Why Do I Need to be Careful Naming the PDF Attachments for My Application?

April 30, 2015

Electronic systems can be a little finicky when presented with file names that include unexpected characters. Take care to follow the directions in the NIH application guide to ensure smooth processing of your application. PDF file names should be less than 50 characters, including punctuation and spaces. File names can contain any of the following characters: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, underscore, hyphen, space, … Continue reading “Why Do I Need to be Careful Naming the PDF Attachments for My Application?”

Learn More About Using the NIH Inclusion Management System

April 30, 2015

A new tutorial video helps principal investigators use NIH’s Inclusion Management System (IMS) to access Inclusion Data Records in the eRA Commons to report sex/gender, race, and ethnicity information as required by NIH’s policy on the Inclusion of Women and Minorities in Clinical Research. ….

Potential Delays to NIH Awards in May 2015

April 30, 2015

Due to software upgrades that impact NIH’s accounting and business systems, NIH’s ability to issue competing and non-competing awards may be delayed from May 19, 2015 until June 3, 2015. While many systems will remain accessible ….

More ASSISTance Options for Submitting Your Application to NIH

April 30, 2015

I’m excited to tell you about a new option for submitting your R01 applications to NIH. Today, we made ASSIST (the Application Submission System and Interface for Submission Tracking) available as an option for submitting your R01 applications, as well as most individual career development (K) award applications. ASSIST is a web-based system that was developed by NIH, in close partnership with Grants.gov, to address common application submission challenges identified by the community. We first launched ASSIST ….

Looking at Recent Data on R21 and R01-equivalent Grants

April 10, 2015

One topic of frequent interest to NIH leadership is how R01-equivalent awards compare to other research grant awards. The R01 is the standard mainstay of NIH’s research portfolio, and the oldest grant mechanism in use by NIH. As those familiar with the blog and RePORT know, we usually look at R01s in conjunction with other awards providing similar support analogous to an R01, which includes R37s or MERIT program awards. Of the R01-equivalent pool however, R01s make up the overwhelming bulk of these grants so while we call them R01-equivalents for accuracy-in-reporting reasons, it is highly appropriate to consider R01-equivalent data as representative of R01 trends. Over the past years we’ve been looking at trends in R01-equivalents compared to trends in awards through the R21 activity code. ….

Give Input on Strategies for Optimizing the Impact and Sustainability of Biomedical Research

April 2, 2015

An important, recurring discussion topic on our blogs is ways to maximize the impact and sustainability of NIH-funded biomedical research. In 2011, a Rock Talk post on managing NIH’s budget in fiscally challenging times solicited many comments and led, in part, to an NIH-wide policy on special council review for applications from PIs who have more than $1 million in NIH funding. We have also implemented new programs that provide more stable support for investigators over longer time periods. A more recent example of the “maximizing impact and sustainability” theme is an NIGMS Feedback Loop post that discussed ideas for how to optimize the biomedical research ecosystem. ….