NIH Training Tables

This module will discuss webpages for the following topics:

• Software for Tables 5 & 8, the publication and outcomes tables, has the biggest time savings. Additionally, the CTSA Common Metrics table can be produced with this tool.
• The tool for Tables 2-4, the faculty and institution tables, cuts down on communication time.
• The survey for Table 1, the program census, coordinates an institution’s program data.
• Future directions are currently considered concerning the NIH’s online submission tools.

Pages for these tables are under the General menu in Flight Tracker.

Tables 5 & 8: The Publication and Outcomes Tables

NIH Table 5 lists all trainees, their mentors, and all publications produced from their training. NIH Table 8 lists the career outcomes for all trainees, including any degrees, first jobs, current jobs, and federal grant awards. Because of the bulk work represented and the overlap in data, these two tables represent the biggest time savings of any Flight Tracker support. Your efforts should first focus on these two tables.

To use these tables, you first need to sign your scholars up to the appropriate grant. They can participate with a predoc project, a postdoc project, or both. You will have to provide their starting date on the grant, their ending date (if relevant), and the topic of their main project. If you are producing the CTSA Common Metrics table, you also need to know whether they are engaged with the CTSA.

After opening the page for Tables 5 & 8 under the General menu, you’ll find a link for the Quick Signup Form. Open this page to add scholars for the predoc and/or postdoc sections of your grant. This page will show all scholars in your Flight Tracker project. The first column represents names; the second column, predoc appointments; the third column, postdoc appointments; and the rightmost column needs entry for CTSA engagement.

Not everyone in Flight Tracker needs to be a part of the grant. In other words, you can skip people if desired. You need at least a starting date to sign someone up. The box will turn green when they have enough information to sign up, but please keep entering as much data as you can for the scholar. The table requires all items. If they are currently on the grant, you do not need to enter an end date.

When done, click the Save Settings button at the bottom so that Flight Tracker will transform your data into REDCap. If you do not click this button, you’ll lose the data you entered, so this step is crucial. When you return to the front page, you’ll see what scholars you have signed up for which grant.

Table 5: The Publications Table

On the main page, you can see two sub-tables for Table 5, depending on whether you require predoc or postdoc information. These tables will show the publications produced during training. Because many publications are published after a scholar leaves a lab, you can specify a number of months to add to the end date. Eighteen months is suggested as a default.

Be aware that Flight Tracker will display only publications that have been approved via the Publication Wrangler. You don’t want to approve any false publications to your scholars. To use this feature, look for the page under the Wrangle menu.

Your REDCap server will likely require some time to produce this table, such as 15 to 20 minutes. This is normal and reflects that your scholars have produced a lot of publications.

When the page opens, you’ll see the table produced with red items identifying data holes. The format seeks to represent exactly the format the NIH requests. Publications are listed on the right, and the names of the trainees are bolded. Each scholar has publications represented during the timespan you configured when requesting the table. If the scholar does not have an end date, publications will continue up until the current date.

If you notice that you know how to fill some of the data holes, you can enter those data on the scholar’s REDCap record. Not only will it help fill the training table, but it will also help with using Flight Tracker features in the future. To find out where to fill the data, you should hold your mouse steady over the header of the column. A tooltip should pop up with a description of where to put the data. This trick is also true for the next table, Table 8.

Finally, for final polish, you should copy and paste the table into either a word processor or spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel.

Table 8: The Outcomes Table

Table 8 represents tangible outcomes of a trainee’s time in your program, like an academic degree, a job, future grants, et cetera. These data come from a variety of sources within Flight Tracker. When you open the page, data holes are again identified in red.

You’ll likely have some holes to fill… if you can. Online professional data sources like LinkedIn can help collect the information. Unfortunately, LinkedIn’s API costs too much for Flight Tracker to use their data automatically. If you sent out surveys, each scholar’s LinkedIn URL was requested on the survey; use the link to find a scholar if it’s available.

The Summary of Support During Training is the only column not collected by Flight Tracker in REDCap. Therefore, when you enter information, Flight Tracker will save it with your project for the next time you fill out the table.

When you identify who needs what data holes filled, go to the top of the table, and steady your mouse over the column header. A tooltip will appear describing where to supply additional data in each scholar’s record.

Finally, the rightmost column will report any federal grants the scholar has received in their future work. Flight Tracker pulled these data from sweeps of your grant data and reports them in the specific format that the NIH specifies. A red X is available if you do not want to report a particular grant. Again, items that are missing or that the computer can’t understand are in red. Your final polish, which can include online searches, will improve this list. Copying and pasting this table to an external software program will help you modify the data further.

Tables 2-4: The Faculty and Institution Tables

NIH Tables 2-4 cover faculty and institutional data. Because Flight Tracker usually tracks trainees, not faculty, not as much data overlap these tables unless the trainee has become a faculty member. Therefore, there may be some overlap, but not as extensive as with Tables 5 and 8. In a change of approach, Flight Tracker attempts to cut down on time spent communicating and coordinating responses. That is, it reduces the back-and-forth spent emailing your scholars rows of their table.

