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		NIHR Central Commissioning Facility (NIHR CCF)

NIHR Senior Investigators: Frequently Asked Questions

NIHR SENIOR INVESTIGATORS

INVITATION TO SUBMIT FULL APPLICATION

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

This supplements the main guidance which is set out in the document NIHR Senior Investigators: Invitation to Submit Full Application. Applicants who have queries are strongly advised to check below before contacting NIHR-CCF.

More information will be added here as further questions arise within the 2010 round of NIHR Senior Investigator competition.

ELIGIBILITY AND FUNDING

Q: Who is eligible to apply to become an NIHR Senior Investigator?

A: Only NIHR Investigators are eligible to apply to become NIHR Senior Investigators.

NIHR Investigators are all those researchers who:

• conduct or support patient or people-based research;
• whose salary is funded as a research cost from NIHR funding and/or DH Policy Research Programme (PRP) funding; and
• are employed by an NHS organisation or by a University or a Charity based in England.

The NIHR Programme/PRP funding which supports a faculty member’s salary may be paid direct to their employer, or may be paid to a partner organisation that then makes a funding transfer to the faculty member’s employer.

Q: What funding sources may support NIHR Investigators?

A: NIHR Investigators’ salaries may be supported in part or in whole by the following sources of NIHR and Department of Health Policy Research Programme funding:

• Biomedical Research Centres
• Biomedical Research Units
• Challenge Fund for Innovation
• Clinical Trial Units
• Cochrane Review Groups
• Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care
• Department of Health Policy Research Programme
• Department of Health Policy Research Programme Research Units
• Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Programme
• Health Technology Assessment Programme
• Hubs for Trials Methodology Research (HTMR)
• Invention for Innovation Programme including the former New and Emerging Applications of Technology Programme and the Health Technology Devices  Programme
• Methodology Research Programme (MRP)
• MRC-NIHR joint funding
• NHS Physical Environment Research and Development Programme
• NIHR Academic Units
• NIHR School for Primary Care Research
• NIHR School for Social Care Research
• Patient Research Cohorts Initiative
• Programme Grants for Applied Research
• Research Centres for Patient Safety & Service Quality
• Research for Innovation, Speculation and Creativity Programme
• Research for Patient Benefit Programme
• Service Delivery and Organisation Programme
• Technology Assessment Review Teams
• Wellcome Trust-NIHR joint funding

Q: Are applications eligible from applicants whose NIHR/PRP grant predates Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) methodology?

A: To be eligible to apply, researchers must be funded to do research by NIHR/PRP and therefore their contribution will usually appear as a ‘Research Cost’ on a successful grant application. A significant exception to this arises from grants awarded before the introduction of Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) methodology on 1st April 2006. Individuals who are named but not costed, but who nevertheless make a significant contribution to research funded by such grants are eligible to apply.

Q: Are individuals eligible to apply whose significant contribution to research does not show as a research cost on a NIHR/PRP grant issued after 1st April 2006?

A: An individual who is making a significant contribution that does not appear as a ‘Research Cost’ on a grant issued after the introduction of TRAC methodology on 1st April 2006 should, to demonstrate their eligibility, ensure a revised budget for that project is agreed within their institution. The onus is on the applicant to demonstrate their eligibility. Applicants should ensure that revised budgets are in place by the time of the Declarations and Signatures form deadline of 6th August 2010.

Q: Are individuals whose relevant NIHR/PRP grant is due shortly to end eligible to apply?

A: Yes: applicants whose NIHR Investigator status is supported by research funding which extends to any date after 30th July 2010 are eligible to apply.

Q: Are holders of personal awards administered through the NIHR Trainees Coordinating Centre eligible to apply?

A: No. Regardless of level of seniority, individuals funded via a personal award are funded as NIHR Trainees, not as NIHR Investigators, and therefore are not eligible to apply - unless they also have NIHR project, programme, unit or centre funding.

Q: Are individuals whose only source of NIHR support is Flexibility and Sustainability Funding eligible to apply?

A: No. Researchers whose only source of NIHR support is Flexibility and Sustainability Funding (FSF) are NOT eligible to apply. This is because FSF funding has not been awarded by NIHR following open competition with peer review.

Q: Are researchers eligible to apply whose employer that administers their NIHR or PRP funding, is not based in England?

A: Researchers whose employer is not based in England are not eligible to apply to become Senior Investigators.

Q. How is NHS Trust affiliation defined, as requested on the application form?

A: You should name only one NHS Trust with which you hold a substantive or an honorary contract. Please ensure that if you do not also name this NHS Trust as your Institution in Section 2 Contact Details, that you include it and the position you hold there in Section 3 Summary of present and previous positions held.

