Thoughts on How Institutions Can Promote a Culture of Research Integrity
On May 22, I had the privilege of
participating in a terrific national conference
that focused on what
institutions can do to foster a culture of research integrity (see the agenda here). The DHHS Office of Research Integrity (ORI),
Northwestern University, and the Council of Graduate Schools hosted the
conference, “The Role of Research Integrity in Promoting Excellence: Tools for
Colleges and University Leaders.” The
conference organizers’ goal was “to engage
university and college leaders in lively discussions about strategies,
resources, and tools for promoting research integrity for current and futu...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - August 15, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Mike Lauer Tags: blog Open Mike Research integrity Source Type: funding
Linking ORCID Identifiers to eRA Profiles to Streamline Application Processes and to Enhance Tracking of Career Outcomes
Enter once, reuse often. That’s the mantra of ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identification), a non-profit organization that promotes the use of its unique digital identifier to connect researchers with their science contributions over time and across changes of name, location and institutional affiliation.
It’s a mantra that ties in well with NIH’s goal of finding ways to reduce the administrative burden on investigators of entering the same information in multiple places when applying to different funding agencies. It’s what propelled NIH and other agencies to develop a tool, SciENcv, to enable researc...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - August 5, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Mike Lauer Tags: blog Open Mike eRA Commons ORCID Source Type: funding
Continuing to Work with the Community on Registration and Results Reporting for Basic Experimental Studies involving Humans
William Riley, Ph.D., Associate Director for Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, NIH
Carrie Wolinetz, Ph.D.,
Associate Director for Science Policy, NIH
The research that NIH funds doesn’t always fall neatly into a single category. Basic research involving humans that seeks to understand the fundamental aspects of phenomena also may meet the NIH-definition of a clinical trial. We refer to these studies as BESH – Basic Experimental Studies involving Humans (see our previous blog). Since this type of research meets the NIH definition of a clinical trial, these trials must register and report summary resul...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - July 24, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Carrie Wolinetz, Michael Lauer, and William Riley Tags: blog Open Mike basic science BESH Clinical Trials Clinicaltrials.gov Source Type: funding
Achieving Gender Equity at Conferences
In 2015, an international conference on quantum chemistry drew a fierce backlash from scientists when it featured only male speakers and chairs. About 1,700 scientists signed a petition on Change.org to change the makeup of the speakers. The result? Conference organizers added 6 female speakers to the agenda (read the coverage).
This was not an isolated case. The lack of gender equity at
scientific conferences persists across the board. There have been several
papers written about the imbalance; there is even a website, BiasWatchNeuro, that tracks the speaker composition at neuroscience
conferences.
Inviting
women ...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - July 22, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Mike Lauer Tags: blog Open Mike Diversity gender equity manel R13 Source Type: funding
Clarifying Long-Standing NIH Policies on Disclosing Other Support
Who funds your
current research? Make sure to let NIH know. It is required.
Institutions
and investigators must disclose all forms of what is termed “other support” when
applying for and receiving NIH grants. Other support, as described in the NIH Grants Policy Statement (GPS)
Section 2.5.1, includes
all resources, regardless of whether or not they have monetary value, available
in direct support of an individual’s research endeavors.
This is not
new, but rather a long-standing requirement for those seeking NIH grants to be
fully transparent regarding all of their research activities both domestic and
fore...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - July 11, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Mike Lauer Tags: blog Open Mike Policy foreign other support Source Type: funding
Breaches of Peer Review Integrity
Sally Amero, Ph.D., NIH’s Review Policy Officer and Extramural Research Integrity Liaison Officer
It is a priority to us to continue to engage with the community about what constitutes a breach of NIH peer review integrity – including, but not limited to:
A reviewer sending grant applications to their postdocs to write their critiquesSomeone revealing that they reviewed a particular applicationA reviewer disclosing how another reviewer scored an applicationA principal investigator (PI) approaching a reviewer at a scientific conference to discuss her/his institution’s application in which s/he is design...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - June 25, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Mike Lauer and Sally Amero Tags: blog Open Mike Enhancing Peer Review Source Type: funding
How to Notify NIH about a Concern that Sexual Harassment is Affecting an NIH-Funded Activity at a Grantee Institution
In February, as
part of a statement from NIH
leadership on addressing sexual harassment in science, we encouraged the community to notify
us about specific concerns by sending an email to GranteeHarassment@od.nih.gov. We received dozens of notifications through
this channel and are taking each one seriously. We are working with the
supported institutions to address these concerns and to assure that NIH-funded activities
are conducted in a safe and harassment-free work environment.
As part of our continued efforts, we are pleased to announce a new webform that allows for anybody in the biomedical research community to sh...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - June 14, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Mike Lauer Tags: blog Open Mike Sexual Harassment Source Type: funding
Outcomes for NIH Loan Repayment Program Awardees: A Preliminary Look
Since 1988, the NIH Loan Repayment Programs (LRPs) have been successful in recruiting and retaining early stage investigators into promising biomedical and behavioral research careers. As I have written about before, one of the most significant benefits of these programs is that NIH can repay up to $35,000 in educational loans per year for these talented professionals, which helps alleviate an often cited barrier to entering the biomedical research workforce. Since their inception, NIH LRPs have funded more than 25,000 new and renewal awards totaling more than $950 million (see more data on the LRP Dashboard).
