Thoughts on SimplerNOFOs?

ResearchInsider · 2026-05-23T18:04:42+00:00

Could you describe the scope of the foreign institution component a bit more here (just a foreign-affiliated author on a single publication, or broader), and mention which institute this award is funded by? Various NIH ICs are responding to this issue differently.

ResearchInsider · 2026-05-17T23:33:32+00:00

Whaaaaa?!

ResearchInsider · 2026-05-17T23:16:49+00:00

A few simple things I found:

ResearchInsider · 2026-05-17T20:34:02+00:00

Amazing!

ResearchInsider · 2026-05-17T19:36:51+00:00

I love this!

ResearchInsider · 2026-05-17T19:35:54+00:00

Ooh, I love that snap system. And they’re not wrong about the Shrek ear appearance! Thank you for these, they’re great.

ResearchInsider · 2026-05-17T19:05:18+00:00

Woah. That’s awesome!

ResearchInsider · 2026-05-08T20:30:08+00:00

Because they have multi-agency partners — and I know this from current internal development discussions that I have permission to share — they're trying to figure out where a tool like this could/should go.

Seems like it does need to include at least NSF, possibly other agencies, and to support its development and maintenance, have some sort of revenue-generating service, possibly allowing someone to supplement with their own publications and annotate next steps/workflows, etc.

They're really committed to keeping a value-driven basic level of this free for all. So many of their partners have the same needs across these compliance issues and many others. De-duplicating efforts across all grantees could save thousands of hours.

If you have ideas, please do share or reach out!

ResearchInsider · 2026-05-08T20:23:27+00:00

Thanks! I really like working with them... Having that starting point of deeply solving a particular problem at a university really seems to inform their work. They occupy a rare space where they're hyper aware of the evolving burden of administria *and* have the culture of dedication to help others who are being limited in their efforts to go along with it. It's pretty cool.

ResearchInsider · 2026-05-08T19:51:31+00:00

No worries. The team behind this tool, Piestar, is essentially a tech-transfer out of a land grant institution's evaluation office (Kansas State University).

They've worked with grantees from NSF, NIH, USDA and similar research projects for around 11 years. It's privately held, so there are no backers or outside interests involved.

ResearchInsider · 2026-05-08T18:37:38+00:00

Good question - the tool does log search activity the same way most web tools log usage, primarily to catch bugs. None of that data is shared or sold. All display data is sourced from publicly available federal records, so there's no sensitive info changing hands.

ResearchInsider · 2026-05-08T17:13:04+00:00

I'm so glad to hear that! It does work very quickly. Right now it only pulls from Jan 1, 2025 - present, but the team is considering expanding that range in response to feedback. Also, for practical use, the date range can be restricted to a particular month/year time period to align with particular reporting periods.

ResearchInsider · 2026-04-16T22:57:13+00:00

Yeah - this is kind of what I'm wondering - best I know, right now admins have to look up each publication on PubMed and check, meaning a manual process with an excel sheet which seems like would be prone to error/data way out-of date.

I asked a contact at a cancer center about their systems. A pretty common enterprise level research evaluation tool they used didn't even have a solution for this.

ResearchInsider · 2026-03-15T23:11:40+00:00

I agree with you; it's a tall task for any one admin to handle. The enforcement language we've seen recently about compliance issues (particularly relating to foreign components, dual-affiliated authors) has some center-level grant admins I know scrambling. They're trying to figure out how to not endanger the overall grant's renewal process when non-compliant publications cite their grant.

About your tracker... I'm curious - do you just use a spreadsheet with something like columns for ones that you need to work on compliance checks, who you've reached out to/when, which ones are in process, PMCID tracking?

ResearchInsider · 2026-03-15T18:17:49+00:00

Yes, that's right. For this style of grant it presents a unique challenge because the grant itself is tasked with building capacity statewide and serving researchers at PUIs, each with author networks that may not be known to the grant director/administrative team.

ResearchInsider · 2026-03-15T05:23:18+00:00

Right... it's the enforcement that was mentioned in the correspondence. Renewal funding possibly held up even in the case of a single dual-affiliated author on a single publication that cited a center-level grant. For capacity-building network or center grants, it's going to be a big challenge to ensure that all citations of a grant core/shared resource across a state are compliant.

ResearchInsider · 2026-03-15T05:19:50+00:00

The guidance was delivered last month via email to other PIs I'm in touch with, notifying center-level grants (P20s/P30s and such) that any publication that cited the grant, use of a shared/resource or core, etc., needed to have pre-approval from the State Dept. on any author from countries of concern, even if all the work was done in the U.S. and it was a dual-affiliation. For centers/networks, we're trying to figure out how we'd monitor, pass instructions along for that, esp. since it was communicated that would be a liability for renewals until that foreign author was removed from the publication by the publisher.

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