Discover Our Money Receipt Sample for Research and Development

Money receipt sample for Research and Development

SYDELLA BLATCH: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the NIGMS Grant Writing Webinar Series for Institutions Building Research and Research Training Capacity. This is the third and final webinar in our series, Writing a Competitive Application. Next slide, please. First, a little bit about today's webinar. This webinar is being recorded. It will be posted online for future access. If you registered to attend, you will receive an email notification once the recording is available. It usually takes us a few weeks to complete the processing that we need to post the webinar online. And I'll also point out that the recordings of the first two webinars are currently posted. You will have the opportunity to enter questions in the Q&A box. We will answer as many as we can throughout the webinar. And you will also have an opportunity to ask questions in an open virtual office hour. We'll share details at the end of today's meeting. Next slide, please. There are many acknowledgments that I would like to share. Many, many people help to make this series possible. The NIGMS Information Resources and Management Branch, in particular, David Mordkofsky. And NIGMS Web Team, in particular, Matt and Chrissa. ?]. The NIGMS Administrative, Travel and Service Center, in particular, Happy Rozario, and Tony Baum. The NIGMS Communication and Public Liaison Branch. And our division of Extramural Activities, in particular, Darren Sledjeski. And our division of Data Integration, Modeling, and Analytics, in particular, David Bochner. Thank you to all of today's speakers, all of the previous webinar speakers. And we have many volunteers from NIGMS that are here to help answer questions. So we're very grateful for that. And we're also grateful for you in the audience for attending today. Next slide, please. The purpose of this series, this series is not a detailed review of specific funding opportunities. The goal is to share strategies for how to navigate the NIH funding process, considerations for determining research and grant writing readiness, and thoughts on effective writing strategies. This information is appropriate for both investigators and sponsor programs or research development professionals. And this information does not supersede official NIH instructions in funding opportunity announcements, the SF424, or the Grants Policy Statement. Next slide, please. I'd like to introduce today's topics and speakers. We have four parts. The first one I'll be doing. My name is Sydella Blatch. I'm going to be talking about forming a feedback team. And then my colleague Dr. Alison Gammie is going to be talking more about how to get helpful feedback. The type of feedback that can be useful. And then Dr. Marc Rigas will be talking about getting the reviewers' attention, practices for effective grant writing. And then we'll conclude with Dr. Latarsha Carithers to talk about the NIH funding decision process. Next, please. So first up is part one, forming a feedback team. Next, please. The purpose of a feedback team, this is a very helpful practice in grant writing is to form a team of people to give you feedback on your application as you write. This team can comment on the research question, or the project goals. For instance, sometimes when we're initially forming our ideas, we may need to change or tweak the question or the context so it can be helpful to get feedback just even on our topic. They can also recognize potentially problematic areas, what parts are unclear, what parts are unconvincing. And they can also help refine ideas. Next, please. The main point to keep in mind here is that it's better to have a team of your colleagues identify areas of concern than have the reviewers find them after you submit your application. So when you're preparing your application, ideally, you've gotten through these kinks, these areas of concern have been addressed. And most often the person writing cannot see what all of the potential problematic areas might be. It takes other people providing input to give us this sense. Next, please. So you may, depending what kind of institution you're at, what kind of colleagues you have, you might want to check with any research development professionals that might be available. Or if you are a research development or sponsored programs professional, this is a way that you may want to assist your investigators in helping them assemble a feedback team. Next, please. So there's different compositions that you could have in a feedback team. And Alison's going to talk about the kind of input you need. But we first want to mention what type of people you may want to look for. The ideal composition could include people that have been awarded the very same, or a very similar, grant as the one that you're seeking, and/or have reviewed those similar grants, or the same grant, that you're seeking. If you have access to such individuals, that is a great and ideal situation in terms of getting a breadth of feedback. But it's also very helpful to have people that are experienced in their field and/or are familiar with the funding agency to which you are applying. Next, please. This ideally or in one particular case could be a combination of people that some of which study the same specific type of research or the same types of project that you're proposing. It could also include people that are in a similar or a related but not the same exact particular area of study that you're in. And it could also include people that are outside of your field altogether. So for example, when I was a researcher full time, my work was on folic acid physiology in fruit flies. So it would be great if I get others who know folic acid physiology in fruit flies, or at least other invertebrates. But then maybe I could find somebody who knows about other vitamins in invertebrates. Maybe other B vitamins, or nutrients, other types of nutrients maybe in invertebrates, or in mammals. Or maybe I want to get someone who doesn't even do anything about nutrients, or invertebrates. So that's just one way to go about it. Next, please. Who could you ask? This could be current or former colleagues. People that you work with now. People you used to work with. Maybe people from when you were in school or in training, if you're still in school or in training. Collaborators, collaborators of collaborators, people from your lab, or your team, or your research group, supervisors, et cetera. Start with the networks of people. And see if people are willing to help. Next, please. Redundancy is helpful. So even if in my case, let's say I have one other person who studied folic acid in fruit flies. It would be great if I had two or three people who study that same thing. The reason is one person's advice may not always be the best. And also everyone may not be able to follow through with each of the requests that you make. Next, please. So