Rigor and Reproducibility Changes, Visualized

April 30, 2016

Looking for a one-page reference on NIH’s application changes to address scientific rigor and transparency? Check out this handy infographic developed by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). ….

Citations Per Dollar as a Measure of Productivity

April 28, 2016

NIH grants reflect research investments that we hope will lead to advancement of fundamental knowledge and/or application of that knowledge to efforts to improve health and well-being. In February, we published a blog on the publication impact of NIH funded research. We were gratified to hear your many thoughtful comments and questions. Some of you suggested that we should not only focus on output (e.g. highly cited papers), but also on cost – or as one of you mentioned “citations per dollar.” Indeed, my colleagues and I have previously taken a preliminary look at this question in the world of cardiovascular research. Today I’d like to share our exploration of citations per dollar using a sample of R01 grants across NIH’s research portfolio. What we found has an interesting policy implication for maximizing NIH’s return on investment in research. ….

Grants Reassigned Within School/Department? Signing Officials, Update the Information in eRA Commons Yourselves

April 28, 2016

College and university officials, has one of your grants moved — say, from your department of medicine to the department of surgery — and you want that assignment correctly reflected in the eRA Commons? In the past, higher education institutions would need to submit a request to the eRA Service Desk to have this information on school/department reassignment updated. The good news is that now Signing Officials can do it themselves, using a new feature in eRA Commons that allows them to update data regarding the reassignment of a grant within an institution (see steps to Reassign Grant).

Building a Better Biomarker Glossary

April 18, 2016

Precise and clear communication across biological and clinical research disciplines supports efficient translation of results from basic research into applied therapeutics and interventions. Both the NIH and FDA are keenly interested in working together to help the biological and clinical research communities speak a common language, so that research results can be clearly understood by both groups. This is especially true in considering the vocabulary used to describe measures of health, disease, or physiological processes…..

Innovating to Make it Easier for You to Find the NIH Grants Information You Need

April 4, 2016

More isn’t always better, especially when it comes to wading through information on NIH grant policies and processes. We talk about burden frequently, usually in reference to policies and processes that add burden to our grantee community. But there is another source of burden: having to spend time digging through resources to find critical information you need to apply for or manage your grant award. For the past year my staff have been strategizing how to improve upon the way we deliver information, with the goal of reducing the time it takes you to find the information you need. To do this, they embarked on a comprehensive, data-driven approach to understand ….