Grants paid by the federal government have two components. One covers the direct costs to perform the research, pay for salaries, equipment and consumables such as chemicals or enzymes. But the government also pays the so -called indirect costs. These go to universities and research institutes, which cover the costs of providing and preserving the laboratory space, heat and electricity, administrative functions and human resources, and more.
These indirect costs are negotiated with each research institution and an average of approximately 30 percent of the amount granted to research. Some institutions believe that indirect rates amount to half the value of the grant.
Friday, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Declare The negotiation rates were over. Each grant, and all financiers in the future, will witness only 15 percent costs. With no warning and no time to adapt to a change in politics, this will prove disastrous for the budget of almost every vital medical research institution.
Cut into two halves or more
The new policy has been described in the supplementary guidance document, amending the statement of Grant Policy 2024. The document is martyred Federal regulations This allows the national costs for costs to use an indirect cost rate different from those that have been negotiated with the research institutions for “either a category of federal awards or one federal award”, but it must justify the decision. Therefore, many documents describe the indirect costs paid by charitable institutions, which tend to be much lower than the rate paid by the National Institutes of Health.
The new rate of indirect costs will be applied to any recently funded grants retroactively to all the current grants that start to issue this notice. Nature may end retroactively to this decision to challenge it due to the formulation of the aforementioned regulations, which also states that “the federal agency must include, in notifying the opportunity of funding, policies related to the indirect cost rate.” However, even moving forward, is likely to reduce biomedical research severely in the United States.