what do you want to ask this team of potential members? One, are they willing to help you and read your application drafts? Two, can they help you more than one time and over a time window that you specify? So working backwards, possibly from the due date, planning when you want to have different parts, or different levels of your application done. Can they help you throughout that time frame? So let them know what your hopes are expectations are. And also ask how do they prefer to communicate, do they want you to send things in writing, emails, do they want to set up phone calls, and so forth. Next, please. Another key point here is to get feedback before you write a lot. Even if you just start with an overview of either a specific aims page or project description. It could be a paragraph. It could be a conversation. And Alison will get more into these kind of methods. But sometimes just the very basic, very beginning stages, you need that input. And if you write a whole application and there's something sort of at the bare bone level that needs changing, it might be difficult to change once you've read everything. Next, please. So this gets at this next point, which is that if you wait until too far into the writing process, it's possible you won't have enough time left to make the changes that you need to do. Most people need to make a fair number of changes in their application. And sometimes what we do is we wait to have what we think is our best, best, most perfectest draft to send it to people to get feedback. But at that point, if the application is due soon, or if you need to make a fundamental change, you may not have enough time. Next, please. So now I'm going to hand things over to Alison and she's going to give you more information about the kind of feedback you need. ALISON GAMMIE: Thanks so much, Sydella. And thanks, everyone, for attending today. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about getting some helpful feedback. Two parts to it, understanding that multiple types of input may be helpful to seek from your feedback team and also to learn various methods of obtaining feedback. Next slide, please. So in terms of helpful types of feedbacks, one thing to understand is your needs as a writer, so what kind of feedback is most helpful to you. Some examples can be you really need that candid, constructive, and actionable feedback. Other times you may be really needing some help on the subject matter. So checking for accuracy, relevancy, or any gaps that you have in terms of your laying out the basic science there. Also you may want to get broader perspectives. So people who are not in your field, as Sydella was mentioning. So it may be related to your field but not in it. And then sometimes an even broader biomedical perspective on the research. And I think we all understand that sometimes we need feedback in the form of being motivational. In the sense that if we feel stuck, if we have writer's block, or we're feeling discouraged, it can be extremely helpful to have a member of the team that can really infuse you with the excitement and enthusiasm you need to push through some of those writing barriers. And then it's always helpful to have the kind of feedback that just talks about the quality of writing, and how accessible your writing is to a broader group. Please know that you don't have to have one person for each type of category. You may have people that will fulfill multiple roles of your needs as a writer. Also this is going to echo what Sydella said. Assembling the team early, and making commitments to get the draft documents to them in time, and to really executing those deadlines are going to be helpful in your process. Next slide, please. Another way to get-- that's really key is to maybe get targeted advice. And this depends upon the type of person that you're asking for feedback. So it's key to flag the areas that you know yourself requires some improvement, and you can ask for targeted advice. And you can really think about the role in your support team. And just showing a couple of examples here. For the non-expert biomedical scientists and skilled writers, you may ask is the proposal accessible to a broad range of reviewers, do you find it compelling and persuasive, is it clearly written. In terms of those who have subject matter expertise and those you can count on to give you candid and constructive feedback, you can ask things like do these aims appear to be interdependent too much and are there sufficient alternative approaches to addressing the goals that are laid out. Next slide, please. Just to continue along the lines of getting targeted advice. Some more examples include that subject matter expert, you can ask, are these methods feasible, rigorous, and do they appear to be aligned with the goals. In terms of the candid constructive reviewer, you can ask are there any logical flaws that I'm missing, are there inconsistencies, any perceived barriers to success. And then in terms of non-expert biomedical scientist and skilled writers, you can ask does the proposal clearly state innovative and significant long-term goals, is the significance of the project compelling, and does the innovation of the project come through as written. Next slide, please. So another thing that we just want to suggest is that you have potentially your formal support team. But you can also solicit ad hoc advice from a broad range of people. And you can get quick feedback. It doesn't have to be, as Sydella was mentioning, you don't have to have an entire draft. And you can get feedback from a broad range of sources. And once again, to reiterate get that feedback before you've committed too much to writing. Some examples can include having very short conversations. You can put forth your significance and innovation to a colleague and say, are you persuaded by the significance and innovation of the research. You may like to float a potential hypothesis to a colleague and ask whether it seems plausible given the current data. You can also ask whether the methods are feasible and address that specific hypothesis or scientific question. You can ask if the logic, if the outline of the research plan seems logical. And also you can get very short, quick responses to the figures that you plan to embed in your document to see whether they're clear and compelling, and they illustrate the point that you're trying to make well. You can also give short oral presentations of components of the proposal. For example, you can invite colleagues to a video conference. And you can lay out your research plan and invite a discussion and feedback in that forum. You can also send out quick emails to get queries. For example, you can send out your specific aims or your general research plan to a broad range of colleagues just to get their feedback and sense of whether they think you're on track. Next slide, please. All right, so that's it. And now, Sydella, I'm not sure if I introduce Marc. But I'll go