant Program are available on the CIHR website, in the document CIHR Open Operating Grant Program Competitions – Frequently Asked Questions.

I would like to again thank the approximately 800 reviewers who dedicated their time and energy to have made this competition possible. For the last few competitions, we asked researchers to submit only their most competitive applications. Conversely, we discouraged researchers from immediately resubmitting unsuccessful applications to the next competition with no change or reflection. As well, we suggested that after an application has been unsuccessful two or three times that it not be resubmitted. We believe this contributed to the number of applications we receive staying approximately stable at 2,333 in the fall of 2012 compared to 2,284 in the spring of 2012, 2,294 in the fall of 2011 and 2,298 in the spring of 2011.

We have received questions from the community regarding the impact that the reforms to open programs will have on the Open Operating Grants program. I can confirm that CIHR will hold three more Open Operating Grant Program competitions (spring 2013, fall 2013, and spring 2014). There will also be a transitional Open Operating Grant Program competition in spring 2015, which will be held in parallel to the first "live pilot" of the Foundation Scheme. Other existing open programs will be phased-out after the launch of the first Project Scheme competition.

More information on the reforms to the open suite of programs and related transitions was released in December 2012 in "Designing for the Future, The New Open Suite of Programs and Peer Review Process". We encourage the community to read this document to be able to work with CIHR on transition to the new programs.

I wish to congratulate the recipients of September 2012 Open Operating Grants and wish them success in all their research endeavours.

Jane E. Aubin, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific Officer and Vice-President, Research and Knowledge Translation Portfolio
Canadian Institutes of Health Research