Resource Library

SciENcv Guide

Including Biosketches and Current & Pending Support

Federal funding agencies, specifically NSF, NIH, and the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences require Biographical Sketches and/or Current & Pending Support documents be submitted in either agency-specific PDF forms or documents created through the SciENcv (Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae) system, a free online website that helps researchers manage their data. No other formats will be accepted for these documents and it is expected that the use of SciENcv will be more widespread among federal agencies in the near future.

 

What is SciENcv?

Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae (SciENcv) is an electronic system that helps researchers assemble the professional information needed for participation in federally funded research. SciENcv gathers and compiles information on expertise, employment, education and professional accomplishments. Researchers can use SciENcv to create and maintain biosketches that are submitted with grant applications and annual reports. SciENcv allows researchers to describe and highlight their scientific contributions in their own words.

URA ScienCV Video: ScienCV Guide: Using ScienCV and Other Resources

 

NIH eRA Commons, NSF, and ORCID account holders who have linked their accounts to NCBI can populate their SciENcv profiles with the information stored in these accounts. The information transferred to SciENcv can be changed, hidden, augmented, or deleted as the researcher decides. SciENcv users control the content displayed in their SciENcv profiles. The benefits include:

  • Eliminates the need to repeatedly enter biosketch information
  • Reduces the administrative burden associated with federal grant submission and reporting requirements
  • Provides access to a researcher-claimed data repository with information on expertise, employment, education, and professional accomplishments
  • Allows researchers to describe their scientific contributions in their own language

You can log into SciENcv using your University SSO account, Fastlane or Research.gov account, eRA Commons account, or your Login.gov, Google, Microsoft, or ORCiD accounts in order to create and fill out your profile. You can also pull information from other systems to assist in filling out your profile, as explained below. Click here for step by step instructions on accessing SciENcv. 

NOTE: The initial method selected to register and login to the system will be the one you must use for all activity; please select SSO or Login.gov for ease of use.

The mandate to use SciENcv only for preparation of the biographical sketch and current and pending support will go into effect for new proposals submitted or due on or after October 23, 2023. In the interim, proposers may continue to prepare and submit this document via use of SciENcv or the NSF fillable PDF. NSF, however, encourages the community to use SciENcv prior to the October 2023 implementation.

NSF requires a biographical sketch for each individual identified as senior personnel. See the Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) Chapter II.D.2.h(i) for complete coverage on the content and formatting requirements for the biographical sketch.

A table entitled, NSF Pre-award and Post-award Disclosures Relating to the Biographical Sketch and Current and Pending (Other) Support, has been developed to provide helpful reference information regarding pre-award and post-award disclosure information in the biographical sketch and current and pending support proposal sections. The table identifies where these disclosures must be provided in proposals as well as in project reports.

Senior personnel are required to certify that the information is current, accurate, and complete. This includes, but is not limited to, information related to domestic and foreign appointments and positions. The certification language is included on both the NSF fillable PDF and SciENcv template.

You can gain functionality and save time by entering your publications and research products elements of your biosketch in the ORCID system first, as the SciENcv system can pull data from the ORCID database. Click here for information on ORCID.

Click here for step by step instructions to create a SciENcv biosketch, and here for the Current and Pending support instructions.

The NIH requires investigators to use My Bibliography to enter publications for progress reports. My Bibliography is a tool within My NCBI.

In order to report publications to the NIH, the My NCBI account must be linked with an eRA Commons account. Investigators can log in to My NCBI with their eRA Commons account to ensure this. Or, link an existing My NCBI login with an eRA Commons account.

When linked, you'll see the eRA Commons icon on the publications page, as well as the option to display Award View as highlighted in the image to the right.

In Award view, you can view the compliance status for each article and manage compliance steps from within My NCBI. Link directly from an NIHMSID to a NIHMS status summary.

Publications that were published more than three months ago but don't yet have a PMCID will show a non-compliant status, even when there's an NIHMSID. Once the PMCID is assigned, the status will update to "complete."

