Questions and Answers Table of Contents
Questions and Answers for Requests for Applications
Individual RFAs
Questions and Answers About Peer Review at NIAID
What award types are peer reviewed at NIAID?
NIAID oversees initial peer review for the following award types:
Are many investigator-initiated applications
reviewed at NIAID?
A very small number
are reviewed at
NIAID, and they are primarily P01 applications
and investigator-initiated
clinical trial planning (R34) and implementation grants (U01). The majority of NIAID's peer review is for solicitations
responding to requests
for applications.
For more information about peer review of investigator-initiated applications,
see NIAID
Program Project (P01) Applications and Peer
Review of Applications -- CSR questions and answers.
Is NIAID peer review similar to CSR
peer review?
The process is essentially equivalent,
with minor differences.
See Do
NIH CSR and NIAID conduct the same kind of peer review? in Peer
Review of Applications -- CSR questions and answers.
Do NIAID staff
check my application to make sure it's complete?
Yes. See SROs
Assess Completeness, Assign Reviewers.
Is study section membership confidential?
No. You can find many NIAID rosters at Councils
and Committees. However, not all are listed. For unlisted rosters,
such as special
emphasis panels, contact the scientific
review officer.
After review, you will get a roster with your summary statement.
It will not tell you which panel members were specifically assigned
as primary, secondary,
and tertiary reviewers,
which is confidential information.
What happens if I respond to an RFA or RFP
and one of the reviewers has a conflict of interest?
NIAID follows NIH policy for conflict of
interest. Before serving on a review panel, all potential reviewers are
required to disclose any conflict of interest. If a conflict is
identified, that person may not be assigned to your
application or the panel, depending on the type of conflict identified.
For each request
for applications (RFA) or request
for proposals (RFP),
one panel reviews every response for that RFA or RFP. Only reviewers
with no
conflicts on a particular application or
proposal are permitted
to participate in the review of an application or proposal.
For more
information, see the Conflict of Interest
In Peer Review SOP.
Will NIAID review late applications?
See NIAID's Late Applications SOP.
If I'm serving on an NIH study section, does special submission timing apply to me when I submit an application?
Maybe. As of February 5, 2008, you may be able to apply continuously rather than wait for standard receipt dates depending on your study section and application type. Find eligibility requirements at Modified Application Submission, Referral and Review for Appointed NIH Study Section Members. Also see NIH's Continuous Submission FAQ and NIAID's Late Applications SOP.
Questions and Answers for Requests for Applications
Before Applying
Am I required to send a letter of intent if one is requested in
the RFA?
No. A letter of intent is not required or binding and does not affect
the review of a subsequent application. NIAID staff use letters of
intent to estimate initial
peer review workload, potential conflicts, and begin planning
reviews.
How should I submit a letter of intent?
Follow instructions in the request
for applications.
May
I respond to an RFA with an application that's pending
initial peer review?
No. NIH will not review an application in response to a request
for applications that
is essentially the same as a new, resubmission,
or renewal application
pending initial peer review unless you withdraw the pending application.
If my investigator-initiated
application was not funded, may I resubmit it in response to an RFA?
Yes. However, it must be a new application,
i.e., it should not include an introduction describing changes made
to your previous submission. However, when you
prepare the application, you should consider
the peer review
comments that you received and follow the format designated
in the request
for applications.
Also see Option 3: Create a New Application in the NIH Grant Cycle: Application to Renewal.
If my application was not funded under an
RFA, may I resubmit it as an investigator-initiated application?
Yes. You can submit an application not funded under a request
for applications as
a new, investigator-initiated application.
Follow the Standard
Due Dates for Competing Applications.
For more information, read If
my R01 application does not get an award as part of an RFA,
can I resubmit it as an investigator-initiated R01 application? in
our RFAs, RFPs, and PAs questions
and answers. Also see Option 3: Create a New Application in the NIH Grant Cycle: Application to Renewal.
Preparing the Application
Do I need to include a data sharing plan? If so, where does it go in the application?
Applicants must share their final
research data for some program
announcements and request for applications, as well as for all applications that seek $500,000 or more in direct
costs in any year of a grant.
Final research data is defined as the recorded factual material commonly accepted
by the scientific community as necessary to document, support, and validate research findings.
Regardless of cost, all applications that are genome-wide association studies (GWAS) also need a plan to share data.
Describe your plan -- or justify its absence -- in a
brief paragraph in your Research Plan. Put the plan in the PHS 398 Resource Sharing Plan Section for a paper application or the Resource Sharing Plan attachment to the PHS 398 Research Plan form for an electronic application. It does not count toward the page limit.
