Back in October, the National Science Foundation announced changes to its Grant Proposal Guidelines (Full GPG for January 2013 here). I blogged about this back when the announcement was made, but now that the changes are official, I figure it warrants another mention.
As of January 2013, you can now list products in your biographical sketches, not just publications. This is big (and very good) news for data advocates like myself.
The change is that the biosketch for senior personnel should contain a list of 5 products closely related to the project and 5 other significant products that may or may not be related to the project. But what counts as a product? “products are…including but not limited to publications, data sets, software, patents, and copyrights.”
To make it count, however, it needs to be both citable and accessible. How to do this?
- Archive your data in a repository (find help picking a repo here)
- Obtain a unique, persistent identifier for your dataset (e.g., a DOI or ARK)
- Start citing your product!
For the librarians, data nerds, and information specialists in the group, the UC3 has put together a flyer you can use to promote listing data as a product. It’s available as a PDF (click on the image to the right to download). For the original PPT that you can customize for your institution and/or repository, send me an email.
Direct from the digital mouths of NSF:
Summary of changes: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/gpg_sigchanges.jsp
Chapter II.C.2.f(i)(c), Biographical Sketch(es), has been revised to rename the “Publications” section to “Products” and amend terminology and instructions accordingly. This change makes clear that products may include, but are not limited to, publications, data sets, software, patents, and copyrights.
New wording: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf13001/gpg_2.jsp
(c) Products
A list of: (i) up to five products most closely related to the proposed project; and (ii) up to five other significant products, whether or not related to the proposed project. Acceptable products must be citable and accessible including but not limited to publications, data sets, software, patents, and copyrights. Unacceptable products are unpublished documents not yet submitted for publication, invited lectures, and additional lists of products. Only the list of 10 will be used in the review of the proposal.
Each product must include full citation information including (where applicable and practicable) names of all authors, date of publication or release, title, title of enclosing work such as journal or book, volume, issue, pages, website and Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or other Persistent Identifier.
