NIH Announcements and Updates

This guide serves as an update service for announcements and communications released by the NIH. It will include:

• Guide notices of interest to our research community (NOT)
  • These will include policy notices, requests for information (RFIs), notices of information, notices of special interest
• News releases from the NIH Office of Science Policy
• Other NIH announcements that are relevant to Northwestern's research community

Announcements related to the NIH Public Access Policy will also be displayed on and integrated into our NIH Public Access Policy GalterGuide. 

If you'd like to track policy and compliance changes and developments from the NIH, we encourage you to bookmark the NIH Grants & Funding Policy & Compliance page. It includes links to policy notices, grants and funding implementation status, and other topics of interest. 

Recent announcements will be displayed on this home page, with newest items at the top of the page. Items will also be sorted into categories in the left hand menu of this guide.

We plan to create another guide/update service for other federal funding agencies' notices and announcements.

Preview of NIH Common Forms for Biographical Sketch and Current and Pending (Other) Support Coming Soon to SciENcv

The change of NIH biosketch and Other Support forms to the use of the Common Forms has been announced to begin in 2026. The NIH announced it will make the previews of the NIH biosketch Common Form, NIH Biosketch Supplement, and Current and Pending (Other) Support Common Form available in SciENcv "on or before September 15, 2025".

These PREVIEW forms became available in SciENcv on September 10, 2025. The final forms are projected to become available in SciENcv in November of 2025, but will not be required for use until 2026.

These PREVIEW forms are not the final forms, and applicants should continue using the current forms until the change is finalized. The PREVIEW forms are meant for researchers to familiarize themselves with using SciENcv and the forms themselves before the requirement of their use goes into effect. Please read NOT-OD-25-143 for more information and instructions.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya released a statement on the NIH's new plan to drive "Gold Standard Science". The plan lists factors that characterize the NIH's requirements, stating that Gold Standard Science is:

• Reproducible
• Transparent
• Communicative of Error and Uncertainty
• Collaborative and Interdisciplinary
• Skeptical of Its Findings and Assumptions
• Structured for Falsifiability of Hypotheses
• Subject to Unbiased Peer Review
• Accepting of Negative Results as PositiveOutcomes
• Without Conflicts of Interest

You can read the plan: LEADING IN GOLD STANDARD SCIENCE: An NIH Implementation Plan at:

https://www.nih.gov/sites/default/files/2025-08/2025-gss.pdf 

NIH Scientific Data Sharing Pages are Now on the NIH Grants & Funding Site

Information on NIH’s scientific data sharing policies and data repositories can now be found on the NIH Grants & Funding site. The purpose of this move was to have everything located in one domain to make it easier for grant applicants to find the information they need for award applications. The data sharing policies join the NIH Public Access Policy information, which was also moved to Grants & Funding recently. 

Links to the NIH data sharing policies and repository information will remain at the sharing.nih.gov sites "for the next year", and there will be redirects in place to guide users to the Grants & Funding site for data sharing.

Share Your Feedback on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publication Costs - August 1, 2025

• The NIH announced its RFI (NOT-OD-25-138 - Request for Information on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs) for public input on capping publishing charges (see July 8th and July 30th announcements below).

Apply Responsibly: Policy on AI Use in NIH Research Applications and Limiting Submissions per PI - July 31, 2025

• Noting an increase in applications developed by AI tools (with as many as 40 applications submitted by some investigators), the NIH announced that it will limit the numbers of proposals per calendar year: Beginning September 25, 2025: 
  • "Applications that are either substantially developed by AI or containing sections substantially developed by AI are not considered the original ideas of applicants and will not be considered by NIH.
  • NIH will also only accept up to six new, renewal, resubmission, or revision applications from an individual PD/PI (Program Director/Principal Investigator) or Multiple Principal Investigator for all council rounds in a calendar year.  For more details on applicability, investigator roles, and impacted application types, please see these new FAQs." 

The NIH Office of Science Policy has just released a request for information (RFI - NOT-OD-25-138) on article publishing cost limits for NIH-funded manuscripts.

This notice is a follow-up to the announcement by the NIH Office for Science Policy (directly below this section) to limit publishing costs for NIH-funded manuscripts.

Responses to the RFI will shape the limits for article publishing costs that are allowable to be charged to NIH awards, and whether they will be capped per manuscript, per life of the award, or some combination of these limits (or NO allowable publishing costs at all). The NIH is proposing five options for respondents to consider. 

In a July 8, 2025 NIH news item, the NIH announced they will address the issue of high article publishing charges (APCs) charged by journal publishers:

... As part of its ongoing commitment to scientific transparency and responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced plans to implement a new policy that will cap how much publishers can charge NIH-supported scientists to make their research findings publicly accessible.

...

To address this imbalance, NIH will introduce a cap on allowable publication costs starting in Fiscal Year (FY) 2026, ensuring that publication fees remain reasonable across the research ecosystem. The policy aims to curb excessive APCs and ensure the broad dissemination of research findings without unnecessary financial barriers.

There was no new policy yet linked to this announcement. 

It was unclear whether the NIH plans to attempt to place a cap on APCs charged by publishers and journals themselves, or if it will place the cap on NIH award recipients' grant budgets for publishing costs. (Update: the RFI listed above suggests that the caps will be placed on allowable costs for grant budgets.)