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.

How to Make Time for Research and Writing

Summer is just around the corner and can be a great time to be productive, even if you have to work around teaching summer classes, field work or family vacations. The Chronicle shares some thoughts from fellow academics around the country on How to Make Time for Research and Writing, part of their Productive Summer article series.

Office for Human Research Protections to hold community forum

The OHRP is teaming up with Hackensack University Medical Center on April 4-5, 2017 for a conference and community forum on "Big Data, Small Data and the Implications for Human Subject Research". The conference will be held at the Hilton Meadowlands in East Rutherford, NJ. A summary of the event:

Human research increasingly relies on the collection and analysis of data. Big Data uses large data sets that may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations. Personalized medicine seeks to identify treatment tailored to the individual patient based on their predicted response or risk of disease; medical decision making, interventions and/or treatment modalities are identified through analysis of data sets. Genomics research has relied on the sharing of genome data since its inception. In all these cases, there are legal, regulatory and ethical implications related to the use of data both alone and in combination with bio-specimens. This conference seeks to create a dialogue that addresses the interception of these implications.

More information about the conference, the hotel and registration links can be found here: http://www.cvent.com/d/yvql9b.

A summary of new NIH policy changes

On the award side, the National Institutes of Health have made some changes to their policies on:

• final progress reports
• training for investigators involved in NIH-funded clinical trials, and
• reporting of NIH-funded clinical trials.

On the proposal side, there are changes in policy regarding:

• the items allowed to be included in appendices
• post-submission materials, and
• acceptable fonts/text color.

Finally, starting tomorrow you may submit an interim progress report rather than a final report if you are ending one grant cycle and waiting for the next cycle to begin. See this webpage for complete details and links to the Notices involved.

Increasing your research's impact

Academia is more crowded and competitive than ever, both in terms of research dollars and the multitude of ways people now have to shout about their own research, which could drown out your voice. Learn 8 Tips to increase the reach of your research in 2017 from editage Insights.