Sources Sought Notice # 75N98026SSN00756

Agency National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Issuing Office Office of Logistics and Acquisition Operations (OLAO), Specialized Scientific Information Technology Division (SSIT)

Requiring Office Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI), Office of Replication and Reproducibility (ORR)

Title Journal Submission and Web Hosting Platform Development – Journal of Replication and Reproducibility (JRR)

NAICS Code 513120 - Periodical Publishers

Response Due Date July 20th 2026

This announcement constitutes a Small Business Sources Sought Notice (SSN) being issued under NAICS Code 513120 - Periodical Publishers. This is NOT a solicitation. This announcement is for information and planning purposes only and is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government, implied or otherwise, to issue a solicitation or award a contract.

This announcement is being issued as an SSN to support market research and acquisition planning for a potential future requirement.

The Government requests responses from all interested Small Business concerns. Interested vendors are encouraged to submit tailored capability statements and provide responses to any questions contained herein.

Information provided by all respondents will be used to enhance the Government's understanding of industry capabilities, available solutions, contract vehicles, potential acquisition strategies, availability of qualified small businesses, and availability of domestic sources.

Purpose of this SSN

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Logistics and Acquisition Operations (OLAO), Specialized Scientific Information Technology Division (SSIT), in support of the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI), Office of Replication and Reproducibility (ORR), is issuing this notice to request information from all qualified small business vendors concerning the work described below.

The Government has provided a draft of the Performance Work Statement (PWS) (See Attachment 1 – Draft PWS) that it intends to use in any potential solicitation for this requirement. The primary purpose of the SSN is the following:

1) Promote competition and support efforts to enable industry to respond with quality quotations.

2) Identify potential small business sources under NAICS Code 513120 - Periodical Publishers

3) Gather information that will inform the Government on best practices, risk avoidance, affordability, domestic availability, and types of industry support available to NIH.

Marketing brochures will not be considered as part of the Government's review. Respondents may submit additional information they deem pertinent, along with an explanation of its relevance and value to the Government.

Background: NIH Objectives

The NIH DPCPSI/ORR seeks to launch a new scholarly journal and publishing platform focused on the reproducibility space. The Journal of Replication and Reproducibility (JRR) will address a major gap in scientific publishing: the lack of incentives, visibility, and infrastructure for replication research. The basic service objective is to provide a fully integrated journal submission, manuscript review, and web publishing/hosting platform for the website on a third-party, separately hosted journals-publishing platform; this platform will not live on a government server and will not have a “.gov” URL.

The platform must be able to accept submissions from authors; post papers as preprints ahead of final publication; route papers to reviewers; allow reviewers to upload comments; allow papers to be published in both a preprint and a “final” format that both include full-text XML; allow for the hosting and archiving of all supporting material in an integrated, interactive manner; and offer uninterrupted access to users worldwide. The service must also be robust enough to serve users throughout the world, including those with poor or limited internet access in low- and middle-income countries. Being a diamond open-access journal, the site must offer unfettered access to all readers in all countries.

NIH requires contractor support in achieving the following objectives:

• Provide web hosting for the JRR journal program.

• Develop and provide a single platform capable of:

o Receiving submissions from authors.

o Posting papers as preprints ahead of final publication.

o Routing papers for open peer review and receiving reviewer comments.

o Single-source XML publishing.

o Hosting code in Git-style repositories, with each paper having its own Git-style instance.

o Hosting containerized software environments running software provided by the author.

o Continuous publication.

• The single platform must also:

o Allow for interface customization.

o Support full-text search with facets and a taxonomy.

o Support social media integration.

o Be mobile responsive, and not dependent on apps for mobile views.

o Allow related articles to be linked together for the benefit of users and readers.

• Provide a portal for JRR staff to access back-end systems and reports from the platform, and to manually manipulate content.

• Provide a platform that allows access to all content for people with disabilities such as but not limited to blindness, deafness, and colorblind.

• Provide the ability to send out email alerts for content on the platform to alert users to new content and more

• Provide usage statistics for the platform and its content.

• Meet all customer service requirements.

SSN Part A – Information Submission Requirements:

Please provide the following in your response:

1) Provide:

a. Legal Business Name

b. UEI number

c. Point of contact name (phone and email), and

d. Company website address, if applicable.

2) State size of business and current socioeconomic status (i.e. small business, small disadvantaged business, woman owned small business, 8(a) program, HUBZone, service-disabled veteran owned small business, etc.) and when, if at all, the Firm’s socioeconomic status will expire, as applicable.

SSN Part B – Capability and Experience Statement:

Please address the following in your response:

1) If a solicitation is released, the Government anticipates corporate capability evaluation criteria requiring Offerors to provide three (3) brief descriptions of relevant and similar work each Offeror has performed in the last three (3) years as a Prime Contractor responsible for a minimum of 51% of the scope of work.

2) The Government anticipates considering the following:

a. Comparable scope, scale, and complexity of NIH (See Attachment 1 – Draft

PWS).

b. What percentage of relevant work was accomplished by the Firm as the prime versus team members, subcontractors, etc.

c. NIH operates in a collaborative scientific setting and similar work should demonstrate this environment. If non-scientific or academic environment examples are provided, the response should include how the capability demonstrated in those settings can be transferred to NIH.

3) Based on the scope outlined in the draft PWS, a description of the Firm’s experience as a

Prime using the various approaches that best demonstrate how requirements were met to rapidly staff or change resources (e.g., rapidly respond to changing priorities ensuring required knowledge and skillsets) without putting technical and financial responsibility on the Government.

4) Indicate the Firm’s ability to achieve development and technical objectives. Further demonstrate the Firm’s expertise as a Prime with delivering scalable and integrated journal publishing platform solutions to scholarly publishers, societies, and/or government organizations.

5) Based on the task areas outlined in the draft PWS, a description of the Firm’s capability and experience performing or providing relevant services.

Attachments Provided with the SSN

A. Attachment 1 – Draft PWS

SSN Submission Requirements:

Response Instructions:

All interested parties should respond with a statement expressing their interest in participating in a competitive process for this opportunity. Interested parties are required to respond to all Parts of the SSN. Responses must be submitted electronically via email.

Who to send responses:

Jacob Balenson, Contract Specialist Email: jacob.balenson@nih.gov

Shirley Ruiz-Lundgren, Contracting Officer Email: shirley.ruiz-lundgren@nih.gov

SSN Response deadline: July 20, 2026, 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time (ET)

SSN & RFI: How to Respond:

Responses shall be in Microsoft Word or searchable Adobe Acrobat format.

Emails shall include “75N98026SSN00756” in the subject/header line.

Disclaimers:

Responses to this SSN are not considered offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract.

The information provided is for market research purposes pursuant to Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO) Part 10 Market Research. The information provided will be used at the Government’s discretion to finalize the acquisition strategy in fulfilling the need through an upcoming solicitation.

Disclaimer and Important Notes: This SSN is for informational purposes only. This notice does not constitute a solicitation and shall not be construed as a commitment by the Government. Responses in any form are not offers and the Government is under no obligation to award a contract as a result of this announcement. No funds are available to pay for the preparation of responses to this announcement. Any information submitted by respondents to this notice is strictly voluntary. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. Responses will not be returned to the responder. Not responding to this notice does not preclude participation in any future solicitations, if any are issued. The type and method of solicitation will be based on the results of the market research.

Confidentiality: No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s).