I’m excited to let you know that NIH RePORT (Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools) is a finalist for the HHSinnovates program, and for the first time ever the public will have the opportunity to vote on RePORT and the other finalists. We have often heard from you about the value that RePORT provides to the biomedical community, so now is the time to show your appreciation through your vote.
HHSinnovates is a program run by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to highlight innovations in programs and processes developed by HHS staff. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius launched the program in 2010, but this year marks the first “People’s Choice Award” where the public can vote and rate the HHS projects they deem most innovative.
Out of the initial 60 projects submitted in this round, RePORT is one of six finalists. I’m especially proud of the advances RePORT has made – and continues to make – in increasing transparency and accessibility to information on the NIH research portfolio.
As I’ve discussed in previous blog posts, RePORT’s innovative interface gives you access to comprehensive information about NIH funding, and the website continues to grow. One of the newest features links RePORTER with EurekAlert!, the international science news service operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). When looking up an NIH award in RePORTER, you can view the news releases published in EurekAlert! that describe research supported by that particular award.
To demonstrate this tool, let’s build upon an example from my most recent blog post on RePORT, the search for active projects related to obesity. You’ll see in the screenshot below that the project search results page contains a “News & More” tab. At the time of writing this post, the tab shows that there are 30 press releases related to projects in the search results, along with 6 stories associated with projects funded through the Recovery Act. (The “News & More” feature is new. We expect the number of releases to increase quickly!)
Clicking on the press release link will expand the list of 30, and you can sort by date to find the most recent news, for example, this August 15th release from the University of Maryland Medical Center.
So how does RePORTER identify these press releases? NIH notices of grant award require acknowledgement of federal funding in press releases and research manuscripts. When press offices of the NIH grantee institutions use EurekAlert! to publish their releases, they now have the ability to tag their press releases with relevant NIH grant numbers, similar to how PIs include their NIH grant numbers in the acknowledgements of published research manuscripts. If an institution does not use EurekaAlert! they can work with the communications office of the funding NIH institute or center to get the release linked to the grant record in RePORTER.
(Note: At the current time RePORTER does not link press releases to specific subprojects of multi-project grants. As a result, RePORTER search results containing subprojects will retrieve all news associated with the parent grant award and all of its other subprojects, including those in diverse areas of research.)
Congratulations to all the finalists, and I hope you will consider voting for NIH RePORT!
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