Length of time awardees remain in NIH applicant pool after after the first R01-e Award.

A Kaplan–Meier approach was used to measure the length of time investigators in each cohort remained in the NIH R01-e applicant pool after receiving their first R01-e awards. Y-axis: percent of investigators in each cohort who received an additional RPG award and remain in applicant pool. Investigators who do not remain in pool are considered to have ‘dropped out’. X-axis: years since receiving first R01-e award. Blue line: NIAID awardees. Orange line: other-NIH awardees. Solid red line: dropout slope between 4 and 5 years. Half of the NIAID cohort dropped out by 15 years after the first R01-e award (i.e. half-life 15 years); half of the other-NIH cohort dropped out by 10 years, or 50% sooner than the NIAID cohort.