February 2016 Newsletter

Sign up Today for NSF Days Workshops

NSF Days provide basic insight and instruction on how to compete for NSF funding in a variety of disciplines. “Virtual NSF Days,” a new pilot program from the National Science Foundation, will take place over four days, February 22-25, with 90 minute sessions occurring every day. These sessions will take place from noon until 1:30 p.m. and will be held for members of the FSU research community who will be able to access the workshops either at the onsite location or from the comfort of their own computers.

During the sessions, NSF staff will provide an overview on proposal writing, NSF’s merit review process, and programs that fall within the seven research and education directorates, as well as funding opportunities that cross disciplinary boundaries. NSF representatives will be on hand to answer questions and discuss topics with attendees. Sign up today at www.research.fsu.edu/NSFDays.

Funding Opportunity: Pre-Proposal Applications Due for Spring GAP

Are you a member of the FSU research community with a great idea that could become a product or service with commercial value? Would funding of up to $50,000 help bridge the ‘gap’ between your lab and the market? If so, apply for the FSU Research Foundation’s GAP program!

The Office of Commercialization is currently accepting applications to be part of the Spring 2016 GAP competition, where you can compete for grant funding to take your idea from the lab into the marketplace. Pre-proposal applications are due by Friday, February 26. Don’t miss your chance to join the 60 or more FSU professors who have received funding in the past 10 years of GAP.

To find out more about GAP and what is takes to qualify and compete, please visit the GAP website.

Date	Course Code and Name	Location/Time
02/03/2016	SRA05 FSURF Account Reconciliation and Disbursement Procedures	Training Center, Front Room 10:00-11:30
02/05/2016	SRA06 Hot Issues in Research	Strozier Library, 005A 2:30-4:30
02/10/2016	SRA08 Finding Funding for your Project	SSB, 301 8:30-9:30
02/15/2016	SRA07 Cost Sharing	SSB, 301 8:30-10:30

Grants Workshop Series: The Ins and Outs

February 16 / March 31/ July 15

The Office of Postdoctoral Affairs (OPDA) and the Office of Graduate Fellowships and Awards (OGFA) are teaming up to sponsor a three-part grants workshop series for postdoctoral scholars and doctoral students. Both scholars and students will be provided: 1) an overview of potential grant mechanisms that would be suitable for their research area of interest, 2) a critique of their specific aims and guidance through all the form pages and supplemental material, 3) a forum to participate in a mock study section led by experts in their field and 4) an opportunity to engage in a peer to peer discussion about the strengths and pitfalls of applying for grants with FSU doctoral and postdoctoral scholars that have been successful in the process.

Funding Mechanisms:

American Heart Association (AHA)
Department of Defense (DOD)
Loreal Women in Science
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
National Institutes of Justice (NIJ)
National Science Foundation (NSF)
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Scholars (doctoral and postdoctoral) with the top proposals selected as a result of the mock study section will receive an intramural award following submission of their grant proposal to a federal agency or private foundation. Doctoral submissions can receive up to $750 of support. Postdoctoral submissions can receive up to $1500 of support.

For additional questions, contact Adrienne Stephenson and Debra Ann Fadool at ogfa-info@fsu.edu.

Registration Deadline: February 12, 2016

Learn more and register at http://ogfa.fsu.edu/Workshops-Events/Grant-Workshop-Series.

Institute on Copyright in Higher Education

Florida State University Libraries are excited to host a one-day Institute on Copyright in Higher Education on February 26 in the Turnbull Conference Center. The institute is a free professional development opportunity for academic librarians and other interested faculty members, focused primarily on exploring (1) the importance of fair use in teaching and research and (2) the role of libraries in providing copyright support and education on academic campuses.

The institute will feature distinguished speakers and a number of interactive sessions and panel discussions. Registration is free and participants are welcome to attend the entire event or individual sessions.

