PHPB 8100: Research Tools for NIH Grantwriting (F31)

Your F31 fellowship application emphasizes a need or an opportunity in your subject area. Review the information you retrieved in your background searches:

• Did investigators refer to areas for further exploration or knowledge gaps?
• Were there areas or topics you noticed that were not addressed in any of the literature you retrieved? 
• Was there an innovation or opportunity you noticed that could provide a different approach to current issues, that you did not see covered in the literature already? 

Search the literature again, this time with a focus on your specific idea. The aim is to pull up any information about that idea, if it exists, or to verify that it is indeed not something covered in the literature already. Try to include grey literature in your search to find the most recent information possible, if available. 

Revisit your search documentation to record your revised searches - ideally, you will not find a great number of results covering your idea, indicating that there is ample room for your own work on the matter and bolstering your argument for the value of your unique contribution. 

Grey literature is generally understood to mean literature that is not formally published in common or conventional sources, like books or journal articles. It may be described as ephemeral, invisible, informal, underground, etc. - that is, literature that may be unevaluated and not peer-reviewed.
Including, but not limited to...