A Note about the Government Shutdown

As with the previous shutdown a few years ago, many federal funders have temporarily dismissed their "non-essential" employees and some have blacked out their websites. While the Feds are staffed by skeleton crews, many grant-related tasks will not be undertaken: awards may be delayed; Fordham will not be able to draw down funds; proposal deadlines will be pushed back indefinitely; program officers and grant management staff will not answer phone calls or respond to emails. If you have questions or concerns, please reach out to your OSP contact. We're here to get you through this.

Additionally, here is a list of contingency plans submitted by Federal agencies to the Office of Budget and Management.

NSF moving their headquarters; websites will be down

The National Science Foundation is moving to Alexandria Virginia over a six week period from August 24 to October 1, 2017. To prepare for the physical move, they are taking advantage of the July 4th holiday weekend to move their Data Center in order to reduce the impact to the research community. NSF.gov, FastLane and Research.gov will all be down from 8pm on Friday June 30 to 6pm on July 4th. So you have no choice but to enjoy your barbecue. More information here: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/issuances/in139.jsp.

Amid controversy, NIH backs down on grant limits

On June 8, Francis Collins posted on The NIH Director about the Grant Support Index (GSI), the method that was used to determine the advantage limiting NIH grants over a researcher's career had for beginning and mid-level researchers, as well as taxpayers, and the fact that "significant concerns" about the GSI's methodology have been expressed -- enough so that the NIH is now backing off that plan, and has come up with a new one called the Next Generation Researchers Initiative. While this plan also "place[s] greater emphasis on current NIH funding programs aimed at early-stage and mid-career investigators", some researchers feel it's not enough, and that the initial plan was perhaps abandoned because it was "shoved down quickly by a bunch of senior folks," as Gary S. McDowell states in The Chronicle of Higher Education. We'll have to wait and see how this all plays out for all our researchers, regardless of seniority.

Authors weigh costs and benefits of applying for grants

In an 2015 article in PLOS One that has been making the rounds lately, Ted and Courtney von Hippel report on a three-year study looking at 195 scientists and social scientists submitting a total of 287 federal research proposals. On average, they found that each proposal took 116 hours of work for the PIs, and an additional 55 hours of Co-Investigators' time. Was it worth it? On the whole, they calculated that each additional proposal submitted in a year increased the chances of being funded, but beyond that, participants in their study reported that even when unfunded, the experience of writing a proposal benefitted them in other ways such as helping to create new collaborations, fine-tune scientific thinking or train grad students and/or post-docs. You can read the entire article here: https://tinyurl.com/ycny2f82.

NIH looks to cap funding with the new Grant Support Index

On May 2, 2017, the National Institutes of Health announced a new approach to grant funding: the Grant Support Index (GSI). This index will assign points to individual researchers or labs based on the funding they receive from the NIH, with the aim to cap funding to one researcher or lab at 21 points. The purpose of this approach is to allow the NIH to fund more, and more diverse, researchers, and is based on a number of reports and findings, e.g., 40% of their funding is going to 10% of NIH-funded investigators and "greater degrees of funding may not generate as much additional scientific output as expected due to the impact of diminishing returns" (Mike Lauer, Open Mike blog). The NIH estimates that the new GSI may only affect about six percent of NIH-funded investigators.

For more information, please see the Open Mike blogpost, "Implementing Limits on Grant Support to Strengthen the Biomedical Research Workforce" and The NIH Director's website article, "New NIH Approach to Grant Funding Aimed at Optimizing Stewardship of Taxpayer Dollars".

Indirect costs and the "skinny" federal budget

Among the proposed cuts to federal grant funders, the NIH's budget is anticipated to be reduced by 18%, some of which could come out of indirect costs to universities, hospitals and other research institutions. Indirect costs are sometimes mistakenly thought of as "extra money" for a grant-holding institution rather than the reimbursement of expenses associated with doing research. Direct costs usually do not include essential items such as salaries for safety, compliance and grant management personnel, building upkeep, and utilities. These are all real costs to the research institution and must be paid for out of the indirect costs.