ahead and introduce Marc for the next section, part three. MARC RIGAS: Great, thanks, Alison. So this part is kind of-- where we're going in this particular webinar is we're going to finish off today telling you some detail about how NIH takes everything you've done and makes its funding decisions. And that's part 4, and I'm kind of bridging between the feedback part and all of this writing that we've kind of coached you to do, and that part where NIH makes decisions. And I'm talking about how you get reviewers attention with your writing. So we'll talk a little bit about considerations to keep in mind about audience, about writing for an audience, and also about some structures and ideas to kind of help you reserve your time to prepare your application. Next slide, please. So any writing project that you do, it is important to consider your audience. And the problem with writing an NIH grant application is there really are multiple audiences. And Latarsha will talk more about this a little bit in the funding decision process. But there's NIH staff that you're writing for. You are writing for advisory council members. You're writing for the public. If the grant gets funded, the abstract and public health relevance statement are public information. So you're writing for these audiences. But your primary audience is that initial peer review group that's going to be reviewing your application and scoring it. Sometimes called the study section, sometimes called the review panel. So who are these people? Well, you can actually go online, and I'll talk about this a little bit in more detail in a few moments, about you can find out which study sections, which review panels may be reviewing your grant application. And the rosters at NIH of these panels are public, so you can actually look at the people that are on these review panels. Some review panels are called standing study sections. They meet regularly. And others are put together for a very particular funding opportunity. And those people may not come back and review in the exact same panel again. But you can look at the-- looking at panel rosters, just give you an idea of the types of reviewers that are on there. And you'll see they're generally a very mix of scientists from different types of institutions, different levels, different stages in their career, all that kind of stuff. So that's who they are. You going to be writing to a fairly general scientific audience. They're not all going to be experts in your field. And what are they looking for? Well, they're instructed to look for the review criteria that are in the funding opportunity announcement that you're responding to. So your feedback team should go through with you and make sure that you are responding to all of those things in the funding opportunity announcement review criteria, that you have addressed all of those review criteria. And how much time do they spend? Again, these are humans. They're like you. They have jobs. They have families. They have extracurricular activities. And they're doing this service to NIH as volunteers really. So they are typically responsible for several, sometimes many applications in a panel. They will spend-- they will do their due diligence, and they will spend a fair amount of time on your application. But you want to try to get your point across to them as easily as-- make it as easy for them as you can. Make their job easy because they've got a lot of work to do. They've got to read a lot of applications. They've got to write the reviews. And they're going to spend a lot of time on it. But your job is to make it as easy for them as possible. How do you do that? You use figures where appropriate. Your feedback team will tell you if something's complicated maybe a picture is worth a thousand words. That kind of thing. And we've talked a lot about in this whole webinar series, some of the strategies to make your writing stand out and to make it accessible. So go back and consider all of those things as you think about these reviewers who will be reading your application. Next slide, please. I encourage you to use the NIH RePORTER. We've talked about this before in the webinar series. So if you've been to previous webinars, you've heard this. But just if this is your first time, it's reporter.nih.gov. The screen looks like the one that's on this slide here. I don't know if you can see. I've got the little Quick Search bar circled in the top there. I wish we had time in this webinar, but we don't for a demo. Because this is really a pretty fabulous tool. But you can type in search terms into that Quick Search bar, you know, your research topics. And it will let you pull up a list of funded applications. You can read the abstracts of those funded applications. So that's a great thing to do. What you want to look for, and we'll talk in a few minutes about what you want to look for when you read those abstracts. You want to look for the scope of work that they're doing. You want to look at the writing style of those abstracts. If you also, the very neat tool is this matchmaker tool. You can see I have it circled down-- midway down the page there. If you go into that matchmaker tool, you can either take an abstract from one of your papers, or you can take an abstract from one of your grant applications to NIH or another agency. You can cut and paste that abstract right into the matchmaker window and send it off to do its thing. It will do-- it'll fingerprint your abstract and it will come up with a list of projects that are funded by NIH that are similar to yours. And then again, you can read those abstracts of those projects. You can see who is doing them. And it will also show you a histogram of the study sections or review panels that reviewed those projects. So it'll say most of these projects, when I fingerprint your abstract and come up with a list of projects, most of them were reviewed by study section A and study section B. A few were reviewed by study section C. So you'll see this histogram of numbers of proposals that were reviewed by the different study sections. So you'll get a sense of which review panel may be seeing your work. And then you can, of course look up the rosters of these on the NIH web page. All right, next slide, please. So you want to read these abstracts. You also want to try to get your hand on applications which you can't do directly through NIH. But, you know, not full applications. There are some NIH sites, and we've talked about them before, that post applications. And there are other places that you can get these. Some universities keep repositories of applications donated by investigators. There are many places, so to look around and find some grant applications. Read as many of them as you can. Try to read for the same mechanism or program that you are going to apply to. So try to look at that read for the same program that you're going to apply to. Reflect on the scope of the project, how much work is being proposed. Especially, again, in