Hold the Date - Academic publishing symposium

University Libraries, in collaboration with the Graduate School and the Office of Faculty Development and Advancement, is excited to host its spring symposium, Publish or Perish: Conversations on Academic Publishing on February 25. The symposium is an opportunity for faculty and graduate students to learn about the state of academic publishing by engaging with colleagues and leaders in the field. In particular, the symposium will focus on exploring the following topics:

Current trends and best practices in journal publishing
The role of publishing in tenure and promotion at FSU
The intersection of open access and commercial publishing
What the future holds for the scholarly monograph

Event details:
Publish or Perish: Conversations on Academic Publishing
February 25, 2016 8:30 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Strozier Library, Bradley Reading Room

More information is available at https://www.lib.fsu.edu/events/academic-publishing-symposium/

Submissions Welcome for Innovative Diabetes Research Journal

The People Living with and Inspired by Diabetes (PLAID) Journal (ISSN: 2374-4669) is an open access, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal that promotes research and perspectives encouraging dialogue between clinicians, researchers, and people living with diabetes.

PLAID is dedicated to removing obstacles that impede better living with diabetes. As such, research, reviews, and perspectives published in The PLAID Journal are openly available and free to share worldwide thanks to support from the Charlotte Edwards Maguire Medical Library and the Florida State University College of Medicine.

Submissions are welcome at any time, and are encouraged in a growing number of topic areas relating to diabetes, including:

Communication
Pregnancy and family planning
Education
Healthcare policies, insurance, cost of care
Technology and innovation
Mental health
Measures of success

Please contact the PLAID editors at theplaidjournal@med.fsu.edu if you have any questions or suggestions for future topics. You can also visit The PLAID Journal website at: http://theplaidjournal.com.

Council on Research and Creativity Updates

Council on Research and Creativity Updates

Nominations for the Honorary Recognition Programs that are due in February:

Distinguished Research Professor Award nominations are due by February 12, 2016 at 11:59 pm
Distinguished University Scholar Award nominations are due by February 22, 2016 at 11:59 pm

For more details on the requirements please visit: http://www.research.fsu.edu/crc/drp.html or http://www.research.fsu.edu/crc/dus.html

CRC Programs: Submit Early for Technical Review

If you would like your proposal to be reviewed for technical errors, you may submit it seven days before the program deadline (i.e. by 4:59 p.m. on 'the date of the deadline minus 7') for a pre-review by the CRC Coordinator to ensure that it follows the program guidelines, the budget is accurate, required documents are incorporated, etc. Please note the following:

In order for your proposal to count as having been submitted in time for this pre-review, your application must have the "Pending Technical Review" status, which means you have obtained all required chair and dean approvals, prior to the opening of the seven day window. Until your proposal has all these approvals, it will not be considered ready for a technical review.
If your proposal is submitted after the opening of the seven day window there is no guarantee that it will be pre-reviewed. Thus choosing to submit after the opening of the seven day window leaves you at risk, as any technical errors, no matter how minor these may seem, will render your proposal ineligible. However, if you meet the seven day pre-review deadline and make any required corrections, as per instructions, by the final program deadline, your proposal will not be rejected on technical grounds.
Your proposal's accuracy is your responsibility, and not that of the CRC. The CRC will not make corrections, and revisions cannot be accepted after the deadline.

Program Deadline	CRC 7-day Technical Review Deadline
Monday	the previous at 4:59 p.m.
Tuesday	the previous Tuesday at 4:59 p.m.
Wednesday	the previous Wednesday at 4:59 p.m.
Thursday	the previous Thursday at 4:59 p.m.
Friday	the previous Friday at 4:59 p.m.

NIH releases FY2016–2020 Strategic Plan

The NIH has released its FY2016-2020 Strategic Plan that lays out a course for advancing scientific discoveries and human health.

The plan focuses on four essential, interdependent objectives that will help guide NIH’s priorities over the next five years as it pursues its mission of seeking fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and applying that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. The objectives are to:

advance opportunities in biomedical research in fundamental science, treatment and cures, and health promotion and disease prevention;
foster innovation by setting NIH priorities to enhance nimbleness, consider burden of disease and value of permanently eradicating a disease, and advance research opportunities presented by rare diseases;
enhance scientific stewardship by recruiting and retaining an outstanding biomedical research workforce, enhancing workforce diversity and impact through partnerships, ensuring rigor and reproducibility, optimizing approaches to inform funding decisions, encouraging innovation, and engaging in proactive risk management practices; and
excel as a federal science agency by managing for results by developing the “science of science,” balancing outputs with outcomes, conducting workforce analyses, continually reviewing peer review, evaluating steps to enhance rigor and reproducibility, reducing administrative burden, and tracking effectiveness of risk management in decision making.

