Chemist-trees!

Don't let being stuck in the lab over the holidays get you down, you can still be festive!

See more trees at the Chemistry World Blog.

Rejection of rejection

Cath Chapman and Tim Slade from the University of South Wales, Sydney, Australia, provide the template of a "rejection of rejection letter" in a recent BMJ feature, which begins:

Rejection of rejection letter

[insert university emblem here]

Dear Professor [insert name of editor]

[Re: MS 2015_XXXX Insert title of ground-breaking study here]

Thank you for your rejection of the above manuscript.

Unfortunately we are not able to accept it at this time. As you are probably aware we receive many rejections each year and are simply not able to accept them all. In fact, with increasing pressure on citation rates and fiercely competitive funding structures we typically accept fewer than 30% of the rejections we receive. Please don’t take this as a reflection of your work. The standard of some of the rejections we receive is very high...

Read the rest at BMJ:
Rejection of rejection: a novel approach to overcoming barriers to publication

thanks to Dean McKay for finding this!

Speaking of avoiding jargon...

via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zack Weinersmith.

"Dance Your Ph.D." 2015 contest finalists

Many writing advisors urge new scientists to "avoid the jargon" when they write about their work; what if you couldn't use words at all? For the past eight years the AAAS, Science and HighWire Press have sponsored a "Dance Your PhD" contest. The winner last year was Uma Nagendra who eared her PhD in plant biology:

The winner for 2015 hasn't been announced yet, and voting has concluded, but you can still view the 12 finalists that are vying for the title:
It's a dance-off! Vote for you 'Dance Your Ph.D. video winner!'

NIH Loan Repayment Program accepting applications - due 11/16

The NIH Loan Repayment Program is accepting applications, due by 8pm on 11/16/15. It's a quick turnaround, but the pay off makes it worth it -- up to $70,000 in student loan debt could be repaid for you if you're a qualifying researcher.

Visit their website at http://www.lrp.nih.gov (hurry!) to learn more.

Many NIH changes to know about

The National Institutes of Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality announce a number of updates:

• Notice 16-004 provides summary information on changes to proposal forms, policies and instructions taking effect in 2016. Changes will take place in two phases, Phase 1 for applications due on or after January 25 but before May 25, and Phase 2 for applications due May 25 and after. Tables included in this notice indicate subsequent notices that detail further some of these changes, some of which are listed below.
• Notice 16-005 describes new post-award forms and instructions.
• Notice 16-006 describes the simplification of the Vertebrate Animals section of NIH proposals.
• Notice 16-008 announces a new form to use for requesting assignment to a specific awarding component and study section (or requesting it not be assigned somewhere), list of reviewers who may have a conflict, and special expertise that may be required to properly review your proposal.
• Notice 16-009 provides information about acceptable font sizes and suggests specific fonts, but provides more flexibility than previously.
• Notice 16-010 explains the change in the definition of "child" as being 18 and under instead of 21, and why.

New NSF guidelines effective January 25, 2016

NSF has posted the new proposal preparation and award management guide for those proposals submitted or due on or after January 25, 2016. There are a number of significant changes including the implementation of NSF's Public Access Policy for publications resulting from NSF funding and changes to the Biographical Sketch format. Be sure to review the full Significant Changes and Clarifications page.

NSF Proposal & Award Policies and Procedures Guide

Scientific papers with shorter titles might get more citations, study suggests

A study in the journal Royal Society Open Science suggests that articles with shorter titles may be cited more often that those with longer ones, based on 140,000 papers published between 2007 and 2013. Read more about this study in ScienceInsider.

Simple tips for writing a proposal

You've probably seen many of these before, but it never hurts to be reminded! CJA Bradshaw's Twenty tips for writing a research proposal.

Think you're good at communicating science to non-scientists?

You could be one of five North American finalists battling for a chance to give a 10-minute "science slam" (think poetry slam, but for science) in Brussels, and then visit a research lab of your choice within the European Research Area. All you have to do to get started is send a 3-minute video or do a 3-minute Skype presentation. More information here.

#IAmaScientistBecause

Scientists take to Twitter to share why they chose their careers.

NSF announces public access policy plans

On March 18, 2015, the National Science Foundation announced its plan to provide greater public access to the results of its funded research, "Today's Data, Tomorrow's Discoveries". This will be officially announced in April 2015 and is slated to go into effect in January 2016.

Much of the plan is a re-commitment to data management and the availability of funds to support publication and presentation of data to the public, but the new component is the publications policy: Within a year of publication, either the version of record or the final accepted manuscript in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, and papers in juried conference proceedings, must be deposited into a publicly-accessible database.

This move is not without precedent among Federal sponsors as the NIH has had such a policy in place for years.

NSF by the numbers

From the National Science Foundation's FY 2016 Budget Request to Congress brochure.

NIH increases salary cap as of 1/11/15

The Executive Level II salary level, at $181,500 for FY2014, is increasing to $183,300 effective 1/11/15. Note that this amount is based on a 12-month salary; for faculty members, if your academic base salary is at or exceeds $137,475, you must use this capped rate when calculating salary requests on NIH grant applications.

See the full notice here: NOT-OD-15-049.