NIH biosketch format and instructions for the Common Forms

What changed in 2026

NIH adopted the federal Common Forms for the biographical sketch in NOT-OD-26-018, released December 2, 2025. The Common Forms are approved for every federal research funding agency, and each agency has its own version. NIH’s adds the NIH Biographical Sketch Supplement, and SciENcv makes both in one interface, with one certification and one PDF. The same notice adopted the Current and Pending (Other) Support Common Form, a separate document also made in SciENcv.

The forms became required for due dates on or after January 25, 2026. A leniency period followed and ended on May 7, 2026 (NOT-OD-26-079). Since May 8, 2026, NIH’s systems stop any application, progress report, Just-in-Time submission or prior approval request that uses the old format pages.

The old five-page limit is gone. The combined PDF has no page limit, and the limits on each field set its length. Fellowship applicants no longer add Section D, Scholastic Performance, which NIH now neither requires nor accepts.

What the Common Form asks for

The Common Form’s instructions ask for four sections. SciENcv sorts the dated entries newest first by start date.

List each postdoctoral or fellowship program as its own entry, and include your bachelor’s degree or other initial professional education.

List all your academic and institutional appointments, across your whole career. Professional appointments outside your primary organization, such as editorial service for a journal, a seat on a government advisory board or an office in a professional society, must be listed when they were active in the last three years, and older ones may be listed when they are relevant (NIH’s FAQ).

A product can be a paper, a conference presentation, a dataset, software, a patent or another work that is citable and accessible. For a paper with many authors, you may list one or more authors and then “et al.” Leave out personal details such as a home address, a personal phone number or marital status.

What the NIH supplement asks for

The NIH Biographical Sketch Supplement holds the three parts NIH uses to assess your qualifications for your role in the project. Each has its own limit.

• Personal Statement, up to 3,500 characters. Why you are well suited to your role in this project. Relevant factors can include your training, earlier work on the topic, technical expertise, collaborators or environment, and projects from the past three years.
• Honors, up to 15 entries. Students, postdocs and junior faculty include scholarships, traineeships, fellowships and development awards. Clinicians include licensures and specialty board certifications.
• Contributions to Science, up to five, each up to 2,000 characters. For each, give the background, the central finding, its influence on science or health, and your own role. You may mention work still under development, such as a manuscript not yet accepted. Graduate students and postdocs may describe two or three.

To point a reviewer to your work, refer in parentheses to any of the ten products on your Common Form, such as (Lane et al., 2024) or the product’s PMCID or PMID. How to write the personal statement has two worked statements, and the NIH biosketch example shows every section filled in.

ORCID, certification and submission

The PID field holds your ORCID iD, which tells you apart from every researcher with a similar name. Without an ORCID iD linked to your eRA Commons account, you cannot submit the forms (NIH’s FAQ).

1. 1

   Link ORCID to eRA Commons. In eRA Commons, open your Personal Profile and connect your ORCID iD (eRA’s ORCID help). One ORCID iD links to one Commons account.

2. 2

   Fill in both forms in SciENcv. Sign in with ORCID, as NIH recommends, and start an NIH Biographical Sketch Common Form. Check that your ORCID iD shows in the PID field.

3. 3

   Certify it yourself. Only you can certify your forms. A delegate can fill them in and then send you a notification.

4. 4

   Attach the PDF as it is. Attach the certified PDF to the Biographical Sketch attachment field of the R&R Senior/Key Person Profile (Expanded) form. You may rename the file, but do not flatten it or save it again in another program.

The eRA Commons username in the application’s Credential field must belong to a profile that holds the same ORCID iD as your forms (NOT-OD-26-079). The certification’s date must fall within the 12 months before you submit (the Common Form’s instructions). The SciENcv guide walks through each screen.

Prepare the words in ScienceDex

SciENcv makes the certified PDF, but the work comes first: a personal statement for each project, the products closely related to it, and up to five contributions to science.

ScienceDex keeps your academic CV. In its NIH biosketch, your appointments, education and honors come from that CV, and you keep up to ten biosketch versions, one for each application, each with its own personal statement, products and contributions.

Download Word gives you the same sections in the same order as the NIH forms, so you can check the file and paste your words into SciENcv.

Faculty privacy sets out who can open your CV.