Read the entire plan at http://www.nih.gov/sites/default/files/about-nih/strategic-plan-fy2016-2020-508.pdf.

Updates on Addressing Rigor in Your NIH Applications

By Michael Lauer, NIH’s Deputy Director for Extramural Research

As NIH moves ahead with implementing measures to enhance rigor, transparency and reproducibility in NIH-supported research, I’d like to give a brief update on these efforts, and highlight some important timeline changes for implementation in applications for institutional training grants (T), institutional career development awards (K12), and individual fellowships (F).

To briefly recap, in October, NIH announced updates to the application instructions and review criteria for most research grants and individual mentored career development awards. These updates instruct applicants to address four key areas NIH deems important for enhancing rigor and transparency in research: 1) the scientific premise forming the basis of the proposed research; 2) rigorous experimental design for valid, robust, and unbiased results; 3) consideration of relevant biological variables; and 4) authentication of key biological and/or chemical resources. My October blog post, “Bolstering Trust in Science Through Rigorous Standards,” describes the rationale behind the changes and the steps NIH has taken to engage the community in these efforts.

For the January 25, 2016 application due dates, the updates apply to most NIH research grant applications, with some exceptions, as described in the October NIH Guide notice. We also announced requirements to address rigor in individual mentored career development award applications submitted after January 25, 2016. In addition, Research Performance Progress Reports (RPPR) for these programs must also address rigor if they are submitted on or after January 25.

As you consider how to address rigor in your NIH applications, I would like to remind you of resources that should help along the way. Your first stop should be the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) web page on rigor and reproducibility, which links to a variety of resources from OER, and across NIH. For example, you might want to watch our NIH staff training module. While this tutorial was initially created for NIH program officers and scientific review officers, it provides lots of content that would be useful to you too–including a general policy overview on rigor and transparency, as well as updates on the changes to our grant applications and review language.

We also recently extended the timeline for implementing rigor and transparency policy changes for institutional training grants, institutional career development grants, and individual fellowships. We recognized that applicants to these programs would require significant time and resources to design substantive instructional plans and new curricula to ensure the in-depth training in rigorous experimental design for trainees and fellows. This is especially true given the breadth of different training and career development programs funded across NIH. As early as fiscal year 2017, we will be asking applicants to include plans for instructing trainees and fellows in rigorous experimental design (stay tuned for future NIH Guide notices). As you start to think about future applications, you may wish to review some different approaches for addressing experimental design and reproducibility in curricula and training. For example, NIGMS recently issued a funding opportunity to support the development of “Training Modules to Enhance Data Reproducibility.” You can review summaries of the awarded projects on NIH RePORT. NIGMS has also compiled award abstracts describing predoctoral training curricula on their website. We also recognize that each grant application will need to develop specific instructional material that matches the specific area of training and research.

I look forward to expanding more on the topics of scientific premise and rigorous experimental design in future blog posts, and hearing your thoughts and questions as well!

FSU Awards Report

A monthly awards report is available online. This report will allow interested faculty, staff and others to learn more about who has been recently awarded research grants. Click here to access the latest report.

Funding Opportunities

Please click here to access some of the latest funding opportunities available for the arts, humanities, social sciences, STEM disciplines and medicine.

Washington Update

Please click here to learn of recent activities in Washington affecting higher education. Included are budget and appropriations updates, new funding announcements and other important campus related issues.

Data Management Workshop Video Posted

The video and PowerPoint slides from Renaine Julian’s (FSU Libraries) Data Management Workshop are now posted here under ‘past workshop materials.’ Discussion topics include the creation of a data management plan for different funding agencies including NEA, NEH, NSF and NIH and effective tools for writing data management plans.

New Face in the Office of Research

A new team member has recently joined the Office of Research family. Say hello to Mike Mitchell, a Proposal Development Specialist in the Office of the Vice President for Research who will be responsible for coordinating university-wide grant proposal submission efforts with a primary focus on large, multidisciplinary grant activities.

Mike comes to the Office of Proposal Development from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services where he served as a policy analyst. Mike has not only been responsible for the administration of grants, he has also been a grant writer of several successful proposals – his last being a $16.9M grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.