See also: How to Add Publications in MyNCBI

Add Publications Associated with an Award

Publications can be added to My Bibliography in multiple ways:

  1. Directly from PubMed searches or by adding PMIDS within My Bibliography (see video tutorial).
  2. When any author associates a PI's award to a paper via NIHMS or My NCBI.
  3. Through manually input publications. Use for articles not indexed in PubMed, for reporting forthcoming articles not yet in PubMed, or for preprints and other interim products that are publicly accessible.
  4. By uploading a file with citations in MEDLINE or RIS format.

Be sure to associate the award(s) with the paper so that publications link up to your NIH Progress Report. For articles in Method A and Method B journals, the investigator must 1) add articles published to My Bibliography, and 2) associate the award. These two steps are not automatic.

Duplicate adds will not be saved to the list, so long as they are an exact match. If any of the metadata differs, it'll result in duplicate records, which can be collapsed. Contact the My NCBI Help Desk for any problematic duplicates.

Tips for Reporting Publications

  1. NIH requires all publications published or accepted for publication as a result from the award during the reporting period to be reported, regardless of public access compliance status. (NOT-OD-12-160).
  2. Preprints, preregistration, and other interim research products may be reported as of May 21, 2017 (NOT-OD-17-050), Note, however, that interim research products are not accepted as post-submission materials for grant applications (NOT-OD-19-083). 
  3. Publications that are exempt from the policy may still be reported in NIH progress reports via My NCBI, but listed as not applicable (N/A). Find more about reporting and citing exempt publications to the NIH.
  4. Include publications associated with a PI's award but that are not authored by the PI in My Bibliography in order to ensure they get reported on the progress report. Set these publications to 'Private' to prevent them from appearing in your public bibliography.
    • These could formerly be listed in the Other Citations collection, which is no longer supported. Publications formerly in your Other Citations collection now appear in your My Bibliography collection with that tag.
  5. To share your bibliography using a publicly available link, select 'make your bibliography public' at the top of your My Bibliography collection. Publications labeled 'Private' or 'Other citations' are not included in the public bibliography.
  6. Training grant publications should also be reported (NOT-OD-15-091).
  7. Papers resulting from shared resources only should not be reported in C1, Publications. They may optionally be listed in B2, Accomplishments or on data sharing plans (see "Tracking and reporting papers arising from resource sharing"). (NOT-OD-16-079).
  8. NIH also has requirements for data sharing. See the Library's guide for details.

See all notices related to the policy, as well as NIH's guidelines for determining applicability.
NSF
SciENcv 
From the National Library of Medicine
Biographical Sketch Resources

Customizing your biosketch for each grant proposal is a good idea as it can highlight your most pertinent qualifications related to the proposal, demonstrating to reviewers why you are an asset to the project and how your participation strengthens the proposal. SciENcv allows you to easily edit your publications and contributions to quickly make these customized biosketches.

My NCBI users can grant access to other persons (delegates) to view and manage their SciENcv biosketches. The delegates will then be able to create, modify or delete the information in the SciENcv account to which they have been granted access.

The option to Add a delegate is available through the Accounts Settings page. The Delegates section of the Account Settings page displays a list of all the delegates granted access to either your My Bibliography collection or your SciENcv, or both. In the Delegates section you may add or remove delegates as well as modify the access granted, see ‘Adding and Removing Delegates.’
How do I certify that my information is accurate, current, and complete? (for senior personnel) 

SciENcv - In the SciENcv system, when you download your document, that will initiate a time-stamped certification on the resulting PDF document.

NSF fillable PDF - The senior personnel must type their name and date in the form. The certification will be printed onto the form once you have typed your name and date. Nothing more is required for the form.

Can a delegate certify a biosketch on behalf of a principal investigator? 

No, as a delegate, you are not authorized to certify a biosketch document. The PI must be the final person to approve any changes in the biosketch. 

What if the publications that I want to select in my biosketch (Products) have too many authors? 

If you have publications with so many authors that it seems daunting to try and create a three-page document, use the SciENcv format. Within the publications section, you can import citations from other sources or type them in manually and then edit the author list down to include however many you want (according to style or listing you) and then append "et al." to the end. If done using the tools provided by SciENcv, the full author list will be included in the metadata (behind the scenes) of the pdf.