You may include additional information on data
sharing in other sections if appropriate. Find more information about
data
sharing on the NIH
Data Sharing Policy Web page.
Also see our Data Sharing for Grants: Final Research Data SOP, Data
Sharing for Grants: Genome-Wide Association Studies SOP, and a Sample Data Sharing
Plan.
Some items required
by the RFA do not agree with instructions in the PHS 398 (paper)
or Grant Application Guide (electronic). Which should I follow?
Special request
for applications requirements
always take precedence over the others. Multiproject applications may
also have special requirements that take precedence -- see "Instructions
for Preparing a Multiproject Grant Application" for
details.
What type of materials can I include in the Appendix?
For details on Appendices, go to If You Need an
Appendix in the NIH Grant Cycle: Application to Renewal.
How should I cite references? Should I cite all names
for a large multi-author paper?
Give complete citations, including titles
and authors.
Read more on Other Project
Information Form: Bibliography and References Cited in the NIH Grant Cycle: Application to Renewal.
When is my application due to NIH, by the receipt date
or postmarked by the receipt date? What about electronic
applications?
For paper applications, your application, copies, and other
materials must be at NIH by the receipt
date when you apply for a request
for applications.
For electronic applications, the application deadline to Grants.gov
is 5:00 p.m. your institution's local time on the submission
date, and you can correct it because of validation issues
up to
one
week
after
that date.
For both paper and electronic applications, if a deadline lands on
a weekend or federal holiday, it moves to the next business day.
How should I submit a paper application?
Unless stated otherwise in the request
for applications, do the
following: Submit a signed,
typewritten original of the application, including the checklist, and
three signed
photocopies
in one package
by U.S.
mail or commercial carrier to:
Center for Scientific Review
National Institutes of Health
6701 Rockledge Dr., Rm. 1040, MSC7710
Bethesda, MD 20892-7710 (Use this ZIP code for the U.S. Postal Service, including express mail.)
Bethesda, MD 20817 (Use this ZIP code for commercial carriers such as FedEx and UPS.)
At the same time, send two exact copies of the application and five
sets of appendix materials to the peer review staff listed in the request
for applications. Even better, NIH prefers that you send the appendices as PDFs on a CD in lieu of paper.
After Applying
If I'm sending a paper submission, how do I know if my application
was assigned to the correct RFA?
Periodically check the Commons,
and the information will appear.
May I send addenda and supplementary materials to NIH after the receipt date?
Contact the scientific
review officer to
find out what materials will be accepted following the receipt date
and
the deadline. It is
up to the SRO whether and when to accept supplementary
materials after the receipt date.
Can I correct mistakes after I submitted the application?
If you have submitted an application and realize it contains incorrect
information, notify the scientific
review officer (SRO) immediately
and explain the situation. At the discretion
of the SRO, you may be
able to submit a short document, such as a letter,
that
identifies the mistakes and provides a correction. The SRO will not
remove pages from your original application -- the new material is
simply added to your application.
When should I contact the reviewers?
Never! You should discuss your application only with the scientific
review officer from
receipt until the peer review and with the program
officer after that.
I cannot find the roster on the Web site for the review meeting for my application. Where is it?
A roster for most NIAID requests
for applications (RFA) is
located at NIAID
Special Emphasis Panels. In most cases, the roster will be posted
approximately one month before the review meeting. Check the site
again closer to the meeting date; the RFA may identify the month
the review meeting is scheduled to take place. If
you can't find the roster, contact the scientific
review officer.
Can I find out the number of applications submitted for an
RFA?
No. That information is confidential.
Who will handle proprietary rights and materials needed for the proposed research, and what will happen to inventions?
Applicants are solely responsible for obtaining the proprietary
rights and materials needed to perform their research. The U.S. government
is not required to obtain intellectual property rights or materials
for applicants.
Applicants must report to the government any inventions
made while conducting an NIH-supported project, as specified at 35
U.S.C. Sect. 202, the Bayh-Dole
Act.
Please refer to the request
for applications for more details on intellectual property.
To learn more about invention reporting, see Invention
Reporting Has Four Parts in the NIH Grant Cycle: Application to Renewal.
What if I can't find the answer to my question in the
RFA or on this page?
Contact the staff person listed in the request
for applications.
See Section VII, Agency Contacts.
Where can I find more questions and answers about funding opportunities?
See RFAs, RFPs,
and PAs and NIAID
Program Project (P01) Applications.
Additional Questions and Answers for Individual RFAs
There are no additional questions and answers for individual RFAs right now. When there are, we'll add them here.
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