Key Dates

Related Announcements

• April 4, 2024 - Overview of Grant Application and Review Changes for Due Dates on or after January 25, 2025.  See Notice NOT-OD-24-084.

Issued by

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH (NIH)

Purpose

This Guide Notice informs the extramural community of NIH’s adoption of Common Forms for Biographical Sketch and Current and Pending (Other) Support to be used with all applications and Research Performance Progress Report(s) (RPPRs) by May 25, 2025.

Background

The Common Forms represent a collaborative effort between federal research agencies to ensure standard disclosure requirements as outlined in the National Security Presidential Memorandum - 33. The approved Common Forms for Biographical Sketch and Current and Pending (Other) Support (OMB Number 3145-0279 managed by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)), can be accessed at NSF’s website at NSTC Research Security Subcommittee NSPM-33 Implementation Guidance Disclosure Requirements & Standardization.

NIH Common Forms Implementation

NIH will implement the Common Forms without change to any collection fields. However, in accordance with NIH’s Peer Review Regulations at 42 Code of Federal Regulations Part 52h, NIH currently plans to continue collecting three required agency specific data elements (i.e., Personal Statement, Contributions to Science, and Honors) to assess qualifications. These data elements will be collected separately from the Common Forms on a new NIH Biographical Sketch Supplement.

A high-level summary of NIH specific updates are as follows:

General Information

• NIH will require the use of Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae (SciENcv) to complete Common Forms (i.e., Biographical Sketch, Current and Pending (Other) Support) and the NIH Biographical Sketch Supplement to produce digitally certified PDF(s) for use in application submission.
• NIH will require all Senior/Key Personnel to enter their ORCID ID into SciENcv in the Persistent Identifier (PID) section of the Common Forms.
  • NIH will require all Senior/Key Personnel to link their ORCID ID to their eRA Commons Personal Profile. For information on linking an ORCID ID to the eRA Commons Personal Profile see the ORCID ID topic in the eRA Commons online help.

Biographical Sketch

• NIH will no longer accept the NIH Biographical Sketch format page.
• NIH will require the use of the Common Form for Biographical Sketch.
• NIH will require the use of a new NIH Biographical Sketch Supplement to collect the “Personal Statement,” “Contributions to Science,” and “Honors” statements.

Current and Pending (Other) Support

• NIH will no longer accept the NIH Other Support format page.
• NIH will require the use of the Common Form for Current and Pending (Other) Support.

NIH Common Forms Timeline

Failure to use the required forms or format pages may cause NIH to withdraw your application from consideration.

Availability of Common Forms for NIH

NIH is in the process of aligning NIH specific fields and instructions to the Common Forms and will post the NIH instructions of the Common Forms and NIH Biographical Sketch Supplement once finalized and approved through the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget under the Paperwork Reduction Act.

NIH will update respective application forms, instructions, and resources to support the need for applicants and recipients to provide full transparency and disclosure of all research activities, foreign and domestic.

NIH is coordinating with SciENcv on the development of the Common Forms in SciENcv for use by NIH applicants and recipients. In addition, we are developing an Application Programming Interface (API) with SciENcv to aid applicants and recipients in completion of the Common Forms for full implementation by May 2025.

Additional Guide Notice(s) will be coming later this year with further details on Common Form instructions, availability of the Common Forms for NIH in SciENcv, as well as updates on the availability of the API.

Resources

Common Forms for Biographical Sketch and Current and Pending (Other) Support

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

NIH Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration (OPERA)
Division of Grant Systems Integration (DGSI)

Systems Policy Branch
[email protected]