Below is an excerpt from an NIH communication written by Sherie Cummins, Communications & Outreach, NIH Office of Extramural Research. This article contains a summary of the important changes to the biosketches which go into effect May 25, 2015, along with links to important policies, guides and resources.
Straight Talk About Application Requirements
I manage a small support team called Grants Info responsible for responding to grant-related email and phone inquiries. Team members spend the better part of their day helping folks navigate through our many grant resources and matching ‘people who have questions’ with ‘people who have answers’. One of the most popular inquiries we receive is “What exactly do you mean by ‘required’?” This question can, of course, apply to any policy or guidance we put out. Most recently, it has been asked in the context of the new biosketch.
NIH expects applicants and grantees to follow all documented policies and instructions. When completing your grant application you must follow announcement clarification and policy notices posted in the NIH Guide, follow instructions in the Funding Opportunity Announcement and follow the guidance in the application guide and supplemental instructions. I know (better than most) that is easier said than done. The NIH puts out A LOT of grant information keeping my team very busy. J
So, when we say NIH “requires use of the new [biosketch] format for applications submitted for due dates on or after May 25, 2015” (NOT-OD-15-032), we mean…
All biosketches included in applications submitted for due dates on/after May 25, 2015 must be formatted per the instructions in the application guide (and repeated in online resources), including:
- Completing each section (A - Personal Statement; B – Positions and Honors; C – Contributions to Science; D – Research Support or Scholastic Performance)
- Including no more than 5 contributions to science with no more than 4 citations per contribution
- Ensuring that if you include the optional link to a full list of your published work in a site like My Bibliography that the URL is public, accessible without providing any login or personal information, and doesn’t link to websites that may violate page limit rules
- Refraining from including information, such as preliminary data, that belongs elsewhere in the application
- Following NIH guidance on font type, font size, paper size, and margins (See section 2.6 of application guide)
- Using PDF format for your biosketch attachments
- Limiting the length to 5 pages or less
The new biosketch policy is “required’ –officially compulsory, or otherwise considered essential; indispensable. Failure to follow the policy means NIH may withdraw your application from consideration (NOT-OD-15-095). The majority of the requirements listed above (all except the 5-page limit) would not be flagged until your application has already moved forward to NIH. If you don’t follow the instructions and our staff manually identifies a biosketch in your application as being non-compliant, then you won’t have the opportunity to correct it before the due date. In that context, is it really worth not following the instructions?