The National Institutes of Health is soliciting advice from scientists about how to improve its peer review of research-grant applications.

Faced with a growing number of grant applications and a tight budget, the agency says it is looking for ways to increase the efficiency of the review process. One goal of the effort is to ease the workload for both peer reviewers and applicants. To that end, the NIH has for years been discussing steps to shorten the application process and the length of applications, partly by relying more on electronic submission and processing.

The advice is being solicited by a working group of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director. The agency announced it is accepting comments through August 17.

In the announcement, the NIH welcomed “creative suggestions, even if they involve radical changes to the current approach.” However, some observers have suggested that the last major overhaul of the NIH’s peer-review process, which began in 1997, produced results that were less far-reaching than anticipated. —Jeffrey Brainard