What changed: Across 2025 and 2026, NIH has been reshaping how it reviews the grant mechanisms that fund individual researchers rather than research projects — fellowships (F), career development awards (K), and institutional training grants (T). Two related but distinct actions are involved: a 2024 revision of the fellowship (F) review criteria that took effect for due dates on or after January 25, 2025, and a newer, 2026 push to centralize referral and review across F, K, and T applications and give reviewers clearer, more consistent instructions to weigh a candidate’s potential and training plan more heavily than the reputation of the sponsor or host institution. NIH frames both as part of its workforce-development priorities under the broader Unified NIH Funding Strategy.
The revised fellowship (F) review criteria: NOT-OD-24-107
NIH announced the fellowship-specific changes in Guide notice NOT-OD-24-107, "Implementation of Revisions to the NIH and AHRQ Fellowship Application and Review Process," part of a package of application and review changes NIH summarized in the umbrella notice NOT-OD-24-084. The revised criteria apply to Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) fellowship activity codes — F31, F30, F32, F33, and F99/K00 — for applications with due dates on or after January 25, 2025.
Where fellowship applications were previously reviewed against a looser set of criteria that gave substantial weight to the sponsor’s track record and the institutional environment, NOT-OD-24-107 restructures review around three scored criteria, each rated on the standard 1-9 scale:
- Candidate’s Goals, Preparedness, and Potential — the applicant’s own readiness, trajectory, and promise as an independent researcher.
- Research Training Plan — the specific plan of research and training activities proposed for the fellowship period.
- Commitment to Candidate — what the sponsor(s) and institution will actually provide to support the candidate’s development, evaluated for its fit to this candidate rather than as a proxy for institutional prestige.
NIH also removed undergraduate and graduate grades from what fellowship applicants are permitted to include, and revised the biosketch and referee-letter instructions to align with the new criteria. The stated goals, per NIH’s own Revisions to the NIH Fellowship Application and Review Process policy page, are to simplify and clarify the language reviewers work from, recognize a broader range of candidates and training contexts as meritorious, and reduce bias by keeping the focus on commitment to the individual candidate rather than on sponsor or institutional reputation.
This is separate from the Simplified Review Framework — and that matters
It’s easy to conflate the F-specific criteria revision with NIH’s Simplified Review Framework (SRF), the better-known 2025 overhaul that regrouped the five statutory review criteria for research project grants (R01s and most other RPGs) into three factors under notice NOT-OD-24-010. They share a rationale — both are explicitly designed to reduce the weight reviewers give to general reputation — and both took effect for the same January 25, 2025 due-date cutoff. But they are not the same policy. As CASRAI’s SRF guide notes, career development (K) awards and training/fellowship (T and F series) awards were carved out of the SRF and continue to be reviewed under their own, separate criteria rather than the SRF’s three-factor structure. The F-series criteria in NOT-OD-24-107 are that separate track for fellowships specifically; K and T mechanisms have their own review process, distinct from both the SRF and the fellowship-specific criteria.
2026: centralizing referral and review for F, K, and T applications
The more recent development is process-level rather than criteria-level. According to NIH’s Office of Extramural Research, summarized in a July 2026 Extramural Nexus update, NIH has been centralizing how fellowship, training, and career development applications are referred to scientific review groups and reviewed, with the stated aim of making the process more consistent and transparent across Institutes and Centers and better tailored to what F, K, and T applications actually need to demonstrate. NIH describes a candidate’s potential and training goals as the more central focus of that review going forward, rather than sponsor or institutional reputation — language that echoes the rationale behind both the SRF and NOT-OD-24-107, applied here specifically to how F, K, and T applications are triaged and assigned for review.
NIH connects this workforce-focused review consolidation to its broader Unified NIH Funding Strategy, described in a November 2025 Extramural Nexus post as an effort to help Institutes and Centers make funding decisions that are more informed, transparent, and flexible, with implementation tied to the January 2026 Council round. Supporting and sustaining the biomedical research workforce — the population F, K, and T mechanisms exist to fund — is presented as one of the priorities that strategy is meant to serve.
