1. Public Access Policy and award restrictions
Last year NIH said that they would not fund non-competing continuations unless all publications were compliant with the Public Access Policy, i.e., a full copy of the publication had been deposited in PubMed Central. Now NIH is adding language to the terms and conditions of new awards stating that if a grant is not compliant with the NIH Public Access Policy, all funds for the grant will be restricted with the exception of those costs associated with patient care and or animal care until that requirement is met. No research activities can occur during the restricted period and any salaries and fringe benefits paid during that time will be at the institution’s expense.
2. NIH to require NIH Commons IDs for Graduate and Undergraduate Students.
The requirement for all principal investigators and post docs to have an NIH Commons ID will now be extended to graduate and undergraduate students (NOT-OD-13-097). Graduate students listed on a current grant may request an NIH Commons account by sending an email to researchaffairs@llu.edu.
3. NIH has announce the availability of a Beta version of the Science Experts Network, (SciENcv).
This new electronic system will enable researchers to easily assemble the information (including expertise, employment, education and professional accomplishments) to populate an NIH biographical sketch (biosketch). Initially, the goal of SciENcv is to reduce the burden associated with creating and maintaining federal biosketches while accommodating the need to describe scientific contributions.
Users can get to SciENcv by going to the NCBI sign-in page at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/account/ where they will have the option to sign in using third-party accounts (for example, an eRA Commons account, a local institutional account through InCommon, or a Google account). Full documentation on how to use My NCBI is located at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK3842/. Information on how to set up and use the SciENcv tool is located at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK154494/.
The beta version of SciENcv will allow users to explore the system and create an NIH biosketch. Users also are invited to identify features that need to improved or added to fully serve the needs of the research community. Suggestions can be entered using the utility provided at info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. A number of enhancements are already planned for future versions of SciENcv including the ability to generate biosketches for other federal agencies as well as other functionality listed below
- Generate and maintain multiple biosketches including those for NSF and other federal science agencies
- Describe the scientific impact of past discoveries
- Ingest data from additional external systems
- Control data exposure
- Transfer data to other systems
- Allow delegates to manage data
For more information: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-13-114.html