Repaying ...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - May 21, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Mike Lauer Tags: blog Open Mike LRP Source Type: funding
NIH Inclusion Data by Research and Disease Category Now Available
This reporting step continues our move towards enhancing transparency and accountability of the research we support. As part of implementing the 21st Century Cures Act and responding to recommendations from the Government Accountability Office, public reporting by NIH Research, Condition, and Disease Classification (RCDC) category helps ensure that women and minorities are appropriately included in biomedical research across a diverse array of diseases and conditions. At a recent meeting of the NIH Advisory Committee on Research on Women’s Health (go to 02:45), where this announcement was made, we also reported that ...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - May 6, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Janine Clayton, Dawn Corbett, Marie Bernard, and Mike Lauer Tags: blog Open Mike Inclusion RCDC Source Type: funding
How Many Researchers? …Revisited…the FY 2018 NIH’s Cumulative Investigator Rate
In March 2018, we showed data
suggesting that, despite still being in a state of hyper-competition (as described in this post),
the severity may be lessening. The number of unique applicants for NIH research project grants (RPGs) appeared to stabilize
after many years of uninterrupted growth. Furthermore, a person-based metric,
called the cumulative
investigator rate, started to rise in fiscal year (FY)
2015 for RPGs after declines in previous years.
With FY 2018 grants information now available in the NIH Data Book, we wanted to see if this positive trend continued. As in my March 2018 blog, the FY 2018 cumulative inv...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - April 22, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Mike Lauer Tags: blog Open Mike cumulative funding rate Funding data Source Type: funding
Association Between Receiving an Individual Mentored Career Development (K) Award and Subsequent Research Support
NIH’s career
development K awards intend to help early career scientists become
independent. These awards afford the recipient protected time for research,
publishing, and generating new ideas. As part of ongoing efforts to take a data
driven approach to managing NIH programs, my colleagues within the NIH Division of Biomedical Research
Workforce (DBRW) in the Office of Extramural Research sought
to determine whether K awards might be achieving this goal, and published their
findings in Academic Medicine last
December.
Dr. Silda Nikaj and Dr. P. Kay Lund focused
their attention on a particular subset of K awards call...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - April 2, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Mike Lauer Tags: blog Open Mike career development K application K award Source Type: funding
The Protocol Template for Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Involving Humans Is Here
A new Behavioral
and Social Sciences Research Template is now available to guide investigators
through the systematic development of a comprehensive clinical protocol. The
new template, based on the previously released Phase
2 & 3 Clinical Trial Template, is fully integrated into the NIH’s Clinical e-Protocol Writing
Tool, and can be used by behavioral and social science researchers to
prepare research protocols for human studies measuring a behavioral or social
outcome, or testing a behavioral or social science based intervention. This
template may be especially helpful to investigators who are less familiar with
th...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - April 1, 2019 Category: Research Authors: NIH Staff Tags: New Resources Clinical Trials protocol template Source Type: funding
CMS Seeks Input on Interoperability and Patient Access Proposed Rule and RFIs
Medicare and Medicaid claims data are
a uniquely valuable, rich source of health information available to the NIH
research community for observational and interventional research. As an
example, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have joined forces to link the Surveillance,
Epidemiology, and End-Results (SEER) data with extensive medical and
patient-reported health information. Another
example – researchers have successfully linked data from the Interagency Registry for Mechanically Assisted Circulatory
Support
with Medicare claims data. And one ...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - March 25, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Mike Lauer Tags: blog Open Mike CMS Interoperability Source Type: funding
NIH Annual Snapshot – FY 2018 By the Numbers
We recently released our
annual web reports and success rate data with updated numbers for
fiscal year (FY) 2018. These web products represent annual snapshots of NIH research
investments, which are highlighted in this post.
Before
delving into the numbers, we want to draw your attention to the new and
modernized NIH Data Book recently released.
This easy to navigate
tool enables users to access and interact with a wealth of data ranging from
NIH funding, research grant types, success rates, and much more (see this NIH Open Mike post for more).
Now, let’s look at the
numbers. In FY 2018, NIH’s budget
incre...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - March 13, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Mike Lauer Tags: blog Open Mike FY 2018 Success Rate Source Type: funding
NIH IRL: Join Us at the NIH Regional Seminar
I recently mentioned how much I enjoy starting a conversation through the blog with you, the investigators, grants administrators, research staff, and others in the research community. It’s a great way to help connect you with my perspective, and mine with yours.
At the NIH Regional Seminar on Program Funding and Grants Administration, I hold “Open Mike” sessions where I have no slides and no prepared remarks – I let the audience determine the topics we discuss. I love the opportunity for frank conversations about whatever is on your mind. While I meet with people in the grants community at many different...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - March 5, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Mike Lauer Tags: blog Open Mike Grants management NIH Regional Seminar Source Type: funding
