eRA Commons & eSubmission Items of Interest
eRA eSubmission Items of Interest - December 5, 2008
Yesterday PureEdge, Today Adobe!
NIH reached a major milestone in our transition from Grants.gov’s PureEdge-based application forms to their Adobe-based equivalents. NIH has updated more than 500 active Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) with Adobe-based application packages and closed their PureEdge predecessors (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-09-026.html.) This “Yesterday PureEdge, Today Adobe” switch would not have been possible without the support Grants.gov provided to “auto-magically” transition our active announcements to the new forms. Our sincere thanks go out to the Grants.gov Program Office and their development staff for their round-the-clock assistance with this transition!
The change was timed (accommodating the error correction window, application viewing window and late application policy) so that applicants submitting for the final PureEdge standard receipt dates could complete the submission process using the same form set. We also tried to transition to the Adobe forms with at least 3-4 weeks for applicants to prepare Adobe-based applications for the next receipt dates. The January 7, 2009 receipt date for AIDS and AIDS-Related Applications will be the first NIH standard receipt date to use the Adobe-based forms.
Last September NIH began posting some announcements without associated application forms. NIH staff is now returning to those announcements to post Adobe-based application packages. This process will be finished early next week.
There are still a number of active FOAs that will continue to use PureEdge packages into January 2009, including some FOAs for grant programs with early December standard receipt dates (small business and conference programs) and FOAs due to expire in January. In early 2009, the remaining active FOAs with PureEdge forms will be updated and our transition to Adobe will be complete.
Important notes…
- You will need a compatible version
of the free Adobe Reader on your computer prior to downloading
the Adobe application packages. See Grants.gov’s
Download Software page (http://grants.gov/help/download_software.jsp)
for a list of compatible Adobe Reader versions, download links
and other important details. Using the correct Adobe Reader is
critical to successful submission - application packages opened
with other software or non-compatible versions of Adobe Acrobat/Reader
can become corrupted and may fail to submit properly.
- When downloading
the new forms, look for “ADOBE-FORMS-A” in
the Competition ID on the Grants.gov Download Application page to
confirm you are downloading the correct grant application package.
- The
content of the actual announcements and the announcement numbers
have not changed as a result of these form package updates. For
example, PA-07-070 is still the “Parent R01” used for
investigator-initiated applications.
- Any in-progress applications
using the old PureEdge forms associated with transitioned FOAs
are no longer viable for submission. You must use the new Adobe-based
application packages.
- Check out NIH’s Electronic Submission
of Grant Applications Web site (http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/)
for Adobe transition resources.
- Grants.gov owns, maintains, and
supports the Adobe application forms and they have applicant resources
on their Web site (http://grants.gov/index.jsp)
worth exploring.
- For you folks that submit using system-to-system solutions rather than downloadable forms …although these transitioned announcements are now posted in Grants.gov’s 2007 system, Grants.gov has helped us “lock in” the exact form/XML schema versions used in the PureEdge/2006 system. You will need to use the newly posted packages in order to successfully submit, but should find no schema changes resulting from this transition.
A few more thoughts…
Many of you reading this message have already used Adobe-based forms to submit applications to other agencies and are more experienced with the new forms than we are at this point. Please continue to share any tips and words of wisdom (or caution) you’ve picked up along the way. Collective experience is a powerful tool that can be leveraged to make us all more successful. If you have general comments or suggestions about eRA eSubmission or eRA Commons services, Scarlett and I would also love to hear from you.
However, please direct your specific production issues to the appropriate help desk (http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/support.htm). The help desks should always be your first line of defense. Not only are they equipped to handle the vast majority of support requests, they also officially document your issues and efforts to resolve them. Food for thought - it is hard to claim you’ve done “everything you could to resolve an issue before a deadline” and have no help desk record of a support request.
Take care,
Sheri Cummins & Scarlett Gibb
Customer Relationship Managers
eSubmisssion and eRA Commons
NIH Office of Extramural Research
askera@mail.nih.gov