eSubmission News and Updates
NIH eSubmission Items of Interest — December 27, 2006
Scheduled eRA Commons Downtime on December 30, 2006
On Saturday, December 30, from 6 p.m. ET until midnight, the NIH eRA Commons will be shut down for system maintenance. During the scheduled downtime, you will not be able to access eRA Commons to check application status or to view an assembled application image. Although you can submit electronic applications to Grants.gov during this window, your application will not be pulled from Grants.gov and processed by eRA Commons until the system is restored.
December eSubmission Training a Big Hit with Applicant Community
We had an amazing turnout for the December 5 training session titled “Preparing for Electronic Grant Applications” with nearly 10,000 participants. If you missed the live broadcast, the video archive is now posted on the eSubmission website training page. Check it out!
New Resources Posted
We have posted the Hands-On Workshop Guide (PDF - 4.89 MB) (complete with detailed notes pages) that we have been using to conduct hands-on workshops. Feel free to use this resource for your own internal training – no sense reinventing this stuff! We also are in the process of beefing up our other available resources. Check out our latest Quick Reference additions including Tips for PIs (PDF - 56 KB) and eRA Commons Processing Flow chart (PDF - 23 KB).
Upcoming Regional Seminars
Registration is now open for each of the two NIH Regional Seminars in 2007 and both will include hands-on workshops. The workshops are very popular so you’ll want to register early. If you have never attended an NIH Regional Seminar before it is something worth considering. The two day seminars cover a wide range of topics and you get direct access to over 25 key NIH experts in everything from policy, to grantsmanship, to how reviews are conducted to (yes, you guessed it) electronic submission. I don’t believe the full program schedules are posted yet, but you can access past agendas to get a feel for topics covered. If you make it to one, stop by the eRA booth and say hi.
R01 Parent Announcement Opens January 5, 2007
I know everyone is ready and anxious to submit their R01 applications for the February 5 receipt date – right? Remember that even though the R01 Parent and other announcements are posted and available for download, applications cannot be submitted to Grants.gov until the Open date included in the Key Dates section of the announcement (e.g., January 5 for the R01 Parent). OK, submissions a month in advance may be too much to hope for, but do try to submit early. We’ll happily accept applications right up to the deadline, but early submitters won’t have to compete for processing and support resources.
Continuing to Track Mac Viewer Progress
NIH continues to closely track IBM’s progress towards providing a Mac-compatible viewer. The Grants.gov website has just been updated with a download to a new version of the viewer that addresses some of the major concerns of the early release. See http://www.grants.gov/resources/download_software.jsp for more information.
Sheri
NIH Electronic Submission Team