areas where you're familiar with what it takes to do that work, you'll get a sense of how much effort is being proposed in the project. Read the specific aims of the projects and reflect on how they're logically connected to each other and to the overall project objectives. OK, do the biosketches that are presented. Remember now with your biosketch, you've got a limited amount of space. You can choose what you highlight there by what you include in that biosketch. So notice how the sketches showcase experience specifically that is relevant to the project that's being considered there, right. The publication should be relevant. And remember if you can include links to submitted publications that have been deposited in a public preprint repositories, you can include those in the biosketch, even if they haven't been published yet. So that's a great way to get those things in front of reviewers. If you've got something submitted, not accepted. So observe the writing style throughout. Observe-- you may see some that really resonate with you, that you think are good examples. And some that you as a reader don't find compelling. So note that as well. Pay attention to that. And repeat this process as often as you can. You can't model your application after a single application that you see and expect that it will work. The goal of this is not to find something that you're going to copy an exact format of and be successful. It's to see as many different styles as you can. See what resonates for you and what doesn't. Go ahead and click for the next item here. And always, always carefully follow the funding opportunity announcement when you apply. Don't assume that everything-- if you have an application for the same funding opportunity that you're applying for, don't assume that the application sections will be exactly the same when you submit your application. Funding opportunity announcements change. So always follow the current version of the funding opportunity announcement when you apply, not something that was submitted two years ago, three years ago, et cetera. So again, remember we did publish a list of NIH sites where you can find sample applications. This is in webinar number two. So you can go back and look at the slides in webinar two for that list of ICs that post sample applications. You can also find them elsewhere in the community. Next slide. The last thing I want to talk about is communities of practice. This is a great opportunity for sponsored projects officials, research developments professionals to kind of create communities at their institutions. I would encourage writing groups, and retreats. If you're a sponsored projects person, or a research development person, you can organize this at your institution. If you're an investigator, try to find some peers that are willing to do this with you. And that means basically groups that meet more than once for the purposes of hashing out, workshopping, writing. That you're working on grant applications together. And you're going to meet repeatedly to develop relationships, to develop kind of a trust with one another. That's very important. To be honest and open and to really be able to give each other feedback. So I encourage you to find these types of groups, or make them yourself. Consider diversity of membership. You want people who are experienced on the team-- in these groups, and people who are less experienced. Diversity of gender, racial, ethnic diversity, any types of diversity is really helpful in groups like this. Protect your time, grant preparation, writing, creating figures, doing all the things we've asked you to do-- suggested that you do, takes time. Allow yourself the time to prepare your grants. Set aside time weekly, block off time on your calendar, if you can do that. Advocate for yourself with respect to committee work, administrative responsibilities, et cetera. So in other words, recognize that you need to preserve this time for yourself to be successful. And if you're having trouble doing, enlist allies, senior people in your department, or college. People who may have recruited you to come to the organization where you are who might be willing to help make suggestions on how you better carve out the time that you need. And lastly, serve on-- valuable time is spent serving on review panels, if at all possible. Ideally, if you're applying to NIH, it's an NIH panel. And I would note that NIH has an early career reviewer program through the Center for Scientific Review. And you can find information on that program at the CSR websites. If you haven't served on a panel before, that's a great place to get started. Also sometimes institutions will do internal review panels for NIH grants. And they might run them very similar to an NIH review. So next slide, please. And with that, I will introduce speaker for part four, Latarsha Carithers. And we'll talk about the NIH funding decision process. LATARSHA CARITHERS: Great. Thank you, Marc. So as Marc mentioned, this is part four where we'll be covering the application review process as well as the funding decision process. Next slide, please. All right, so thank you to my colleagues who've already provided you with lots of information on how to prepare your application. So now, I'm going to go over what happens to your application when it comes to NIH. The schematic on this slide, it gives you a high level overview. First the application is received by the division of receipt and referral at NIH's Center for Scientific Review. And then it goes through a two stage review process, which really forms the cornerstone of an NIH's extramural research mission. And the two stages are initial peer review and then review by a National Advisory Council. And lastly, we will cover how funding decisions are made. Next slide, please. So the Division of Receipt and Referral has referral officers who take the first look at your application. They determine whether your application is on time, whether it's formatted correctly, whether it's complete and compliant with the SF424 application guide instructions, as well as the instructions in the funding opportunity announcement, which I will refer to as an FOA. The referral officer will also assign you a primary or possibly a secondary institute that will be responsible for funding your application, if it is selected for funding. And they will also decide where your application will be reviewed. So for some FOAs, it's already predetermined which institute or center will review the applications in response to that specific FOA. But for the remaining applications, the referral officers decide whether they should be reviewed at the Center for Scientific Review, which handles about 75% of all NIH application reviews, or whether it will be reviewed at a different institute or center. And if so, the referral officer will decide which institute or center is most appropriate. They do consider referral requests made by the applicants which they take seriously