The first screen for these tables will search for grants active at your institution on the submission date of your grant. You also must supply the names of the faculty that will appear on Tables 2 and 4. When your setup is complete, a big blue button will prompt you to move to the next screen.

Flight Tracker will then seek to match the faculty names to all Flight Trackers on your REDCap server. Matches will be displayed on the front page, and any names missing matches will appear in red. It is completely fine if names are missing; as mentioned before, each faculty member is not expected to be in a Flight Tracker project. When ready, you can click on the table you wish to view via the top menu.

Tables 2 & 4: Faculty Tables

Tables 2 and 4 feed off the faculty list you provided in the setup. Each faculty is listed in a row in Table 2, and each faculty’s active grants are displayed in table 4. These tables go together. Table 2 will prepopulate with any data already in Flight Tracker, but the overlap with its data is minimal. Flight Tracker simply does not track, say, the number of postdoctoral scholars in a lab. Flight Tracker does track federal grant support, and those data points will appear on Table 4.

To save time, Flight Tracker will save any entries you make on Table 2 and share that information with other groups on your REDCap server. Since you share a REDCap server, the software assumes that you’re on the same team. For each faculty member, it will save your entries along with a date so that the next person can make an informed decision about the reasonableness of their entry.

Since tables are long-term efforts, Flight Tracker offers ways for your data to persist across several sessions. You can save your entries by clicking the “Save Table” button in the menu. Further, you can export the table to a CSV by a link at the bottom of the table.

Below the table, you will find another table with ways to contact the scholar. You can contact the scholar via their email address or via a delegate’s email address. A delegate is defined as an administrator managing a scholar’s business.

If you click the button to send them an email, a yellow popup will appear with some sample text. You are encouraged to edit and personalize this text. You should put your email address in the From field. If you click Send, the system will send the scholar or their delegate the email and will affix their rows for Tables 2 and 4. It will not attach rows for other scholars.

The email will then ask them whether these data are correct and provide two buttons: Yes or No. If they click Yes, your software will show that they have confirmed their data on such-and-such date. If they click No, they will be taken to another website where they can correct their data and leave notes for you. Those data, too, will show up on your webpage after they are available. You will have to decide whether to trust or change those data and input the result on your Table 2 and/or Table 4.

Table 3: The Institution Table

Table 3 lists training grants at your institution that are active at the date of submission. They are meant to show the funding support available for your faculty members. Only grants “available to the participating faculty members for predoctoral and postdoctoral support” need to be listed.

Flight Tracker will look for such grants on the NIH RePORTER system. You can add them by clicking a button; likewise, you can remove grants by clicking a button. Each selected grant will provide a list of faculty you entered in the setup. You should check the checkbox for each faculty participating on the grant. The same persistence mechanisms are relevant: You can click the Save Table button in the menu, and you can export to a CSV below the table.

Table 1: The Program Census

NIH Training Table 1 has the least overlap with Flight Tracker data. It is only useful when several programs at an institution use Flight Tracker. The software provides a central repository where data can be shared amongst programs.

To set up, someone must first create a central project in REDCap to house the data and then provide an API token for that project to Flight Tracker. The software will take over this project and create a survey whereby programs can submit their data regularly to keep others informed about their program. All Flight Trackers on your REDCap server will share this one project, and all Flight Trackers will have access to its data.

Once set up, you should provide this link to all programs involved in the program census information for table 1. Obviously, they need to provide data to make this table useful. After someone fills out a survey, Flight Tracker automatically sends out an email requesting updated data at a regular interval. Data for predoctoral programs are requested three times per year, two-to-three months before submission deadlines. Because postdoctoral programs have less turnover, their data are requested only once per year.

The survey for table 1 also requests a “reliability index” associated with each number. Many program managers report uncertainty about the data they provide, and Flight Tracker seeks to represent such uncertainties in the data. Therefore, certainty is ranked on a scale from one to four, with one being the most uncertain and four being the most certain.

Flight Tracker lists all entries for all programs, ordered by date. You can also sort by other columns by clicking their headers. You also have the email address of whomever submitted the data in case you have further questions. You are highly encouraged to use only recent data and to reach out to the program if you have follow-up questions.

If you wish to copy a row when viewing the repository, you can click the link on the rightmost column. Then paste that row in the appropriate software program for further polish. Unnecessary columns will be removed when copying. Again, your final polish is required for the final details.

Online Submission of Data

In recent years, the NIH has sought to transition these reports to online submissions via eRA Commons. As of this writing, they support ways for you to fill out a form manually to submit their data, and Flight Tracker cannot automatically link to their software, unfortunately.

In online statements, the eRA Commons team has indicated that they wish to provide an API whereby individuals can automatically submit their training tables. Such a new setup might provide a way to automatically connect Flight Tracker with the eRA Commons. If able, Flight Tracker will attempt to make use of such a connection as soon as it can.