eSubmission News and Updates
NIH eSubmission Items of Interest for AORs & SOs— June 27, 2006
Grants.gov and NIH Update on SF424 (R&R) and Agency-specific Forms
Grants.gov and NIH recently have made changes to the standard SF424 (R&R)
and agency-specific PHS 398 electronic form components. The forms changes
provide greater consistency between forms and align the forms with current
policy.
Among the changes are:
- State Code List has been updated to include US possessions, territories, and Military Codes (see attached for updated pick list)
- Address field for Province has been added
- Enumeration values containing abbreviations and full descriptions have been standardized with a value format of abbreviation, colon space, full description (e.g. AK: Alaska)
- Type of Applicant pick-list expanded (SF424 (R&R) cover component field 7)
- Field length adjustments have been made to:
- Congressional District
- Employer Identification (EIN/TIN)
- Organization name
- Opportunity ID
- Competition ID
- Grants.gov form hover text has been updated
- Four new sections of the PHS 398 Research Plan have been added: Inclusion Enrollment Report and Progress Report Publication List are now separate attachments. These were previously part of section 4. Preliminary Studies/Progress Report. They have been separated out to avoid being counted in the page limit validations. In addition, new distinct sections have been added for Select Agent Research and Multiple PI Leadership Plan. Some of the previous sections have been renumbered accordingly. The other change to the Research Plan Component eliminates the separate section for Data and Safety Monitoring. This is now incorporated as a subtopic within section 8. Protection of Human Subjects.
- PHS 398 Checklist component has been modified to remove the itemized list of policies, assurances, and certifications that appeared on the form. Instead, applicants are instructed to consult a specific website.
The forms changes will be included in all new Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) that NIH posts. Over the next few months, NIH also will update existing FOAs that use the older forms and are open for multiple receipt dates (read on to learn more).
The Challenge of Forms Changes
So, that doesn’t sound so bad…we’ve updated the forms,
new announcements will use them and old announcements will be upgraded so
that all FOAs are working from a common form set. Simple, right? Not exactly;
there are some challenges associated with forms changes.
Until all FOAs can be modified to use the new forms, we will need to maintain
and support two form packages and their associated application instructions.
What this means to you:
- For new FOAs (Release/Posted Date after June 15), the process is straight forward. The application package attached to the FOA will already contain the new forms and application guide. Make sure the application guide available for download with the forms is used. No other special instructions to applicants are needed.
- For older FOAs (Release/Posted Date before June 15), the process becomes
more complicated.
- FOAs that have a single receipt date (typically NIH RFAs and PARs) will be evaluated and, in most cases, will be allowed to close naturally with no change to the associated form package. No special action needs to be taken.
- For older FOAs with multiple receipt dates, you will need to pay close attention to the form set used to create the application package to be submitted. NIH is targeting July 5-15 to update older FOAs for the R03, R15, R21, R21/R33, R33 and R34 grant programs and September 9-15 to update older FOAs for the R43/R44 and R13/U13 grant programs with the new form packages. Once the new form packages are in place for a particular FOA, the old form packages will no longer be accepted by Grants.gov. Any application “in the works” will need to be moved to the new form package (i.e., download new forms and cut-and-paste content from one form to the other). If your business office provides to Principal Investigators versions of the form packages that are pre-populated with your organizations information, you will want to make sure your form package templates are updated. We have timed the updates to occur well in advance of the next standard receipt date of each grant program to provide enough lead time to take any necessary actions.
- To assist you in identifying the form version used to create an application package, NIH will populate the Competition ID of new forms packages with the label “Version 2 Forms”. The Competition ID appears at the top of the page when you open an application package with the PureEdge viewer. Similarly, the appropriate application guides will be labeled Version 1 and Version 2 on the cover page and within the footers.
- There will be a short period of time when both the old and new form packages will be available for download. Whenever there is a choice, the package labeled “Version 2 Forms” in the Competition ID field should be used. To help in the transition, NIH will develop a splash screen that will alert users to select the Version 2 package. However, the splash screen only will be visible when using the NIH Guide and the download button from within the NIH Guide FOA to find and download opportunities.
- The NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts, the NIH Electronic Submission of Grant Applications website and this listserv will be used as the primary communication channels for these activities. When changes are made to the FOAs, anyone that subscribed to receive notification of changes when they downloaded an application package also will receive an automated email from Grants.gov.
Offices of Sponsored Research – you rock!
For the April 1 receipt date for small business applications (SBIR/STTR) we saw an average of three application attempts per successful submission. For the June 1 receipt date of R03, R21, R21/R33 and R34 applications we saw an average of 1.7 application attempts per successful submissions. That means many applications went through on the first try! Continued software improvements, aggressive education efforts (by NIH and within your organizations), and the preparedness of Offices of Sponsored Research dramatically improved the success rate for application submissions and reduced call volume to our help desks. The new two-day window to view the assembled application before automatically moving the application forward also made a big difference in getting applications through to the end of the submission process. All-in-all, it was the smoothest transition date yet.
NIH Electronic Submission Team
