March 23, 2006 -- Feature on Electronic
Applications
News Articles
Opportunities and Resources
Advice Corner
New Initiatives
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News Articles |
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New Electronic Application Deadline,
Rules for Appendices
Life in the electronic lane just got a little easier. Now your
deadline for submitting your application to Grants.gov is
5:00 p.m. your local time, NOT 8:00 p.m. Eastern
time.
Read the official scoop in the March
16, 2006, Guide notice.
How to send electronic appendices
Whether your application is paper or electronic, rules for appendices
have changed starting with the May 10, 2006, submission date. Here
are the key points:
- Publications in press. Do not include
entire articles. Make a list and link to the online journal articles
or NIH PubMed
Central identification numbers.
- Manuscripts accepted for publication but not yet published. You
may submit entire articles as a PDF attachment.
- Published manuscripts without an online journal link. Same
as above -- attach a PDF.
For more information, read the full March
16, 2006, Guide notice.
More Grants Go the Electronic Route
As more grant types -- or "mechanisms" -- switch to
electronic submission, NIH is replacing more old funding
opportunity announcements (FOAs) with new ones to reflect that change:
For the June 1 due date, you will apply electronically for a R03 or R21
whether you are sending in an application on your own (investigator-initiated)
or are responding to a program
announcement (PA) or request
for applications (RFA).
Use
the "parent" R03 and R21 FOAs to submit an electronic investigator-initiated application
in any scientific topic. Even though NIH has a broad
announcement, institutes may also issue their own FOAs to solicit applications
in a defined scientific area.
The easiest way to find out which FOA to use is
to go to our NIH Funding Opportunities Relevant to NIAID.
You can read more about the switch to electronic for R03s, R21s, R33s, and
R34s in the March
2, 2006, Guide notice. To review NIH's electronic transition
timetable, go to Planned
Transition Dates. What about AIDS and AIDS-related applications?
For the May 1, 2006, AIDS submission date only, you will apply using
a paper PHS 398 application for R03s and R21s. After that, you will use the
parent FOAs to submit electronically.
NIH cancelled some AIDS-related FOAs prematurely on March 2 but restored them after recognizing
the error. See the March
14, 2006, Guide notice for more information.
Some PAs Have Split Personalities
Paper and electronic in a single program
announcement (PA)? Yes. Some PAs have grant types that use electronic application, such as the Exploratory/Developmental Research Grants (R21), as well as mechanisms
that use paper, e.g., the R01
and P01 (program project).
Apply electronically using the Grants.gov funding opportunity announcement if the mechanism has
made the transition; use paper if it hasn't.
Remember, each mechanism has or will have its own FOA, including the R01. As more grant
types move to electronic submission, you will be using the FOA that goes
with the mechanism, even though you still follow any special instructions in the RFA or PA.
Our NIH Funding Opportunities Relevant to NIAID tells you how to apply for each announcement.
How Do I Find Out About Commons Validation Comments?
NIH revised its 55-page eXchange
Services Notes, Tips, and Validations, which describes the errors eRA Commons sends you when it validates your application.
The treatise tells you both what Commons is looking for and what each error message means. This is useful for figuring out what the problem is and what to do about it. The
error table starts on page 5.
To help you know what to expect, read NIH's Generic
Validations Summary or Avoiding
Common Causes For Rejected Applications and other Tips
and Tools for Navigating Electronic Submission before you apply.
If you still need help, ask the Commons Help
Desk; Finding Help has
full contact information.
Upgrades in the Works for Grants.gov
Grants.gov is planning to boost capacity and function in both software and hardware. In February, it published a request for information, the market research precursor to a request for proposals for a contract.
A revamped architecture will support a variety of desktop operating systems. A common complaint with the current PureEdge forms is that they do not work on a Mac. Read more in the RFI.
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Opportunities and Resources |
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Making
It Twice as Easy: New Step-by-Step Guide and Narrated Tutorial
Two new resources will help Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer applicants walk through electronic
application.