These misperceptions about indirect costs prompted COGR, the Council on Governmental Relations, an association of research institutions, to publish a three-page Talking Points document discussing what indirect costs are, how they are calculated, and how cutting indirect costs could affect research institutions like Fordham University. You can download it here: COGR Talking Points. Please feel free to share it.

Defense Innovation Summit, 11/29-12/1 in Austin, TX

Many Federal sponsors, including those from the Department of Defense, and private companies are looking to partner with universities to develop technology solutions to strengthen national security, keep our soldiers safe and help care for veterans. Attending this summit at the JW Marriott in beautiful Austin, Texas, could be a great way to find out what you have to offer these funders.

For more information on the summit, which is being held in tandem with the Defense Energy and SBIR/STTR Innovation Summits, or to register, please visit defenseinnovation.us.

Experiment shows eliminating deadlines dramatically reduces submissions

" [Alex Isern, the head of the surface Earth processes section] eliminated the twice-a-year deadlines for four of her grant programs, in geobiology and low-temperature geochemistry, geomorphology and land-use dynamics, hydrological sciences, and sedimentary geology and paleobiology. NSF sent out a notice about the change at the beginning of 2015, and after a 3-month proposal hiatus, the no-deadline approach began in April 2015.

The number of proposals plummeted, from 804 in 2014 to just 327 in the 11 months from April 2015 to March... So far, she says, there have been no effects on the demographics of who is applying, such as the age of the principal investigator or the type of university they are applying from. Because of a lag in decisions, she hasn’t yet measured the expected rise in success rates."

Read the full story in Science.

Reminder: Changes in NIH and NSF procedures in effect 1/25/16

On the NSF side of things: The new 2016 Grant Proposal Guide (GPG) is now in effect. You can find it here.

Any unsolicited proposals sent in response to the GPG need to reflect this change on the cover sheet -- in the "Program Announcement/Solicitation/Program Description Number" box, make sure to use NSF 16-1. Solicited proposals should of course continue to use the number provided in the program announcement or description.

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On the NIH side of things: Many changes! All are listed in NIH notice number NOT-OD-16-058, here is a summary:
• information about rigor and transparency in research must be included in applications;
• the vertebrate animals section has been simplified;
• the definition of "child" has been changed from a threshold of 21 to 18 years of age;
• Forms Version C application packages have been updated and the new versions should now be used;
• Instructions for Version C packages have been updated and should be followed.

These changes are just phase I for the time period January 25 through May 24. Notices regarding phase II, starting May 25, will be released shortly.

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

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.

NIH posts official notice of fiscal practices for the rest of FY2013

The NIH announced on 5/8 that it is operating on a budget that's about $5M less than FY2012's and therefore continuing awards will continue to be made at lower levels than originally projected. This level is actually better than the 10% decrease seen on continuing awards while the NIH was under a Continuing Resolution (CR) (i.e., without a budget from Congress). Some awards made while they were under the CR may be partially restored with the new budget, which is the good news. The bad news is that all inflationary increases are discontinued and the salary cap remains at Executive Level II ($179,700).

Read the full text of the notice here: NOT-OD-13-064

UPDATE: We've just received a revised notice of award for one of our NIH grants issued while NIH was under the CR, restoring more than $20,000 to the budget. Take heart! And remember, even though funding may be down, you'll never get any money you don't ask for.

NIH releases some information about sequester cuts

Science Insider has an interesting article about the actual impact of the sequestration so far, including Twitter reactions: NIH Details Impact of 2013 Sequester Cuts

Federal grantees - prepare for possible belt tightening

As the sequestration decision deadline of March 1st approaches, those of you with Federal sponsors may want to start thinking about the possibility that your next year's budget could be cut. An Office of Management and Budget memo dated January 14th to the heads of executive departments and agencies provides guidelines to follow in the event that sequestration goes into effect; among other tips is "review grants and contracts to determine where cost savings may be achieved in a manner that is consistent with the applicable terms and conditions."

You can read the whole memo here.