EGRP News Flash - December 2, 2008

Updates on NIH Peer Review and Public Access Policies

The Epidemiology and Genetics Research Program (EGRP) would like to remind current and prospective grantees about the following changes to the NIH Peer Review and Public Access policies.

Enhancing Peer Review

The first stages of implementation of changes in NIH peer review will begin in January and February 2009. These changes will be timed to apply to all three standard review/award cycles in each fiscal year. While many details continue to be worked through, the first set of changes are highlighted on http://enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov/preparingchanges.html. For more information on Enhancing Peer Review and the related NIH Guide Notices, go to http://enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov/.

NIH Public Access Policy

To ensure compliance with the Public Access Policy, NIH Program Officials will check applications, proposals or progress reports to see if citations of papers appearing to fall under this policy include a PubMed Central Identifier or appropriate alternative. NIH staff will inform the Principal Investigators (PIs) via an e-mail if citations appear out of compliance and will copy the Institutional Business Official on the e-mail.

The PI will be asked to respond via e-mail to both the Program Official and the Institutional Business Official with confirmation of compliance, or an appropriate explanation. Confirmation is the citation for the paper plus the appropriate identifier as described in the NIH Guide Notice, NOT-OD-08-119. The NIH Guide Notice also contains a summary of application instructions pertaining to citations, and details on demonstrating compliance through the eRA Commons using eSNAP.

For slides, articles, and other training materials and communications about the Policy, please see http://publicaccess.nih.gov/communications.htm.