and try to honor if possible. Next slide. So the assignment request form is a place where you can make such recommendations, if you prefer. It's not mandatory. You can request an awarding Institute or Center, who again would fund your application, if it's selected for funding. This form also allows you to request a specific study section. List individuals who should not review your application, if there's some type of genuine conflict. And indicate the types of expertise you think would be needed to properly review your application. But please note that you should never suggest specific reviewers. We're looking for areas of expertise only, not specific names. Next slide. All right, so once the division of receipt and referral has determined where your application will be reviewed, it will be routed to that Institute or Center. And then once there, it will be further routed to a Scientific Review Group that is managed by a Scientific Review Officer like myself. We'll talk about the two types of review groups. So first is a chartered study section, which usually consists of 12 to 25 standing members from the scientific community who serve for multiple years on the panel. And they generally meet about three times a year. The expectation is that their expertise will be needed on a reoccurring basis from round to round and that temporary members can be recruited to provide any additional expertise needed on the panel for any given round. Then there are Special Emphasis Panels, which are one time or reoccurring panels that are held to review applications on special topics, or when standing study section members have conflicts with applications. These panels only have temporary members who are recruited based on the expertise needed for each meeting. And the number of applications reviewed by each study section or Special Emphasis Panel can vary. Next slide. All right, so the Scientific Review Officer, who I will refer to as an SRO for the remainder of the presentation, they will take a look, a deeper look at whether your application is complete and compliant with the SF424 application guide instructions and FOA instructions. They'll also look over your application and determine what type of expertise will be necessary to evaluate it. Then the SRO can start the reviewer recruitment process. So SROs do consider expertise that you've listed in your assignment request form, if you listed any. When recruiting reviewers, SROs consider a wide variety of factors depending on the goal of the FOA. They can consider factors such as research, or mentoring expertise, and what types of degrees the investigators have. SROs also aim to have diverse panels in terms of faculty rank, geographic region, race, gender, and ethnicity. It's also the SROs responsibility to identify any potential personal or institutional conflicts of interest. Next slide, please. All right, so once the reviewers have accepted the invitation to participate in the review meeting, they will be able to see the list of key personnel and institutions involved to check for any conflicts. They must find conflict of interest and confidentiality certifications just agreeing that they don't have any known conflicts with the applications. And that they will keep all aspects of the review confidential. So that includes critiques and review meeting deliberations. And then generally about four to six weeks before the critiques are due, they will be able to view their assigned applications. So we usually have three reviewers per application but there are times where we could have more. Reviewer assignments are confidential. So reviewer one does not know who reviewer two or reviewer three are until they get to the actual review meeting. Each reviewer will read their assigned applications and submit their preliminary critiques and scores into a secure website a few days before the review meeting. And once they submit it then they will be able to read the other reviewers critiques and scores. Next slide. All right, so this is how the critiques are generally formatted. Reviewers are asked to write an overall impact paragraph describing each of the factors that contributed to their overall impact score. So overall impact can be defined differently depending on the type of activity code or FOA your application is in response to. For research project grant applications, the overall impact is generally something like the likelihood for the project to exert a sustained and powerful influence on the research fields involved. While overall impact will be defined differently for other applications, like career development or training grant applications. Once overall impact is addressed, then reviewers will list the strengths and weaknesses of each of the scoreboard review criteria listed in Section Five of the FOA. And then they will address additional review criteria and considerations that I we'll go over in the next slide. Next slide, please. All right, for every FOA, there are three general categories of review criteria which are scored review criteria, additional review criteria, and additional review considerations. Now the actual items or headers in each of these categories will differ based on the FOA. But here we're showing review criteria for Parent RO1, which is a research project grant application. So the score review criteria, such as significance and approach, they will receive individual criterion scores and will also factor into the overall impact score. Then additional review criteria, such as protections for human subjects and vertebrate animals, they do not receive individual criterion scores. But they still factor into the overall impact score. And finally, we have additional review considerations. Those do not get individual criterion scores. And they do not factor into the overall impact score either. But they're still very important elements. Because if the reviewers find concerns, they may need to be resolved before your application can be funded. Next slide, please. So once we get into the meeting and your application comes up for review, any reviewer in conflict will leave the room. Then reviewer one will give an overview of what you propose in your application and present their major score driving strengths and weaknesses. Next, reviewers two and three will state areas where they agree with reviewer one, or discuss any differing opinions. And they will also add any additional strengths and weaknesses that they want to bring up. Then the additional review criteria will be considered, such as protections of human subjects and vertebrate animals. And finally, the application will be open for discussion by the entire panel. So any member, not just the assigned reviewers, can participate in the discussion. The chair then provides a summary of the discussion and calls upon the three assigned reviewers to state their final overall impact scores which sets the range for most of the reviewers. All reviewers, not just those assigned to your application, will enter