Workflows in Personal and Professional Productivity

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New NIH Grant Requirements - Critical Evaluation of Existing Literature

For those of you that write NIH grants for a living, you are well aware of the changes required for new grant applications in 2016. In an effort to improve rigor and transparency as well as to increase reproducibility, The NIH now requires the grants to be written in a whole new way. A major part of these changes has to do with critical evaluation of existing literature.In light of these changes I have been formally appending my manuscripts a new way. In previous entries I’ve written how I take notes while reading, then extract these highlights and notes to their own individual files. Now, as I'm reading, I make and effort to record perceived strengths weaknesses of each study appending my comments with the text “StrengthX” or “WeaknessX.” I then extract each comment as its own text file. When writing grants or manuscripts, using Devonthink, I’m able to find similar notes to the one I’m reading. By appending StrengthX or WeaknessX, I’m able to single out my own comments instead of a seeing every instance of each word.In a future entry, I’ll talk more about the ways I’ve updated finding extracted information using Devonthink (and Tinderbox). A good portion of my writing workflow from 2015 has changed. I will write an updated writing workflow after the official release of Scrivener iOS.I'd be interested to hear how other academics are dealing with the changes at the NIH. Please leave a note in the comments below.