by

Preparing for the New PAPPG: Biosketches and Current and Pending Support

The new version of the Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide, or PAPPG (NSF 20-1), goes into effect on June 1st, 2020, and there are some things you can do now to help prepare for your next proposal submission.

Specifically, we wanted to highlight some changes to the preparation and submission of the Biographical Sketch (Biosketch) and Current and Pending Support documents.

Biosketches

Your Biosketch must be submitted using one of two pre-approved formats, either 1) using SciENcv: Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae or 2) NSF’s Fillable PDF. Be sure and read the available FAQs and information about the two pre-approved formats and see our breakdown below.

  • NSF is partnering with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use SciENcv: Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae. It will provide an NSF-approved format for both the Biographical Sketch and Current and Pending Support sections of an NSF proposal.
  • SciENcv allows proposers to integrate their ORCiD profile enabling automatic filling of the Biographical Sketch. Additional information is available on the ORCiD website.
  • SciENcv will produce NSF-compliant PDF versions of these documents. Proposers must save these documents and submit them as part of their proposals via FastLane, Research.gov or Grants.gov.
  • Additional resources including video tutorials are available on the SciENcv website.
  • You also have the option to use the NSF Fillable PDF if you do not want to use SciENcv. You must download the fillable PDF form from the NSF biographical sketch and then submit the completed forms as part of their proposals via FastLane, Research.gov or Grants.gov.

Current and Pending Support

Just like the Biosketch, you now must use the new NSF-approved formats for submitting your current and pending support. These include SciENcv or the NSF Fillable PDF.

To listen to even more information, NSF recently recorded a webinar about the requirement to use an NSF-approved format for both the biographical sketch and current & pending support documents as part of proposals submitted to NSF.

If you try and submit a Biosketch or your Current and Pending Support after June 1st, 2020 and do not use these NSF-approved formats, you will receive an error message and will be unable to submit your proposal. DEB Program Officers tried out SciENcv and found it was very easy to use and minimized some of the repetitive work of updating these documents, but if you don’t want to bother with setting up an account, the fillable PDFs are great options.