SOLICITATION NOTICE
B -- Analysis of Scientific Productivity of NIH Awardees using a Database of Scientific Literature - Sole Source Justification
- Notice Date
- 2/7/2014
- Notice Type
- Presolicitation
- NAICS
- 519130
— Internet Publishing and Broadcasting and Web Search Portals
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Rockledge Dr. Bethesda, MD, Office of Acquisitions, 6701 Rockledge Dr RKL2/6100 MSC 7902, Bethesda, Maryland, 20892-7902
- ZIP Code
- 20892-7902
- Solicitation Number
- NHLBI-CSB-RG-2014-70-KBM
- Archive Date
- 2/27/2014
- Point of Contact
- Kelli Malkin,
- E-Mail Address
-
Kelli.Malkin@nih.gov
(Kelli.Malkin@nih.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- Thomson Reuters Sole Source Letter PRE-SOLICITATION NON-COMPETITIVE (NOTICE OF INTENT) SYNOPSIS INTRODUCTION THIS IS A PRE-SOLICITATION NON-COMPETITIVE (NOTICE OF INTENT) SYNOPSIS TO AWARD A CONTRACT OR PURCHASE ORDER WITHOUT PROVIDING FOR FULL OR OPEN COMPETITION (INCLUDING BRAND-NAME). The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), Office of Acquisitions (OA) on behalf of the Center for Scientific Review (CSR) intends to negotiate and award a purchase order without providing for full and open competition (Including brand-name) to Thomson Reuters, 1500 Spring Garden Street, Philidelphia, PA 19130 for analysis of scientific productivity of NIH awardees using a database of scientific literature. NORTH AMERICAN INDUSTRY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM (NAICS) CODE The intended procurement is classified under NAICS code 519130 with a Size Standard of 500 employees. REGULATORY AUTHORITY The resultant contract will include all applicable provisions and clauses in effect through the Federal Acquisition Circular (FAC) 2005-72. This acquisition is conducted under the procedures as prescribed in FAR subpart 13-Simplified Acquisition Procedures at an amount not exceeding the simplified acquisition threshold ($150,000). STATUTORY AUTHORITY This acquisition is conducted under the authority of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 13-Simplified Acquisition Procedures, Subpart 13.106-1 (b) (1), Soliciting from a single source and is not expected to exceed the simplified acquisition threshold. Contracts awarded using FAR Part 13-Simplified Acquisition Procedures are exempt from the requirements of FAR Part 6-Competition Requirements. DESCRIPTION OF REQUIREMENT Background The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the nation's medical research agency, making important discoveries that improve health and save lives. The Center for Scientific Review (CSR) is the portal for NIH grant applications and their review for scientific merit. CSR receives all research grant applications sent to NIH and handles the review of more than 70% of those by organizing peer review groups (study sections) to evaluate research grant applications. CSR's mission is to see that NIH grant applications receive fair, independent, expert, and timely reviews, free from inappropriate influences, so NIH can fund the most promising research. The Office of Planning, Analysis, and Evaluation (OPAE) at CSR is establishing an information technology infrastructure and seeks access to a bibliometric database which will enable large scale batch queries for bibliometric records and associated citation metrics. This information will enable CSR to establish relationships between applicants and reviewers so CSR can understand where fields of study and scientific expertise overlap. CSR began work on an information system to link scientific publications to grants and investigators in December 2011 through acquisition of a one year license from Thomson-Reuters [20130116814]. Considerable effort has been expended on developing the tool for CSR's purpose (approximately 0.5 FTE of a PhD level analyst) and significant progress has been made. CSR would like to extend the contract by another year to take advantage of the extensive customizations that has been invested. CSR is also interested in including two, 12 month options in the resulting contract. Purpose and Objectives The Director of the National Institutes of Health has commissioned a committee consisting of senior staff to evaluate, at high priority, the organizational structure of peer review and its impact on the scientific community for the purpose of identifying any improvements that could be designed and implemented to ensure that the very best scientific ideas are supported with taxpayer funds. The purpose of this acquisition is to ensure adequate technical resources to fulfill the objectives of the committee. A critical aspect of this study is to enumerate and evaluate the scientific publications that are attributable to NIH funded research. This requires access to one or more bibliographic databases. Unfortunately, none of the