Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Tales of the NSF Inspector General

Violation of confidential peer review? Saying a manuscript has been submitted when it hasn't? Take a look at some case studies from the National Science Foundation's Office of the Inspector General to see how these situations played out.
See a list of case studies. (Scroll to bottom of page)

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Succeed

Grants.gov has a quarterly newsletter, to which you can subscribe electronically. Click on the headline above.

Friday, March 07, 2008

NIH Public Access Policy

Investigators who publish articles based on NIH-funded research will have to provide a copy of the article for NIH's PubMed Central. This means investigators need to be careful not to sign publication contracts in which they surrender this right. Click on the headline for a trove of up-to-date information on this new Congressionally mandated requirement.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

NIH report on peer review

NIH has released a final draft report, "Peer Review Self-Study." The lengthy report contains recommendations for addressing the following challenges:
(1) Reduce administrative burden on applicants, reviewers and NIH staff. Recommendations include shortening the length of the application itself.
(2) Enhance rating system. Recommendations include creating a "not recommended for resubmission" category as well as providing scores for all applications.
(3) Enhance review and reviewer quality. Suggestions include the use of anonymous review to reduce possible bias against an applicant's institution, and the use of patients and patient advocates on review panels.
(4) Optimize support for different career stages and types. One suggestion is to rank early-career investigators against each other.
(5) Optimize support for different types of and approaches to science. This puts forth strategies to ensure that transformative, clinical and interdisciplinary research are included in the NIH portfolio.
(6) Reduce stress on the support system for science. Requiring a minimum percentage of effort for investigators on grants is among these proposals.
(7) Continue to scrutinize the peer review process. A data-driven assessment is recommended.
Click on the headline to view the report and accompanying materials

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Grants.gov application tutorial

Grants.gov has an online, narrated tutorial about how to prepare a grant application package with Adobe Reader. Click on the headline of this post to take a look.