NIH’s New Biosketch

(Note: the following article is based on personal speculations. It has not been proved to generate successful results. Nor does it represent opinions of NIH agencies.)

On Nov 26, 2014, NIH issued a new Biographic Sketch Format (Notice NOT-OD-15-024) for grant due dates on or after May 25, 2015, but can be used before that. Compared with the old one which mostly involves cutting and pasting bibliographical information, the new format requires substantial effort to make it stand out (or even acceptable if everyone else is trying to stand out). On the one hand, it provides you a valuable opportunity to explain your qualification for the proposal and beef up your resume. On the other hand, you’ll be doomed if you try to do this as a last minute thing. So it’s not a bad idea to start working on it now.

Basically, the old section C, “Peer-Reviewed Publications”, has been replaced by “Contribution to Science”. Here are the instructions.

“The new format extends the page limit for the biosketch from four to five pages, and allows researchers to describe up to five of their most significant contributions to science, along with the historical background that framed their research. Investigators can outline the central findings of prior work and the influence of those findings on the investigator’s field. Investigators involved in Team Science are provided the opportunity to describe their specific role(s) in the work. Each description can be accompanied by a listing of up to four relevant peer-reviewed publications or other non-publication research products, including audio or video products; patents; data and research materials; databases; educational aids or curricula; instruments or equipment; models; protocols; and software or netware that are relevant to the described contribution. In addition to the descriptions of specific contributions and documentation, researchers will be allowed to include a link to a full list of their published work as found in a publicly available digital database such as MyBibliography or SciENcv.”

Intuitively, you would want to fill all “five spots” to impress the reviewers, but unless you’ve really done five completely unrelated projects, I would advise not to do so. For example, you have conducted five projects, ABCDE. A is a significant finding that is worth bragging about. B is an independent project, but somehow has connections to A. C and D share some comment features but are different in other aspects; neither alone is impressive. If you describe them all separately, what will the reviewers bring home with? They will remember A, but certain details may be messed up since B keeps jumping out with its similarity.  They won’t be able to tell either C or D. So, why not just present three themes? After all, we only need one Noble Prize to become famous. Combine similar topics, and make each individual case strong and distinct. That is, strong as evidenced by multiple publications, and distinct from any other topic so that there won’t be confusions.

In terms of presenting each topic, if it was a mentored study, I would briefly mention the place and the advisor’s name, such as “This experiment was conducted during my first postdoctoral research with Prof. XX at Impress-U.” This is because, when we review someone’s application, the first thing we do is take a quick look at the places and labs where the applicant has been trained. Very natural, and a valid reviewing process, because when we rate for the “Candidate”, we are supposed to give a higher score if his mentors have the right expertise in the areas of training he has received. So, mentioning the labs saves the reviewer’s time, especially given the fact that the list of publications has been replaced by an URL, which makes it difficult for the reviewer to take a quick peek as he moves along into different sections. The good thing about providing an external URL for publication list is that you can keep updating it with articles that are published after the proposal has been submitted (remember to do that!).

Similarly, when referring to your publications, adding an Abbreviation of the Journal before or after the year may not be a bad idea. The major reason is not about showing off your “high-profile” (since I don’t have one), but making different publications more distinct and memorable. For example, instead of writing “Me et al. 2008, 2009a, 2010b”, make it “Me et al. 2008, J Right; Me et al. 2009a, J More Right; Me et al. 2010b, J Even Better”. It is very likely that you will keep repeating some of these publications in other parts of the Biosketch. This way it’s easier to link them back to specific topics.

Another presentation tip is to type your own publications in bold. Because the instructions ask you to give some background information about each topic, you may find it necessary to cite other people’s work. You want to be clear about which work belongs to you. This is especially a problem when you are not the first author of a publication. So I would put a small note at the beginning of the section, saying that references in bold are the PI’s own work.

Anyway, these are just my speculations. I look forward to finding out whether the reviewers agree or not!