# Plain Language Summary: GRANT Act of 2023

The GRANT Act requires the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—the federal agency that funds medical and scientific research—to be much more transparent about how it decides which research projects get funding and which ones don't. Right now, when researchers apply for grants from the NIH and get rejected, there's often little public information about why their proposals were turned down or how the decision was made. This bill changes that by creating two main accountability measures.

First, the NIH must create and maintain a public database listing every research proposal that gets rejected, along with an explanation of why it was denied. This database has to be updated at least every three months, starting within six months of the law taking effect. Second, the bill requires the NIH to share detailed information with independent researchers who ask for it—including individual reviewer scores and written comments on both funded and rejected proposals, the full text of research proposals and reports, and information about how NIH employees performed their jobs. The only names that will be redacted are those of the peer reviewers (to protect their privacy) and the names of people who applied for rejected grants.

This affects researchers, taxpayers, and the scientific community broadly. Researchers will be able to see why their proposals were rejected and understand the evaluation process better, which could help them improve future applications. Taxpayers will have better visibility into how their money is being spent on research. However, the bill also overrides several federal privacy laws to make this information available, which some might see as a trade-off between transparency and privacy protections. The NIH will need to maintain all this information indefinitely and make reasonable efforts to recover old records that may no longer exist.