Decoding NIH Grant Numbers
November 15, 2018
Have you ever wondered what each part of an NIH grant number means? Decode that string of letters and numbers with this helpful cheat sheet.
Tag: applications
RCDeCade: A Case Study to Show NIH Support Trends in an Emerging Scientific Field
August 2, 2018
A few weeks ago, we touted the value of the NIH’s Research, Condition, and Disease Classification (RCDC) system to give us consistent annual reporting on official research budget categories and the ability to see trends in spending over time. RCDC’s robust scientific validation process, which allows for such consistency, provides public transparency into over 280 different NIH budget categories.
RCDC categories do not encompass all types of biomedical research. So, how can we get this type of data for other research areas that are not encompassed in RCDC categories, especially those which are newly emerging fields? Are we able to use the same thesaurus-based classification system to explore other research trends?
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“Cover Letters and their Appropriate Use” Podcast Now Available
April 16, 2018
Ever wonder what you should and shouldn’t put in a grant application cover letter? Dr. Cathleen Cooper, director of the Division of Receipt and Referral in NIH’s Center for Scientific Review, explains just that in the latest addition to our “All About Grants” podcast series – “Cover Letters and Their Appropriate Use” (MP3, Transcript).
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Do Reviewers Read References? And If So, Does It Impact Their Scores?
March 30, 2018
In March 2017, we wrote about federal funders’ policies on interim research products, including preprints. We encouraged applicants and awardees include citations to preprints in their grant applications and progress reports. Some of your feedback pointed to the potential impact of this new policy on the peer review process.
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Be Careful to Pick the Right Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA)
December 7, 2017
Recent policy changes requiring clinical trial applications to be submitted to FOAs that specifically allow clinical trials, first announced in fall of 2016, impact how all NIH applicants choose a FOA, whether you are submitting a clinical trial or not.
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Applications, Resubmissions, and the Relative Citation Ratio
April 25, 2017
Measuring the impact of NIH grants is an important input in our stewardship of research funding. One metric we can use to look at impact, discussed previously on this blog, is the relative citation ratio (or RCR). This measure – which NIH has made freely available through the iCite tool – aims to go further than just raw numbers of published research findings or citations, by quantifying the impact and influence of a research article both within the context of its research field and benchmarked against publications resulting from NIH R01 awards.
In light of our more recent posts on applications and resubmissions, we’d like to go a step further by looking at long-term bibliometric outcomes as a function of submission number. In other words, are there any observable trends in the impact of publications resulting from an NIH grant funded as an A0, versus those funded as an A1 or A2? And does that answer change when we take into account how much funding each grant received? ….
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Outcomes of Amended (“A1”) Applications
March 23, 2017
In a previous blog, we described the outcomes of grant applications according to the initial peer review score. Some of you have wondered about the peer review scores of amended (“A1”) applications. More specifically, some of you have asked about amended applications getting worse scores than first applications; some of you have experienced amended applications … Continue reading “Outcomes of Amended (“A1”) Applications”
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Resubmissions Revisited: Funded Resubmission Applications and Their Initial Peer Review Scores
February 17, 2017
“My first submission got an overall impact score of 30. Is that good enough? What’s the likelihood I’ll eventually get this funded?”, or, “My first submission was not even discussed. Now what? Does anyone with an undiscussed grant bother to resubmit? And what’s the likelihood I’ll eventually get this funded?” In a past blog we … Continue reading “Resubmissions Revisited: Funded Resubmission Applications and Their Initial Peer Review Scores”
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How Many Researchers Were Supported by NIH as Trainees?
November 28, 2016
Earlier this year we reported on the unique numbers of research project grant (RPG) awardees and applicants each year since the end of the NIH doubling, in 2003. We described how the number of unique RPG awardees has remained relatively constant, while the number of applicants (as assessed over 5-year windows) has steadily and markedly increased.
A number of readers asked us about the prior NIH-supported research training and career development of these investigators. Among RPG awardees, what proportion had received prior fellowship, training, or career development (F, T, or K) awards? And perhaps of greater interest, among unsuccessful, unfunded applicants, what proportion had received prior fellowship, training or career awards?
To answer these questions, we start with a quick recap. ….
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R01 and R21 Applications & Awards: Trends and Relationships Across NIH
November 4, 2016
As described on our grants page, the R21 activity code “is intended to encourage exploratory/developmental research by providing support for the early and conceptual stages of project development.” NIH seeks applications for “exploratory, novel studies that break new ground,” for “high-risk, high-reward studies,” and for projects that are distinct from those that would be funded by the traditional R01. R21 grants are short duration (project period for up to 2 years) and lower in budget than most R01s (combined budget over two years cannot exceed $275,000 in direct costs). NIH institutes and centers (ICs) approach the R21 mechanism in variable ways: 18 ICs accept investigator-initiated R21 applications in response to the parent R21 funding opportunity, while 7 ICs only accept R21 applications in response to specific funding opportunity announcements. As mentioned in a 2015 Rock Talk blog, we at NIH are interested in trends in R01s in comparison to other research project grants, so today I’d like to continue and expand on looking at R01 and R21 trends across NIH’s extramural research program. ….
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