1) What do I need to consider when defining a portfolio for analysis?

• Click here for a checklist to start you thinking about the decisions to make before undertaking a portfolio analysis

2) What are the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)?

• Click here for a summary of MeSH
• To read more about MeSH go to https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/ 

3) What is the difference between application ID, grant number, and core grant number?

• Click here to learn more about NIH grant/application numbering

4) NIH grants are linked to its publications through their core project number

• Click here to read more about grant to publication links

5) What is provisional Relative Citation Ratio (RCR)?

RCRs for papers published in the previous two years are flagged as "provisional", to reflect that citation metrics for newer articles are not necessarily as stable as they are for older articles. Provisional RCRs are provided for papers published the previous year, if they have received with 5 citations or more, despite being, in many cases, less than a year old. An exception is made for these papers as these are deemed to be accruing citations quickly enough for calculations to be very reliable (Field Citation Rates are over 90% stable over a two-year period after 5 citations have accrued, see: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002541.g003 ).

The current year in the database increments with the NIH Fiscal Year every October. All papers published the year before the previous year receive provisional RCRs. For example, in months prior to October 2019 (NIH Fiscal Year 2019), papers from 2018 receive provisional RCRs if they have 5 citations or more, and all papers from 2017 receive provisional RCRs. In October 2019 (the start of NIH Fiscal Year 2020), papers from 2019 receive provisional RCRs if they have 5 citations or more, and all papers from 2018 receive provisional RCRs. The provisional flag is removed from 2017 papers.

For this reason calculations using provisional RCR for papers in the most recent year need to be treated with care. RCR is only calculated for papers with a relatively high RCR.

Provisional RCR values are available in iSearch and iCite.

6) Why does the co-occurence export in the Publications module of iSearch 2.6 include weird characters when opened in Excel?

The file is a .tsv file and needs to be imported as a UTF-8 file. See instructions here. There are also details in the iSearch user guide: https://itools.od.nih.gov/help/faq/exports#exports7