J. Kelly Byram, MS, MBA, ELS

New NIH Post-submission Materials Guidelines

You can update your NIH application post-submission. Read on to learn how (and for what circumstances).

While the focus of my job is the time period before the application deadline, I do spend a considerable amount of time managing clients’ expectations and anxieties in that time between application submission and review. The timescale of grants can seem glacial to those who are new to the grant funding process, and so much can happen in the career of a researcher or to a research project between the time a grant application is submitted and the time it is reviewed. This applies equally to academic researchers and private sector researchers, because, although the SBIR/STTR timeline is shorter than the R01 timeline, for example, small businesses tend to have less of a financial cushion and a tighter timeline than academic research programs. When something good (promotion! publication!) or bad (loss of an animal colony due to natural disaster) happens, what can you do? Most people do presume that they can (and should!) contact the agency in the case of a natural disaster, but are at a loss over the ability to communicate less dramatic happenings, like publication. What many applicants don’t realize is that there is a mechanism by which they may update their applications post-submission. This is the topic of today’s blog, so take a deep cleansing breath, release that anxiety, and read on.

Continue reading “New NIH Post-submission Materials Guidelines”

What the New NIH Guidelines for Appendices Means for You

The NIH Application Guide has been updated again, this time to introduce two changes to submission guidelines (effective on and after 25 January 2017). The first (NOT-OD-16-129) further restricts what may be included in the application’s appendix, while the second (NOT-OD-16-130) simplifies and consolidates guidelines for post-submission materials. This post reviews the appendix guidelines. The new post-submission materials guidelines will be discussed in a later post. Continue reading “What the New NIH Guidelines for Appendices Means for You”

Preparation for the New NIH Biosketch

Just a quick post so my blog doesn’t appear abandoned! It has been a while since the last post simply because there is so much going on in funding at the moment that I just don’t have the time to blog anything substantial. To that point, yes, federal funding is on the decline in many ways, but there are a lot of new sources of funding and novel emerging funding models. It’s an exciting environment these days!

The quick bit of advice I would like to share today is regarding the change in the NIH biosketch form. I am finding that a lot of people are really focused on the form itself and strategies for developing a solid biosketch using the new form. That’s great! I have blogged about the new form and those strategies previously, so if you are looking for biosketch strategy, just browse the blog.

What is alarming to me is that people are tending to ignore the need to have all of their publications in a publicly available digital database, like My Bibliography or SciENcv, and to link to the database in the biosketch. If you do not have a publicly available digital database with a full list of your published work already developed, this (dreary) task will take some time. In my experience, getting housecleaning items like this squared away in advance of the final push toward the finish line alleviates a considerable amount of stress.

Additionally, if you are a PI, take the time to assure all of your colleagues who will need to submit a biosketch for your project are aware of the new format, and schedule some time to review the team’s biosketches together to assure they are pertinent and work together. You may also want to assure the publication databases are being developed if they don’t exist already so there are no unpleasant large surprises as your deadline draws near!