Step-by-Step Checklist for Electronic Submission
See each step in the electronic application process in Step-by-Step Checklists for Electronic Application, which includes SBIR and STTR.
Our checklist highlights common pitfalls and errors applicants
have experienced, rather than detail every form field.
If you still have a question after viewing it, read the FOA instructions.
If you're still confused, get help from Grants.gov or
the eRA Commons.
Please let us know if you
come across anything that is unclear or not addressed, and we will update
the document.
We'll be coming out with a checklist for R01 applicants soon. New Narrated Advice Presentation
A brand new tutorial gives you a visualization
of the full electronic process. Called Understanding Electronic Submission
of NIH SBIR and STTR Applications, it is now live on our revised Narrated
Advice Presentations for SBIR and STTR page.
The narrated tutorial supplements our older "Advice on NIH SBIR
and STTR Grant Applications" presentation, which does not yet address
electronic application.
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Advice Corner |
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How Do I Submit a Corrected Application?
Let's say your application had errors and did not make it through
either Grants.gov or eRA Commons validation. At that point, you have to resubmit
a corrected application through Grants.gov.
Below are the steps you will take.
Be sure
to resubmit
the
whole
application -- NIH does not retain
any part of an application you previously submitted.
- Changed/Corrected. On the first page of the SF 424, select "Changed/Corrected Application" in the Type of Submission field, box 1.
- Federal Identifier field. Once the box
described above is checked, Grants.gov will require data in
the Federal Identifier field, box 4.
- For a new application, including a corrected
new application, enter "N/A."
- For a renewal
of an existing grant or a grant revision
(competing supplement), enter the previous NIH award
number, e.g., 1 R01 AI 123456-01, if that field is
blank.
- Cover letter. Describe how you fixed the
problems in the Cover Letter File, found under Optional Documents.
If the submission deadline has passed, your cover letter must
also explain why your application is late. Include
all relevant information from your previous
cover letter since it no longer exists.
- Always send the application back through Grants.gov even if the failure point was in the eRA Commons.
Understanding Deadlines in Grants.gov and the Commons
Why are some applicants not following through
with their final electronic submission steps?
It's a complex
process. Electronic submission
has
two final steps:
- Your business official for Grants.gov,
called the authorized
organizational representative, submits your application
to Grants.gov before the
deadline. It
must be in Grants.gov on
that date by 5:00 p.m. your institution's local time.
- Then, the business official who serves as your eRA Commons signing official and you, the PI,
verify the application in the NIH
Commons within
two days of the submission deadline.For
details, see the article below, "How
Long Do I Have to Verify the Application in the Commons?"
The PI
or business official can log in to the eRA Commons and view the
status of the application
after NIH has received it. When
planning your submission, allow at least two weeks to complete
both steps,
including time to resolve
any errors that may arise.
How
Much Time Do I Get to Submit a Corrected Application?
For Grants.gov, your application
must be there before the deadline; it does not have to make
it through the validation
by that time. It's fairly simple to
get through Grants.gov validation.
If your changes address errors from the more complex eRA Commons validation, for
now you can submit a corrected application to Grants.gov during
the week following the submission deadline.
That leniency will
change after
we all get more comfortable with electronic application,
though we don't know when. Read more in "How
Do I Submit a Corrected Application?"
How Long Do I Have to Verify the Application
in the Commons?
Updated April 11, 2006: The verification process has changed.
See the April
7, 2006, Guide notice.
After NIH notifies you that your application is in the eRA Commons, you
and your signing official both have until two weekdays
after the submission deadline to verify the application
there.
This may be confusing because the online documentation says
you must verify within two days after you get the notification
from NIH.
While you should always verify as quickly
as possible, you are not required to sign off before the deadline
has passed. Once the deadline has passed, your application is final,
and you will most likely not be able to change it before peer review.
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