Guideline
Changes to the biosketch
National Institutes of Health (NIH) have applied a major change in how applicants portray their body of work when applying for NIH funds. The new NIH biosketch emphasizes the applicants’ accomplishments instead of just a list of publications.
The new NIH biosketch emphasizes the applicants’ accomplishments, rather than referring solely to their list of publications as this is no longer considered to be the best way to showcase scientific contributions. The primary focus of the new NIH biosketch will be the magnitude and significance of the scientific advances associated with a researcher’s discoveries and the specific role the researcher played in those findings. This change will help reviewers evaluate the applicant not by how many times or in which places they have published, but instead by what has been accomplished. Hopefully, this change will redirect the focus of reviewers and the scientific community more generally from widely questioned metrics, such as the number of published papers, the number of citations received by those papers, or one of several statistical approaches used to normalize citations. NIH strongly believes that allowing a researcher to generate an account of their own work will provide a clearer picture of each individual’s contributions and capabilities.
Reference of the resource
Modified NIH Biosketches, National Institutes of Health, 2014.