What we could not independently verify: NIH’s own primary-source pages describe the Unified NIH Funding Strategy and the F/K/T referral-and-review centralization in the terms above, but at the time of writing we were unable to retrieve the full text of either 2026 Extramural Nexus article directly (both returned an access error on direct fetch); the summaries here are drawn from indexed excerpts of those pages plus the confirmed NIH Guide notices (NOT-OD-24-107, NOT-OD-24-084, NOT-OD-24-010). Program officers and applicants should confirm current specifics — including whether K- and T-series review criteria themselves are being reworded, beyond the referral/process changes — against the live NIH Guide notice and the relevant funding opportunity announcement before relying on this summary for a specific application.
What this means for applicants and program directors
- Fellowship (F) applicants: build the application around the three scored criteria — candidate potential, the training plan itself, and what the sponsor/institution concretely commits to that candidate — rather than leading with sponsor credentials or institutional rankings. Grades are no longer part of the application for due dates on or after January 25, 2025.
- K and T applicants and program directors: confirm which review track applies to your specific activity code and funding opportunity announcement — K and T mechanisms are not on the SRF’s three-factor scoring, and NIH’s 2026 centralization changes are about referral and review consistency, not (as far as is confirmed) a rescoring of K/T criteria analogous to NOT-OD-24-107.
- Everyone: referee letters, biosketches, and training-plan narratives should be written to demonstrate fit and commitment to this specific candidate, not general institutional prestige — that shift in emphasis is the common thread across all of NIH’s 2025-2026 review changes.
Timeline
| Date | Action |
|---|---|
| April 2024 | NIH issues NOT-OD-24-107, announcing revised fellowship (F) review criteria. |
| January 25, 2025 | Revised F-series criteria and the Simplified Review Framework both take effect for applications due on or after this date. |
| November 2025 | NIH describes the Unified NIH Funding Strategy in an Extramural Nexus post, tied to the January 2026 Council round. |
| July 2026 | NIH publishes referral-and-review updates specific to F, K, and T applications, framed within the Unified NIH Funding Strategy. |
Frequently asked questions
What is NOT-OD-24-107?
It is the NIH Guide notice, issued in April 2024, that implements revised review criteria for NRSA fellowship applications (F30, F31, F32, F33, F99/K00) effective for due dates on or after January 25, 2025. It restructures fellowship review around three scored criteria: Candidate’s Goals, Preparedness, and Potential; Research Training Plan; and Commitment to Candidate.
Do K and T awards use the same Simplified Review Framework as R01s?
No. The Simplified Review Framework (NOT-OD-24-010) applies to most research project grant mechanisms. Career development (K) and training/fellowship (T and F series) awards are explicitly excluded and continue to be reviewed under separate, mechanism-specific criteria.
What is the NIH Unified Funding Strategy?
Per NIH’s own November 2025 description, it is an initiative to help NIH Institutes and Centers make funding decisions more consistently, transparently, and flexibly, tied to the January 2026 Council round. NIH connects its 2026 F/K/T referral-and-review changes to this broader strategy.
Does this affect currently funded F, K, or T awards?
The changes described here govern how new applications are reviewed at the point of submission and funding decision; they do not retroactively alter previously awarded grants. Applicants should confirm applicability against the specific funding opportunity announcement, since NIH has continued to clarify scope as implementation has progressed.
Sources
- NIH, NOT-OD-24-107: Implementation of Revisions to the NIH and AHRQ Fellowship Application and Review Process
- NIH, NOT-OD-24-084: Overview of Grant Application and Review Changes for Due Dates on or after January 25, 2025
- NIH, Revisions to the NIH Fellowship Application and Review Process
- NIH Extramural Nexus, Implementing a Unified NIH Funding Strategy to Guide Consistent and Clearer Award Decisions (November 2025)
- NIH Extramural Nexus, Updates to NIH Fellowship, Training, and Career Development Applications: Referral and Review Highlights (July 2026)
See also CASRAI’s guides to the NIH Simplified Review Framework, Career Development (K) Awards, and the NIH Grant Cycle.
