Sally Gore, MS, MSLIS
Manager, Research & Scholarly Communications Services
sally.gore@umassmed.edu
508-856-1966
Lisa Palmer, MSLS, AHIP
Institutional Repository Librarian
lisa.palmer@umassmed.edu
508-856-4368
Tess Grynoch, MLIS
Research Data & Scholarly Communications Librarian
tess.grynoch@umassmed.edu
508-856-2467
Leah Honor, MLIS
Research Data & Scholarly Communications Librarian
leah.honor@umassmed.edu
508-856-2458
Please refer to our guides for specific information about:
The NIH biosketch is required for all NIH and AHRQ grant applications. Investigators are asked to describe up to five Contributions to Science (Section C), and can include citations in this section and in the Personal Statement (Section A). Applicants have the option to include a link (.gov URLs only) to a full list of their published work such as My Bibliography.
SciENcv (Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae) is a free tool you can use to generate an NIH biosketch using information in your My Bibliography account and eRA Commons account. My Bibliography and SciENcv can both be found in your My NCBI account. My Bibliography should be set up before you set up SciENcv.
Visit Frequently Asked Questions about NIH biosketches for more information. Blank templates, instructions, and sample biosketches are also available.Are your eRA Commons and NCBI Accounts linked?? It is important for an investigator's eRA Commons and NCBI accounts to be linked properly for efficient integration and auto-population of some sections of SciENcv. Check your NCBI Account Settings and look under "Linked Accounts." If they are linked, you will see "eRA login" listed here. If eRA is not listed here, the accounts are not linked.
Problems linking your NCBI and eRA Commons accounts? Contact one of the librarians listed on this page! Or email info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Provide your NCBI user name, eRA Commons user name, and the email address(es) associated with the accounts.
My Bibliography is a citation management tool that helps you save your citations directly from PubMed. You can include a link to My Bibliography in your biosketch to provide a full list of your publications.
To add citations to My Bibliography:
1. Log in to My NCBI.
2. Search for all of your publications in PubMed. Use the “send to” menu on the search results page to send the citations to My Bibliography.
3. Click on “My NCBI” in the upper right corner to access the dashboard. Look for the My Bibliography box.
4. Click on “Manage My Bibliography.” Your My Bibliography should be populated with all of your citations.
5. At the top of the page is a link to make your bibliography “public.” When you click on this, it will show you the “public URL” that you can paste into your biosketch.
6. Keep your My Bibliography up-to-date by periodically adding citations for your newly-published articles. (Hint: Set up a search alert for your publications.)
To set up a PubMed search alert for an author's publications:
SciENcv is a recommended tool designed to facilitate the creation of biosketches for NIH and NSF grant applications and annual progress reports.
SciENcv links your biographical information from eRA Commons (education, work experience, award history) with your PubMed publications that have been saved in your My Bibliography account.
First, set up your My Bibliography as outlined in Step 2 above. Then follow these steps:
For future proposals, you can create a new biosketch using Existing Biosketch as the data source to reuse elements.
SciENcv has templates for each section of the biosketch that make it easy to add and update information. Review SciENcv Help for specific directions on how to edit SciENcv profiles.