Can I create a PDF through Word and upload it as a biographical sketch if I format it similarly?

Not for NSF, the systems in place will flag biosketches and current & pending support documents and halt the grant-seeking process. The metadata that is embedded in the NSF fillable PDF and the SciENcv system is necessary for the granting offices to process a request. For NIH and IES, SciENcv is an optional tool.

What is the benefit of using SciENcv over the fillable PDF?

The NSF fillable PDF and SciENcv created PDF are both approved formats for submitting biosketches and current & pending support documents. One of the benefits of using SciENcv as opposed to the NSF fillable PDF is that SciENcv is a free and easy to access system that will save your biosketches and supporting documents. This means that after you have created one biosketch in SciENcv, it becomes much easier to take and reuse that information in creating future biosketches. The NSF fillable PDF also has some limitations due to document space constraints like the number of line items you can add in any one field.

Are there best practices I should follow when using the NSF-approved fillable form? 

Yes, always save your form on your local computer before you start to edit.

The NSF fillable form is intended to be downloaded and saved to your computer prior to entry of information. If you open the document and start to directly insert content, you run the risk of losing your progress because of the configuration of different in-browser PDF reader settings. In addition, using the PDF application on Apple computers can automatically resize the text to fit within PDF text boxes - we don't want this. You can change that setting in your Preview application settings.

Does SciENcv send notifications when changes or updates are made?

SciENcv does not send notifications.

Can you have more than one account, or start a new SciENcv account if you’ve misplaced your first account, or moved to a new institution?

If you login with another platform or start a new account, the documents from the previous account will not be available.

How should the biosketches or current and pending support documents be identified in SciENcv?

Please name the document you want to be used for the project, for example: Smith 2023 Biosketch NSF DMREF, or Smith 2023 CP R01, to assist with correctly identifying the document(s).

Who should I use as a delegate to assist in maintaining documents?

Add your pre-award research administrator, post-award research administrator, unit or department admins - anyone you need to maintain and update your documents.

When a PI gives access to the delegate, what are the different options the PI can choose?  For example, giving access to C&P, publications, other sections.  Are those individually given permissions?  I know our focus is C&P, but some PIs are asking for review of their entire profile to make sure everything is up to date.

A PI can select the level of access to Current and Pending Support, biosketches, and publications for a delegate to edit and maintain. Some items, such as publications, should only be addressed by the PI, but the delegates can be provided access to revise/edit. Only the PI can certify the documents.

Can delegates download the biosketches and current and pendings from SciENcv?

Delegates can download draft versions for review purposes, but faculty must certify the documents to use as the signed pdf.

If I have more questions about SciENcv, who do I contact?

For questions specific to the SciENcv system go to: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK3843/

For general guidance and more FAQs use this link.

Project Proposal Information:

  • Person Months validates that it cannot be more than 12 months
  • It can go out to 2 decimal points - .01
  • SciENcv is working on being able to upload information from an .xls or .cvs file
  • In terms of data source, the most complete should be used
  • SciENcv will consider whether or not the system can pull from multiple data sources – currently, it cannot
  • Warn faculty that the system will timeout after no activity for a certain amount of time

General points to keep in mind when creating documents in SciENcv to not clutter the faculty’s account: 

  • A new document (CV or CP) should be created for each new proposal or progress report. 
  • Previously created documents should not simply be updated and re-used, as it can quickly become unclear whether they are truly up-to-date. 
  • SciENcv allows easy creation of a new document from the most recent prior document 
  • Each document should be named according to a convention “Last Name – FP Number – Date”, e.g. “Alivisatos-FP123456-20230823”, so that the correct file can easily be identified in the faculty’s account when they’re notified to certify the document. 
  • Since each CP is created for a specific application or purpose, the Overlap Statements must be updated in relation to the particular application. Remind the faculty to update the overlap statements each time a new CP is created. 
  • To reduce clutter in the SciENcv profiles, work with faculty to delete older documents (e.g. more than 3 months old) from their SciENcv profiles 
  • Remember, only the faculty can delete items from their profile.