Grantwriting faculty already know that the National Science Foundation has changed Biosketch and Current & Pending requirements. 

Biosketches are short summaries of a researcher’s accomplishments submitted in a grant proposal in a specific format. Biosketch and Current & Pending documents for the NSF must be written and certified in SciENcv. In 2025, the National Institutes of Health will also require that  Biosketches and Other Support documents be written and certified in SciENcv. 

For faculty creating these documents, entering a complete list of publications is time consuming, and the “add citation” button only accesses PubMed, which can miss publications not indexed there.

The libraries have advice to speed up SciENcv citation entry in a detailed online guide. 

Using ORCID iDs

ORCID iDs integration with SciENcv has improved, and you can use your ORCID to create the new NSF/NIH Biosketches.

An ORCID, which stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID, provides researchers with a unique digital identifier that distinguishes them from others. disambiguating authors with similar names and ensuring proper attribution of research outputs.

The NSF and NIH are encouraging applicants to include their ORCID in biosketches to streamline the review process and verify researcher credentials. Including an ORCID in a biosketch provides a direct link to a comprehensive record of the researcher’s work. In 2025, the NIH will require an ORCID.

Citation managers like Zotero

Another way to get publications into SciENcv is using the File Upload. The files to upload must be RIS files.

RIS files can be created by most citation managers, such as Zotero, Endnote, or Mendeley with the Export or Save as… option. If you have a list of your own publications in a citation manager, you can export those citations to RIS format, then import the .ris file to your SciENcv. 

If you write in LaTeX or Markdown and prefer to keep your citations in BibTeX, check to see whether your editor exports .bib to .ris. If not, you can import .bib into Zotero, then clean the citation data, and export to RIS from there. 

Contact your librarian if you would like Zotero or Mendeley training for yourself or your team.

Image: from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/about/