If you hold contracts with more than one NHS Trust you should still name only one NHS Trust on the application form. Substantive contracts should take precedence over honorary contracts. If you hold more than one honorary contract please select the Trust with which you do most research.

If you do not hold either a substantive or an honorary contract with an NHS Trust then please enter nothing in this section.

 Q. Where can I find further information on Patient and Public Involvement in Research?

A: You can find further information on the INVOLVE guidelines at http://www.invo.org.uk/. INVOLVE is an NIHR funded organisation supporting researchers to involve patients and the public in all stages of research. For examples of how current Senior Investigators have involved patients and public in their research, please see the document relating to Senior Investigators and Public Involvement, found in SI FINAL PAPER.pdf.

APPLYING VIA THE NIHR CCF WEBSITE

Applications to be an NIHR Senior Investigator can only be submitted via the NIHR CCF Website.

Applications cannot be processed after the closing deadline for electronic submission, which is 4.00 p.m. on Friday 30th July 2010. Further to this, new applications cannot be initiated after 11.59 p.m. on Tuesday 27th July 2010.

Q: What browsers and software are compatible with the NIHR CCF Website for submission of applications?

A: Applicants are advised to use Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Windows operating system. To avoid problems of incompatibility with NIHR CCF systems applicants are advised not to submit applications via alternative browsers such as Firefox, Safari, Opera and Mozilla.

Q: How should applicants submit details of research funding where an appropriate reference number or project title cannot be found or does not exist?

A: Not all the NIHR/PRP grants that support NIHR Investigator status have an appropriate reference number as requested on the application form. This applies for Research Unit, Centre and NHS Estates research grants. In these cases applicants are advised to substitute their job title for ‘Project Name’, and to substitute their place of work including the name of their NIHR funded Research Unit or Centre in place of ‘Project Number’.

 Q: Can Research Costs paid from an Infrastructure award (e.g. the NIHR Centres, Units and CLAHRCs) for a specific project awarded following peer review be included in the list of grants received?

A: Yes, Research costs from NIHR Infrastructure can be listed in the 'Research Funding' list on the application page.

Q: I entered my grant amount and get an error saying "integer must be greater than zero". What do I do?

A: Please do not enter the pound sign, comma symbol or decimal point.

SUBMITTING PUBLICATION DETAILS

The selection process for NIHR Senior Investigators will be informed by independent bibliometric analysis of applicants’ publications within their self-identified field of research, to be carried out by RAND Europe. This offers the most objective available measure of an individual’s contribution within their field. It is vital that applicants submit details of their publications in a way that allows bibliometric analysis.

Q: How should applicants decide which fields of research to select on the online form?

A: Applicants should choose the two most appropriate categories given on the Research Field page. These categories will not be used to determine research standing through bibliometric analysis but will be used to assess distribution of awards within research fields. If you do not believe that you are represented by more than one field, please select the same field in both drop-down lists.

Q: If an applicant’s research does not readily fit within the research field categories available on the online form, can the applicant submit details of their publications using the ‘other’ category?

A: Yes: where research is in a relatively narrow field with findings published in generalist journals research field may be given as ‘Other’. However applicants should be aware that the ‘Other’ category may be heavily subscribed and thus highly competitive relative to the specified fields.

Q: How will the bibliometric analysis be conducted?

A: The bibliometric analysis for the NIHR Faculty applications will identify applicants' citation records for their submitted papers. The analysis will identify highly cited publications, publication volume and citations in high impact journals correcting for research field in order to ensure that we as far as possible can make "like for like" comparisons.

Q: Will my particular field of research be disadvantaged in the bibliometric analysis, especially compared to medical specialties?

A: This should not be the case. The analysis of the publications submitted will be normalised by comparison to other papers published in the same subject area.

Q: Can you explain in more detail how the bibliometric analysis and this normalisation process will work?

A: The Research Field categories used in the online form are only used to group the results of bibliometric analysis of individuals’ research output.

Setting to one side for the purposes of this answer the complexity of papers that fall in multiple categories, each paper that an applicant submits will fall into a particular subject-based ISI journal set. This could be any of the over 250 ISI subject categories and need not be related to the subject category into which the applicant places him or herself (The ISI Journal Subject Categories are a sensible level of aggregation for analysis given that as field size decreases the number of papers in the field decreases so the robustness of the averages falls).

Each paper is compared against the other papers in this subject-based ISI journal set. This reveals how well cited it is compared to the field and whether it is particularly highly cited in the field (for example in the top 10% of citations). This analysis is then repeated for each paper that the applicant submits. These normalised measures of impact - level of citation and whether a paper is highly cited - are aggregated to give a score for how well the applicant’s papers are cited in whichever field they occur.

