1. Home
  2. Recipients
  3. Submitting Data on R&D Contracts
  4. Tips for Writing Text About R&D Contract Projects

Tips for Writing Text About R&D Contract Projects

Learn about NIH’s expectations and why it’s important to develop strong titles, abstracts, and specific aims for projects funded under NIH RD contracts.

Why this Information is Important

Information about NIH funded projects needs to be clear, accurate, and descriptive for two important reasons.
 
  1. Much of the information is made available to the public. The titles, abstracts, and funding appear in RePORTER, NIH’s public searchable database of funded projects. It is important that people looking to understand the projects NIH funds (researchers, congressional staffers, the general public, and others) can understand the work being accomplished with NIH funding and who is doing that work.
     
  2. It’s used for public reporting. NIH relies on project titles, abstracts and specific aims to feed systems and processes that develop public budget reports by research areas, conditions, and diseases. Congress and the public rely on these reports to understand the distribution of NIH funding. NIH systems search for keywords in titles and abstracts, weighing where they appear and the frequency of appearance, to assign R&D projects to categories for reporting. (Learn more about Research Categorization and Disease Condition (RCDC) Process)

Tips for Developing Project Titles, Abstracts, and Specific Aims

  1. Write abstracts broadly and use specific aims to capture specificity.

  2. Be succinct. In the abstract, be succinct in describing your project and its relevance to public health. Do not include proprietary or confidential information in the abstract as funded project abstracts are viewable to the public on RePORTER and RePORT. Specific aims are viewable only by NIH.

  3. Make sure that your project title, abstract, and specific aims clearly state all research areas relevant to your project. This allows our systems to properly classify the project into multiple categories if needed for reporting purposes.

  4. Use specific scientific terminology. In the title be sure to include the primary research area(s), condition(s), or disease(s) using specific scientific terminology to allow our systems to appropriately categorize the project for reporting. 

  5. Stay focused. In the specific aims, when addressing your “broad, long-term objectives,” keep responses relevant to the specific problem, existing paradigm, or stated hypothesis. Avoid overstating your project’s goals.

  6. Use specific topic information and related concepts. Try not to refer to irrelevant or loosely-related concepts, as these terms can affect how your project is categorized and reported. (for example, avoid overuse of a broad term like dementia if the project is looking at Lewy body dementia specifically.)

  7. Expand abbreviations. Spell out all acronyms upon first use.

  8. Avoid negative phrases. Phrases such as, “This project will not study lung cancer.” May lead our systems to miscategorize the project.

  9. Avoid referring to past or future efforts. Describe current activities to avoid mis-categorization of the project.

  10. Proofread. Confirm title, abstract, and specific aims are about the current year research and make sure all terms are spelled properly.