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.

NIH policy workshop on biosafety and emerging technology in July

On July 18-19, the NIH will be hosting a workshop entitled "NIH Guidelines: Honoring the Past, Charting the Future" in Rockville, MD. The workshop is designed for investigators, research administrators and biosafety professionals. More information about the event and how to register can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/ybpt2tm9

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.