The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR), and its reporting units, sponsor a range of strategic initiatives to assist researchers and scholars with achieving their research goals.
Explore the following OVPR-sponsored tools designed to help investigators enhance their research collaborations, craft high-quality research publications, and improve the competitiveness of grant proposals in 2025.
Utilize a new authorship agreement tool to prevent authorship disputes
In line with best practices for avoiding authorship disputes, investigators are encouraged to talk early and often about authorship and authorship order for each project. The Office of the Vice President for Research has launched a new authorship agreement tool to help researchers facilitate proactive conversations and document the authorship designations. Using the tool, authors can indicate roles and responsibilities, authorship order, and publication goals.
Additional information about UI authorship policies and frequently asked questions are available on a new UI Authorship webpage. Questions can be directed to Mike Andrews, director of research integrity and security, OVPR-RIO@uiowa.edu.Enhance your research surveys through a nationally-representative survey panel
The Center for Social Science Innovation (CSSI) has launched two new tools that expand and enhance survey research opportunities for UI investigators. The new resources, which include access to a new subscription to a high-quality survey panel available via Verasight, and a competitive research incubation program that covers all survey costs, stem from faculty requests for additional survey support. Learn more on CSSI’s website.
Gather expert feedback on your grant proposal before submission
External review of proposals prior to submission will provide critical feedback in order to strengthen the proposal and improve the overall likelihood of success. Through a program sponsored by RDO, researchers can receive an external reviewer’s written critique of their proposal’s strengths and weaknesses as well as its overall impact and significance to the field. In addition to a written critique, the PI, external reviewer, and RDO representative participate in a 30-60 minute Zoom call to discuss the critique. In the first five years of this program, proposals reviewed by external reviewers had a 56% success rate, which is significantly higher than the national average.
Polish your communication skills via Writing for the Public Good workshops
As a part of the Writing for the Public Good Initiative, the Office of the Vice President for Research is offering a range new professional development workshops to support faculty in the new year. “In 2025, we are offering a suite of programs to help researchers and scholars craft compelling narratives, pitch their stories effectively, engage with the media, and make progress on book manuscripts,” said Kristy Nabhan-Warren, associate vice president for research, professor, V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Chair in Catholic Studies. “We look forward to expanding the cohort of 132 researchers and scholars who engaged with Writing for the Public Good programs last fiscal year to continue to extend the reach of new knowledge and discoveries produced at the University of Iowa.”
Take advantage of the UI’s license for the anti-plagiarism tool iThenticate
The easy-to-use anti-plagiarism tool iThenticate helps researchers proactively check their work for originality. It enables researchers and scholars to check their original works for any instances of potential plagiarism before the submission of manuscripts, dissertations, journal articles, grant proposals, and other forms of research and scholarly work. With iThenticate, users can check their document against an expansive database of 140 million major periodicals and books, 89 million works from top publishers, 99 billion webpages, and 975,000 thesis and dissertations.