Created by the NIH Center for Scientific Review, the online Assisted Referral Tool (ART) recommends appropriate study sections for grant applicants. It’s particularly helpful given the large number of NIH study sections (175 as of August 2020).
Each study section recommendation is based on the application’s scientific content alone. Once an investigator enters application text in ART, the tool uses natural language processing and large-scale machine learning to compare the text entered with that in previous applications (up to 10 years’ worth) to identify which study sections have evaluated relevant topics. ART then produces a list of study sections with “strong” and “possible” relevance to the entered application (usually 3-6 sections per group).
To enhance the performance of ART in recommending study sections, enter the title of your application into the title box in ART, and enter your proposal abstract and specific aims in the main text box. Applicants must include at least 10 scientific concepts in the application title and main text; these can include disease names, drugs, molecules, and methods (as defined in the Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization thesaurus.) ART does not keep the text of your application or its indices after this procedure.
Read more of The Write Stuff
