Bibliography and References Cited

Bibliography Guidelines

The Bibliography & References Cited section is required for all NIH applications unless otherwise stated. It should include any and all references cited in your research plan. NIH allows any standard format and suggests that investigators consider using the NLM format. Citations within bibliographies, similar to biosketch citations, must comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.

While there is no required citation style, best practices indicate that you should include authors' names in correct order (NIH allows the use of “et al”), article and journal title, volume number, page numbers, year of publication and PMCID#, if applicable. PMID#s are not required but may be included.

It is important to note that URLs are only allowed when an article is published online (and the URL is therefore part of the official citation), or when a manuscript is publicly available online for free (and that publication does not have a PMCID#).

Note: If citations are included in other components of the grant application, such as the Human Subjects sections, those citations should still be included in the overall bibliography, not embedded within individual documents.

For multi-component center grants, each component (e.g., Overall, Admin Core, Research Projects, and Research/Service Cores) typically will each have their own bibliographies.

PMCID Numbers: NIH requires that you provide PMCID#s for applicable papers (those arising from NIH support) when citing papers that were (co-) authored by the applicant. If a PMCID# is not yet assigned, citing NIHMS numbers or stating “PMC Journal – In Process” is also acceptable.

Page Limit: None.

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