their final overall impact scores in a secure website. And any reviewer who is voting outside of the range must state a reason why, if it's not already been stated. Then after final scoring, the additional review considerations, such as select agents and budget will be discussed. Next slide, please. All right, so generally not all applications will be discussed at a review meeting. The discussions will focus on the most meritorious applications based on their preliminary overall impact scores. And the number or percentage of applications discussed will vary from meeting to meeting. If your application is discussed, then you will receive a summary statement that will show your overall impact score. For those applications that are percentiled, you will receive a percentile ranking also. The summary statement will also include a summary of the discussion that's written by the SRO. It will include scores for each of the review criterion, critiques for each assigned reviewer, as well as any administrative notes. We always encourage reviewers to go back and update their critiques and scores if their opinions change based on the discussions at the review meeting. But just know that does not always happen. So your overall impact score will definitely reflect the score based on the discussion while the criterion scores and critiques may or may not have been updated after the review meeting. Next slide, please. So if your application falls into the less meritorious range based on preliminary overall impact scores, then it may be a candidate for potential streamlining. So in order for an application to not be discussed, the entire review panel must agree. So any reviewer who is not in conflict with that application in this range can rescue it so that it can be brought up for discussion. If however your application is not discussed, then you will still receive a summary statement with the scores for each review criterion, critiques from each of the assigned reviewers, and administrative notes, if any. You just won't receive the overall impact score, or the discussion summary because there was no discussion. But you're still getting lots of feedback. Next slide, please. The impact scores range from 10 to 90, where 10 is best. And just a reminder that funding decisions are made by the Institute or Center director, who I will refer to as the IC director, following the recommendation of program staff. Or sometimes the IC director will delegate the funding decisions to division directors. Some Institutes have firm pay lines that are published and differ between funding mechanisms. While other Institutes do not have paylines, and funding decisions are driven by overall impact scores as well as other factors. So for example, at NIGMS, when making funding decisions we consider the breadth and diversity of our institute's research portfolio, approaches and investigators, the total amount of funding available to the investigator, the priority of the research area for our institute's mission, early stage investigator status, at-risk investigator status, and whether the PI would have more than two NIGMS funded RO1s. So when you receive your summary statement, the appropriate contact would be your Program Officer listed on the summary statement, not your SRO. If your application is not funded, the Program Officer may be able to give you some insights on why the application was not funded and give suggestions for improvement. Next slide, please. All right, so what happens to your scores and summary statements? They then move to the second level of review, which is comprised of each Institute or Center’s National Advisory Council. Each Council has broad and diverse membership expertise depending on the mission of the institute. They can include basic science researchers, clinicians, and public members, such as patient advocates, or disease research advocates. These members are nominated by the Institutes and approved by the Department of Health and Human Services. And the chair of the Council is the director of the NIH funding Institute or Center who is also advised by their extramural staff. Next slide, please. So Council procedures vary across Institutes and Centers. But in general, the Councils advise the IC director on research priority areas. The Council members also consider concepts for new Funding Opportunity Announcements. And they also adjudicate any appeals that come up from the initial peer review. National Advisory Councils do not make funding decisions but rather they make recommendations on applications for funding to the IC director. Next slide, please. All right, so as mentioned earlier, the director of the NIH funding Institute makes the final funding decisions or sometimes the IC director will delegate that job to division directors. The outcomes of initial peer review is very important. It's a very important component of funding decisions. But again, it might not be the only one. So the director may also consider factors such as their Institute or Center’s mission, program priorities, Congressional mandates, recommendations of program staff, or the IC advisory council. And of course, they have to consider how much money they have available in their budget. Next slide, please. All right, so what to do if your application is not funded. First, know that you are not alone. In 2021, about 19% of research project grant applications were funded. But that percentage did vary by Institute and Center. If your application is not funded, please do not take it personally. It was your application that was reviewed, not you. Carefully read the summary statement with the reviewer's comments and think about how you can use their feedback to improve your application. Contact your Program Officer listed on your summary statement. The Program Officer can provide you with insights and suggestions on how you can improve. And most importantly, you are encouraged to resubmit, or submit a new application, depending on what's appropriate for the FOA you're applying to. And your Program Officer can help you to decide whether you need to resubmit, or submit a new application. For most investigators, achieving funding success usually comes from persistence and patience. And the typical applicant who is finally successful in obtaining funding, they had submitted several applications prior to obtaining support for their research. Next slide, please. All right, so who should you talk to? And when? Before you submit your application, the appropriate contact would be a program officer. So they can answer questions about IC priorities, point you to an FOA that might be appropriate. Or maybe they can tell you, no, research is not appropriate for our Institute, maybe you should try another IC. After you submit and before the review, the appropriate contact would be the SRO. They can answer questions about the study section scope and review criteria. Then after the review meeting, your Program Officer again would be the appropriate contact. If your