available sources is ready to use for CSR's purposes- thus extensive customization is required. Period of Performance One year base period and two one year option periods. Project Description CSR requires access to an abstract and citation bibliometric database of the peer reviewed scientific literature that meets the following requirements: • The database must be multidisciplinary with a high degree of coverage of the peer-reviewed publications from the sciences and social sciences; • The database must include cover-to-cover indexing of the highest impact journals world-wide; • Coverage must include the years 2000-2014; • The database must provide professional level search and analysis capabilities such as retrieving all records corresponding to a list of up to 5,000 first and last names submitted in batch queries; • The Contractor must provide the data in a form that it can be installed on a Structured Query Language (SQL) database, on a secure server within the National Institutes of Health with access permitted only to those individuals authorized by the terms of the license; • At least 5 NIH users will require access to the database; • The Contractor must provide a detailed description of how the data will be provided, descriptions of data elements and field names, and sample queries plus technical support for CSR's database programmer; • The Contractor shall provide CSR with full data rights to the data retrieved by query including individual records. These data will be used for internal operations analysis and may be submitted for publication in aggregate form with full attribution to the source of the data. CONTRACTING WITHOUT PROVIDING FOR FULL OR OPEN COMPETITION (INCLUDING BRAND-NAME) DETERMINATION The determination by the Government to award a contract without providing for full and open competition is based upon the Sole/Single Source Justification that is attached to this Notice of Intent. In the specialized case of the proposed limited scope project which has been designated as high priority by NIH, Thomson-Reuters is the only responsible source of the services being sought. The cost of recreating the database from the previous year's work using a different vendor would be approximately four times higher not counting staff salary time. Using an alternative vendor would also involve an incubation time while they established familiarity with the data at hand and would involve rebuilding the data base using the alternative vendor's technology, then cross-validating it against the data generated for CSR by NETE/STS. This would add considerable cost to the project as well as time. Thomson-Reuters was previously awarded a contract on a best value basis following a full and open competition to provide a bibliometric database for CSR. Its proposal was judged most technically acceptable and is of best value to the Government. These data now represent the base infrastructure that is critical for the proposed studies. CSR staff has experience in working with Thomson-Reuter's data. The most simple and cost-effective path forward would be to extend those studies rather than rebuild them using a different set of technologies which would be a substantial duplication of cost to the Government that will not be recovered through competition. In addition, this will create unacceptable delays in fulfilling this specialized requirement. CLOSING STATEMENT This synopsis is not a request for competitive proposals. However, interested parties may identify their interest and capability to respond to this notice. Responses to this notice shall contain sufficient information to establish the interested parties' bona-fide capabilities for fulfilling the requirement and include: unit price, list price, shipping and handling costs, the delivery period after contract award, the prompt payment discount terms, the F.O.B. Point (Destination or Origin), the Dun & Bradstreet Number (DUNS), the Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), and the certification of business size. All offerors must have an active registration in the System for Award Management (SAM) www.sam.gov." A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. The information received will normally be considered solely for the purposes of determining whether to proceed on a non-competitive basis or to conduct a competitive procurement. All responses must be received by 3:30 PM EASTERN TIME February 12, 2014 and must reference number NHLBI-CSB-RG-2014-70-KBM. Responses may be submitted electronically to Kelli Malkin at kelli.malkin@nih.gov or by U.S. mail to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Office of Acquisitions, COAC Services Branch,6701 Rockledge Drive, 6114, Bethesda, MD 20892-7902, Attention: Kelli Malkin. Fax responses will not be accepted.
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