If it is necessary to arrive at a provisional shortlist based on the bibliometric analysis of research output, a set of cut-offs are then developed and applied to these scores.

The applicant is then listed along with the other researchers who have classified themselves into the same field for the presentation of the results. But the important thing to note is that this applicant is not being compared directly against the other applicants in this group – rather each of their individual publications has been compared with the other publications in that particular field.

What this means is that the research field category selected in the online form does not affect the analysis of publications. We have used ISI subject categories plus additional priority areas to categorise researchers as a useful starting point for a way to divide patient and people based health and social care research, rather than for any deeper reasons relating to bibliometric analysis.

Q: What is the significance of Web of Science or PubMed reference numbers when submitting publication details?

A: Publications can only be included in the bibliometric analysis if referenced in Web of Science or in PubMed. It is therefore vital to enter the Web of Science or PubMed  publication reference in the Publication page. Web of Science ‘ISI code’ references are preferred.

Q: Can you clarify if Cochrane Database Review publications can be included in the Publication page?

A: Many of the Cochrane Database Review (CDR) papers (articles, correspondences, editorials, reviews) are now covered by the Web of Science (mainly 2005 onwards) and are considered as regular entries in the database. Most of the CDR papers are treated as reviews, and have good coverage. These should be included in the applications and will be in the analysis.

Q: How can Web of Science ‘UT code’ references for publications be obtained?

A: All Web of Science searches have a ‘ISI Tag’ that applicants need to enter on the Publication page. There are a number of ways to obtain this code, which is 15 digits long, and has no punctuation or breaks. When entering the 'ISI Tag' into the publication page, only type the 15-digit number (without the 'ISI' or 'WOS' letters preceding the number). 

Method 1: Via Web of Science Search

• search Web of Science for relevant publications;
• select the relevant hits;
• using the 'save' button on the right hand side of the screen save the hits to file;
• use the ‘import to spreadsheet’ option saving the hits as ‘tab delimited for windows’;
• view the output in Windows Notepad or similar. The hidden tag will be visible in the saved file.

Method 2: Viewing the ISI tag of an individual record

• view the record in Web of Science;
• right-click on the page;
• from the resulting menu, select ‘view source’ which will display the source code for the page;
• identify the ISI tag.

Method 3: Using EndNote bibliographic software:

• in EndNote the ISI Tag is the same as the Accession Number; 

Method 4: Using Reference Manager bibliographic software

• in Reference Manager the ISI Tag is the same as the Web URL. In this case the ISI Tag begins with ‘WOS:’

Q: How can PubMed PMID numbers be obtained?

PMID numbers are visible when papers are located in a PubMed search: all results having an associated PMID number. This should be entered directly as the publication reference in the Publication page. PMID codes are 7 or 8 digits with no breaks or punctuation. They are featured in the URL of the publication in question (e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12345678) as well as at the bottom of the page (PMID: 12345678)

Q: For what period should applicants submit publication data?

A: Applicants should indicate on the Publications page their ten best publications from the previous 5 years. Applicants should also list all publications from 2000 to 2009, inclusive. If applicants do not submit all their publications they risk being excluded from the competition.

Q: How should publication details be submitted?

A: Applicants are likely to find it most convenient to use reference management software to manage information about their publications

Where the reference management software does not store PubMed Identification numbers or Web of Science ISI codes these should be exported from PubMed/WoS search exports as explained above and pasted manually into the Publications page.

Q: How should date of publication be submitted?

A: Publications must be published within the specified dates. Publications in press are not admissible. The publication page asks for publication dates that include day, month and year. Applicants should enter ‘01’ for date and ‘01’ for month if the precise date is not available.

Q: Can publication lists be submitted as a csv or excel format?

A: No, all publications need to be individually entered in the webform in the Senior Investigators application pages.

Quick Questions:

Q: Can I cite papers which I think are important but do not have PMID/WoS codes?
A: Yes. They will not be bibliometrically analysed but the panel will see them.

Q: Can I edit my publications/grants once I have submitted them (but not completed the whole application process)?
A: Yes. Click the edit button on the right hand side of the list view.

Q: I can’t log in.
A: Make sure you are at www.nihr-ccf.org.uk/extranet, not www.nihr.ac.uk or the NIHR portal. Your username is usually your university or trust email address.

Q: Can I reorder my publications/grants, e.g. by date?
A: No, we will do this later, there is no need for you to do this.

Q: I am not sure if I am eligible
A: See the list at the top of this page (also in the document NIHR Senior Investigators: Invitation to Submit Full Application). If you do not currently receive funding through any of those programmes, you are not eligible to apply in this round.