application is not funded, they may be able to give you some insights on why the application was not funded and how to improve your application. And you can also try to get their advice on things like whether you should resubmit in the next funding cycle, or whether you should wait to collect additional pilot data to strengthen your application. And that means waiting for a later cycle. So you can kind of brainstorm some of these things with them. If your application will be funded, then your Program Officer might talk to you about topics like resolving any human subjects, vertebrate animal, or inclusion code concerns. Next slide, please. All right, so what is the timing of all this? In general, from the time of submission, it takes one to two months for the referral process to take place. And then four to six months for the review panel to convene, and overall impact scores to be released. Six to seven months for the summary statements to be generated. Seven to eight months for advisory councils to convene. Eight to nine months for funding decisions to be made. And nine to 10 months for awards to start. So just remember that this timeline is very high level. And it may vary. But it could take a several months from the time of submission to finally getting your award to start. And I think that that's all I have. So I hope that you have a better understanding of the NIH peer review process as well as the funding process. And I will pass the baton back over to Sydella. SYDELLA BLATCH: Thanks, Latarsha, and Alison, and Marc, all very helpful information. And there were a number of questions coming in. And I believe we answered a large number, if not the vast majority of them. But I wanted to circle back to starting with one of them that I thought was just a really excellent question. And I wondered if anyone wanted to elaborate. Because I think it's a really important question. So the question was about the amount of jargon that should be included in the application, in particular, in the beginning or the opening pages. And a question along with that was whether this will be read by a broad or general audience. So does anyone want to share any additional information besides what was posted about how much jargon to include and whether people from a broad background are going to read the application? LATARSHA CARITHERS: I would say that we always tell applicants to tailor their application to a very broad audience. You know, I don't think that there's one person on the panel that will have 100% of the expertise needed to review that application. It really is the whole panel combined that brings all the expertise needed to review. So you really want to make sure that your application can be read by a wide variety of different-- of people with different backgrounds. SYDELLA BLATCH: Great, thank you, Latarsha. Andrea, did you want to add to that? ANDREA KEANE-MYERS: Yeah, I mean, I would second what Latarsha just said. I mean, essentially you want to make sure that what-- you don't want to have your application to be too dense. And you want the reviewers to understand what it is you're talking about. So you can have some jargon as long as you explain-- or acronyms, as long as you explain what those are. And you explain them clearly. But if you have an application that comes out and it starts reading really densely. And it requires review, [AUDIO OUT] we're going to spend two or three times to reread your application, they are going to get kind of frustrated while they're reading it. And so though it may be obvious to you, it may not be obvious to someone else. And that's why having someone who is tangentially related to what your research is read your application without you telling them what it is. And let them tell you what they think that it is that you're saying is probably the best advice I can give to a lot of applicants. SYDELLA BLATCH: Great. Thank you. That's very helpful. And a good reminder that sometimes, if only someone in your exact same specific area of study is looking at your application, they probably already understand it. So they don't necessarily know how clear it may be because they're already familiar with that information. So thank you, that's very helpful. Another question I thought was really helpful that if anyone wanted to provide any additional feedback on is what if your feedback team disagrees, how do you resolve that? What if one person says one thing, another person may say the opposite, then what do you do? I don't know if anyone had additional advice than what was already posted, which was in summary, you can be that tiebreaker. Alison, did you come on camera to comment? ALISON GAMMIE: Well, yeah, I mean, I think that at the end of the day, it is your grant application. And obviously, you don't have to take any of the feedback that you get because you ultimately are the judge. But I think it's just extremely helpful to get a broad range of opinions and perspectives. But at the end of the day, I think it's ultimately your choice. If you're truly torn and you really don't know, seek more feedback as was suggested in the answer. So yeah, at the end of the day, it's your proposal. SYDELLA BLATCH: Very helpful. Thank you. Another question I thought was very pertinent was, and I'm going to broaden this question a little bit more in part to address some of what Latarsha was saying at the very end there, is so let's say you submit an application, it's not funded, or doesn't score well, or it's not discussed. And so the advice is to either resubmit if the FOA allows, or see if you can submit a new application. But what if you've resubmitted and still that isn't funded, should you just-- what then? If you tried twice now, and you still didn't get funded, do you just stop there? What do you do? Does anyone want to share any thoughts about that? Tough question. MARC RIGAS: I feel like this is maybe a Program Officer question because you all have to deal with it more but that is a tough one, right. And I think it requires some kind of rethinking, some big rethinking, right. And it's not just going to be I just tweak this thing a bit more and send it in again as a new application. SYDELLA BLATCH: Thanks, Marc. Mike Sesma? MIKE SESMA: Yeah, I think this is not an unusual question. We actually get it all the time. I think the most important thing is to contact your Program Pfficer to discuss the prospects for a project like yours and what the particular issues were in terms of the review. And you may have to pull things back and rethink the whole thing. But probably the best person to provide that advice to you or to give you some perspective on those decisions would be the Program Officer that you've worked with in the process of submitting your initial applications and even a revision. So believe it or not, there are a lot of good applications and well reviewed applications that aren't funded across the NIH. And it doesn't mean it's bad science or that there are big problems with the project. Sometimes