No Longer Common Errors
Preferred
Address Not Checked in Personal Profiles of PI and SO Active
Links in PDFs Partial
Months Commons
User ID in Capital Letters Turn
the "signature" off in original documents Do
not submit PDFs with editable fields
Preferred address not checked in Personal Profiles of PI and SO
NIH will no longer have a system check against preferred address, but it is recommended that the PI and SO check and update their preferred address. [Posted May 2006].
Active Links in PDFs
NIH had previously recommended that applicants not use active links in PDFs. NIH has since addressed the issue and applicants can now include active links in PDFs. [Posted April 2006]
Partial Months
Originally the eRA Commons system only allowed whole numbers 1-12 for the number of calendar months that a senior key person worked on a project. The system has been fixed to accommodate partial months up to two decimal places (e.g., 2.55 academic months is an acceptable value). [Posted April 2006]
The system had also not been accepting partial months less than one (e.g., .65). However, NIH has since fixed that issue and now accepts partial months less than one. [Posted May 2006]
Commons User ID in Capital Letters
When NIH first launched electronic submission via Grants.gov in December 2005, the user name had to be entered in all capital letters, but NIH has since fixed that issue. Now the user name can be entered in capital letters or lower case. [Posted January 2006]
Turn the "signature" off in original documents
NIH had previously recommended turning the "signature" off when creating original documents in Adobe Acrobat and possibly other tools. NIH has since addressed the issue and applicants can include the signature in the documents. [Posted September 2006]
Do not submit PDFs with editable fields
NIH had previously stated that it did not accept PDF documents with editable fields (fields that can be changed). However, NIH has since addressed this issue and can process PDF documents with editable fields. [Posted September 2006]
