Narrative of Biosketch Modification

Attachment 1A

Proposed Modifications to the Biosketch

The NIH plans to modify the Biographical Sketch form (OMB No. 0925-0001/0002 (Rev. 08/12 Approved Through 8/31/2015) in the following ways. The initial blocks including the Name and Education and Training would not be changed. Sections B. (positions and honors) and Section D (federal and non-federal grants and other instruments of research support) would not be changed. Sections A (personal statement related to qualifications for the proposed project) and Section C (list of up to 15 selected, peer-reviewed publications) would be enhanced as shown below. For most NIH grant applications, the biosketch section could be extended from the current limit of four pages to five pages.

Section A. Personal Statement includes the following instructions: Briefly describe why your experience and qualifications make you particularly well-suited for your role (e.g., PD/PI, mentor, participating faculty) in the project that is the subject of the application. Within this section you may, if you choose, briefly describe factors such as family care responsibilities, illness, disability, and active duty military service that may have affected your scientific advancement or productivity.

In order to clarify the Section A: Personal Statement the instructions would be modified as follows: Briefly describe why you are well-suited for your role in the project described in this application. The relevant factors may include aspects of your training; your previous experimental work on this specific topic or related topics; your technical expertise; your collaborators or scientific environment; and your past performance in this or related fields (you may mention specific contributions to science that are not included in Section C). Also, you may identify up to four peer reviewed publications that specifically highlight your experience and qualifications for this project, provided that those publications do not appear in Section C. If you wish to explain impediments to your past productivity, you may include a description of factors such as family care responsibilities, illness, disability, and active duty military service.

Section C. Selected Peer Reviewed Publications currently includes the following instructions in version C which is available at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/424/SF424_RR_Guide_General_Adobe_VerC.docx : NIH encourages applicants to limit the list of selected peer-reviewed publications, manuscripts in press, and patent citations to no more than 15. Do not include manuscripts submitted or in preparation. The individual may choose to include selected publications based on recency, importance to the field, and/or relevance to the proposed research. When citing articles that fall under the Public Access Policy, were authored or co-authored by the applicant and arose from NIH support, provide the NIH Manuscript Submission reference number (e.g., NIHMS97531) or the PubMed Central (PMC) reference number (e.g., PMCID234567) for each article. If the PMCID is not yet available because the Journal submits articles directly to PMC on behalf of their authors, indicate “PMC Journal – In Process.” A list of these journals is posted at: http://publicaccess.nih.gov/submit_process_journals.htm. Citations that are not covered by the Public Access Policy, but are publicly available in a free, online format may include URLs or PubMed ID (PMID) numbers along with the full reference (note that copies of publicly available publications are not acceptable as appendix material).

Section C would be renamed as Contributions to Science and would include the following instructions. NIH encourages applicants to describe up to five of their most significant contributions to science. For each contribution, the applicant should indicate the historical background that frames the scientific problem; the central finding(s); the influence of the finding(s) on the progress of science or the application of those finding(s) to health or technology; and the role specifically played by the applicant in the described work. For each of these contributions, the applicant may reference up to four peer-reviewed publications relevant to that contribution. The description of each contribution should be no longer than one half page, including any figures. Applicants also are encouraged to provide a link to a full list of their published work as found in a publicly available digital data base such as PubMed, myBibliography, or SciENcv all of which are maintained by the National Library of Medicine.

Examples of the current (Attachment 1B) and modified (Attachment 1C) biosketch are attached.