I’m often asked whether applicants to the NIH Career Development Award (K Series) need to have publications with their primary mentor in order to be competitive. The resounding answer is “yes”! Even though this is not written anywhere in NIH’s official guidance, it is a consistent reality in the field.
I know that it sounds counterintuitive: You’re applying for funding to develop expertise in an area, and yet you need already to have demonstrated some expertise in that area. But publishing with your primary mentor provides proof of that initial expertise. It also demonstrates that there is an established relationship with this mentor.
If you do not yet have a first-author publication with your primary mentor, you could:
- wait until you have the first-author publication with your primary mentor;
- if you have a draft manuscript in review, submit the K application and hope that you could update publication information by the post-submission material deadline of 30 days before the study section meets; or
- consider putting in the application and aim to have the publication in press by the time of a resubmission, knowing that few applicants get funded on the first try anyway. This last option might make sense if you don’t have time, for example, if you are concerned about preserving your ESI funding advantage on a future R01 and don’t want to spend many years preparing for, applying for, and conducting a K. Putting in a K submission without the first-author publication would allow you to gather valuable information about what reviewers want to see on your K resubmission. In general, I’m not a fan of researchers submitting an application that they know is unlikely to be funded. But occasionally, it makes sense in terms of the longer-term grantsmanship strategy.
In roughly two decades of reviewing hundreds of K summary statements, I cannot think of a single instance where an applicant was funded without a first-author publication with their primary mentor in the field in which they were applying. And I can think of many cases where reviewers explicitly said, “Come back when you have that publication.”