it's just a limitation of the funds available to an Institute and the area of science and the priorities of that science in terms of the mission of the Institute. So it's very important to discuss these issues with the Program Officer that's assigned to your application. So don't be afraid to reach out. Reach out by email and then set up an appointment to talk to them and to talk about those particular issues. SYDELLA BLATCH: Thank you, Mike. Andrea. ANDREA KEANE-MYERS: Yeah, I mean, I second what Mike has to say. I mean, Program Officers, we are not-- we are friendly people, generally speaking. A lot of times if applicants have trouble, if their application hasn't been discussed a couple of times, sometimes a Program Officer can help you decipher what your summary statement is actually saying. Because summary statements are written really more for the Program Officers rather than they are written for the applicant. So sometimes there's information that's in there that may not be clear to the applicant. The other thing to note is that sometimes your application may either be too broad or too specific. And so maybe a question of reining in all of your ideas, or it may be a question of trying to refocus what it is that you're trying to say. So it may be that your research and what you're doing is fine, it just may be that the way that you're conveying it is not working. And so-- so sometimes your Program Officer can help you decipher what the summary statement really is saying. Now, the Program Officer can't help you write your grant. Because that would be considered bias. But they can provide you some advice. And I think that's absolutely right. A lot of really, really good and excellent scientists have had their applications reviewed. And unfortunately, have not been funded. So keep that in mind. SYDELLA BLATCH: Great. Thank you. Isaah ISAAH VINCENT: And this is just a general warning. So when you are putting in an application after, say its second revision-- sorry, its first revision did not do well, please remember to leave out any comments that you may have gotten from those prior reviewers. Those will usually lead in withdrawal because you're not allowed to actually add any of that language. So when you're putting in a new application, it has to have no references to old scores and stuff like that. So that's just a cautionary note. SYDELLA BLATCH: Great. Thank you. Thank all of you for-- excuse me, for weighing in on that important question. OK, I'm looking at the question box now to see some questions that have just come in. One is about the balance and providing enough preliminary data to show feasibility compared to the reviewer thinking, quote, "research has already been done." Is it better to publish a preliminary report with the core findings before submitting the grant, or wait until the grant is funded and all associated mechanistic studies are done? Does anyone want to try to weigh in on that? JOE GINDHARDT: I could, Sydella. SYDELLA BLATCH: Great. Thanks, Joe. JOE GINDHARDT: So yeah, this question brings up a great point that the reviewers want to see enough preliminary data that demonstrates that you can do the experiments, or that you've already lined up collaborators that can help you do the experiments. But then once, you've established that you have to be able to tell a story about what you're going to do for the next four or five years. So I would argue that it would not be a great idea to have everything to propose to do things that you show that you've done already. You want to have a foundation and then use that as a launching point to do the next thing. SYDELLA BLATCH: Thanks, Joe. OK, not seeing other comments on that. It looks like-- looking at questions coming in, I see a couple about emailing a Program Officer too much. And on the other hand, if the Program Officer is not responding, not responsive. So I think one strategy if the Program Officer is not responsive is to carbon copy send an email to them again, and maybe include the branch chief which you can look up on that institute's website, someone out the chief of the branch that the Program Officer is in. And maybe that can help with the email not getting lost. And the related or the opposing question is there too much back and forth with your Program Officer, what would be annoying. And as Andrea said, most of us are very friendly people who want to help. And as was also previously said, we aren't allowed to help you write your application. So we will give you the kind of guidance that we can. It may not be as extensive as everyone would wish. But again, we are here to try to help. So please do reach out. I don't know if anyone wants to add to those that line of questioning about interacting with your Program Officer after your application has been reviewed. Yep, Darren. DARREN SLEDJESKI: I was just going to add to keep in mind that a lot of the questions program officers get is, will my grant be funded, what's going to happen, when are things going to happen. A lot of times they just don't know. Right now, for instance, we're under a continuing resolution, which means we have a limited budget through December. Hopefully, we'll get a regular full year budget after December. But we just don't have the knowledge of what is happening, and when the money is going to come in, and how much we're going to have, and what our pay line is going to be. So certainly, contacting your PO is fine but just keep that in mind that there isn't a lot of secret knowledge that POs necessarily have that they're hiding from you. I mean, if they say they just don't know, that's probably because we just don't know. SYDELLA BLATCH: Right, great point. Thanks, Darren. OK, well, I think it looks like most of the questions have been addressed at this point. Again, if you have specific questions about a funding opportunity mechanism, please reach out to the Program Officer. If you have questions about anything and you don't know who to ask, please feel free. We have our email address is shown on this slide. We might not be the best person to answer. But if we're not, we will try to direct you to who may be able to help you. We will post the slides to this webinar probably by the end of-- before the end of the week most likely. And the recording will take us a few more weeks to complete. But we will post that on the event page. There are also resources there on the page. The resources address many of the questions that have been frequently asked during the webinar series. So you'll find some helpful links there. That page is in the chat. So if there aren't any last comments from any of the panelists, then we can go ahead and close out. So I'll just look for any last hands raised, if anyone wanted to add any last commentary. OK, well, not seeing any. Again, please reach out if there's anything else, any way we can direct you. And we appreciate your time. And thank you to the speakers and the question volunteers. Everyone have a great day. Thank you.