Presenting Yourself:
an introduction to the
new SOM requirements for the c.v. and
the new NIH Biosketch format
Sue Tolleson-Rinehart, PhD
Prepared for
Pediatrics Faculty Development Curriculum Series
19 and 20 February 2015
Our goals today
• Review SOM curriculum vitae requirements
• Review the new NIH Biosketch requirements
• Explore SciENcv – the new NCBI mechanism for creating and
downloading biosketch content
• Do all this with the fewest PowerPoint slides and the most
hands-on exploration we can!
“The course (or study) of my life”
• The curriculum vitae (plural is curricula vitae, for those who love
language esoterica)
– In the U.S., it’s used almost entirely in academic settings,
or settings that share the academic culture
– The U.S. academic use shares some basic expectations,
but institutions vary in their preferences, so make sure you
know what your institution requires. That’s our main job
today!
– You may have more than one c.v.:
o An abbreviated version for quick dissemination
o The fullest and lengthiest version your university
requires for purposes of annual review and
promotion
o Other forms – you may think of the new NIH Bioskethc
also as a kind of c.v. – with its own rules and
expectations!
What’s the point of the c.v.?
• It provides a consistent format within which to account for and
present your career achievements
• It gives a quick but accurate and thorough picture of whether
you are meeting your own and your institution’s expectations
• As the NIH Nexus blog entry pasted onto slide 6 shows, it’s also
a tool for peer review in intra- and extramural funding
decisions
• It enables you to join in and contribute to a long tradition of
transparency in the academic community!
Resources I: SOM CV
• UNC SOM c.v. policy is on the school’s website, but not
necessarily in an obvious place:
– Go to med.unc.edu
• Go to “Administration”
– Go to “policies”
» Finally!
“SOM Standardized CV”
• This produces a pdf document with all the rules:
– http://www.med.unc.edu/hr/epa/files/cv-standardized-format-revisedjune-2014
Let’s go quickly through the format and sections of the cv…
and we’ll discuss them in more detail shortly
http://www.med.unc.edu/hr/epa/files/cv-standardized-format-revised-june-2014
What’s new?
• Opportunity to add new “products of scholarship,” such as
– Refereed other products of scholarship (with electronic links displayed, if
relevant)
– Products of interdisciplinary scholarship
– Products of engaged scholarship
– Products of creative activity such as performances and exhibitions
– Digital and other novel forms of scholarship (with electronic links
displayed, if relevant)
• Old personal statement replaced by up to three new
statements on teaching, research, and service
Resources II: New NIH Biosketch
• http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-15032.html
“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 you not by where you’ve published or how many times, but instead by what
you’ve accomplished. Hopefully, this change will redirect the focus of reviewers and the scientific
community more generally from widely questioned metrics, like the number of published papers, the
number of citations received by those papers, or one of several statistical approaches used to
normalize citations.
We strongly believe that allowing a researcher to generate an account of his or her own work will
provide a clearer picture of each individual’s contributions and capabilities. But one might question
whether this new biosketch will have a negative impact on younger investigators whose body of
work may not be as robust as more established investigators. I believe the contrary is true; this new
format will give early career investigators a platform for describing and framing the significance of
their contributions, which should help reviewers better understand their accomplishments without having
to rely simply on a list of publications.”
-- Dr Sally Rockey, Deputy Director, Extramural Research, NIH*
See more at: http://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2014/05/22/changes-to-the-biosketch/#sthash.hrrvxpca.dpuf
Link to new forms and samples: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/424/index.htm#format
*”Rock Talk,” http://nexus.od.nih.gov/all/2014/05/22/changes-to-the-biosketch/ , site last vistied 18 February 2015, emphasis added
What has changed?
• Length: new maximum length is 5 pages (see below)
• Personal statement REMAINS and should, as always, be tightly
directed to your contribution to a given proposal effort.
• “Contribution to science” is the puzzling new feature:
– Maximum of FIVE (5) “contributions” each containing up to FOUR (4)
publications in support of each contribution
– Each contribution must be no longer than a half page, for a total limit of
2.5 pages for the “contribution to science”
• Opportunity to include a stable hyperlink, generated by
MyNCBI, taking reviewers to your entire bibliography.
My NCBI has created a tool to help you with this!
• It’s called SciENcv…http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sciencv/
And here is how you get to it:
• Go to MyNCBI
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/account/?back_url=http%3A%2F
%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fmyncbi%2F
…and sign in with whatever option you prefer (Google, NIH,
ERaCommons, or sign in directly with your NCBI username and
password)
Getting usernames and passwords…
•
-- if you don't have a MyNCBI or ERa Commons username and password,
–
–
–
•
•
you can create a MyNCBI username and password for yourself, and
Kira Frediani ([email protected]) can connect you to the folks in OSR who can create your
ERa Commons name, after which you can create an ERa Commons password.
If you are going to be preparing federal proposals, it is useful to have an ERa Commons username! If
not, the NLM lets anyone create a MyNCBI uersname and password.
Once you are logged in, you will see [this screen -- I'll be showing it to everyone] -- and
SciENcv is in the lower right part of the page. There you can get started -- and once
you have started your cv, all of your subsequent visits to the My NCBI page will show
your name -- you can click on it to go to your profile and continue updating your cv. You
will also see a hyperlink to the lower right of your name that says "manage SciENcv" -there, you can edit the wya you appear, or create a new profile.
When you click on your name, from either page (home or "manage SciENcv"), you can
work on your c.v. Note that SciENcv will automatically populate your profile with all
publications catalogued in PubMed, but you must manually enter all others, along with
your degrees and experience, etc.
Your “My NCBI” page looks like this:
Now let’s get to work…
On thinking through the
requirements of
the new SOM CV
and
the new NIH Biosketch
Thank you!
More discussion?
image citations for first and last slides:
1.. Audubon drawing by Arthur Ambler in the National Audubon Society collection.
[Photograph]. Retrieved May 4, 2007, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-67613
2. Kitties copyright CartonnBank.com for New Yorker and used with permission.