Don’t Forget the
eSubmission Basics
I had the privilege of spending some time last week with the
eRA Commons Help Desk and posed the question - “If you could tell the applicant
community one thing about application submission what would it be?” I was a bit
surprised to hear the same key messages that we have been pushing for years. On
the other hand, that’s why we consider them ‘the eSubmission basics’.
So, here’s a quick reminder…
- Watch out for form fields required by NIH that are not marked required on federal-wide forms (e.g. Credential for PD/PIs and Organization for all entries on R&R Sr/Key Person Profile form; primary site DUNS on Project/Performance Sites form).
- Use PDF format for all attachments. Follow PDF Guidelines.
- Submit early – days, not minutes – to allow time to correct unforeseen errors.
- Track your submission in eRA Commons. Email can be unreliable.
- Check your entire assembled application image in eRA Commons. If you can’t view it, we can’t review it!
- If federal system issues threaten your on-time submission you need to notify the help desk and follow the Guidelines for Applicants Experiencing System Issues.
Impact of Biosketch
Pilot on Non-pilot Applications
Did you see in the NIH Guide (NOT-OD-14-091)
or in Rock Talk (Changes
to the Biosketch) that NIH is piloting a new biosketch format? The pilot
directly impacts applicants applying to a few Funding Opportunity Announcements
(FOAs) (e.g., RFA-NR-15-001),
but there is an immediate indirect impact to all applicants as well. In order
to accommodate the pilot applications, eRA has changed the way we
systematically validate the biosketch page limit for all applications.
Specifically, a warning will fire if you submit a 5 page biosketch and an error
will fire if your biosketch is over 5 pages. Applicants to pilot FOAs can
ignore the 5-page warning, but everyone else should take action or risk
post-submission rejection of their applications. After your application moves
forward to NIH staff, we will do a manual check of the biosketches in
applications to FOAs not participating in the pilot. If your non-pilot FOA
requires 4 pages, but you included 5 and ignored the warning, then your
application may not be reviewed.
Applicants must read and follow all FOA and application
guide instructions – even those that aren’t enforced by electronic systems.
Non-standard Characters
in Form Fields
Although NIH systems now support a broader character set
including Greek and other non-standard characters, Grants.gov systems currently
do not. When completing application form fields type content directly from your
keyboard. Avoid cutting and pasting from Word and other word processors- they
often convert your plain text to rich text (e.g. Word converts quotes to ‘smart
quotes’ that curve towards the text between them and combines two dashes into
one long em-dash.)
Also, keep your text as simple as possible. The following
characters are typically ‘safe’: letters, numbers, spaces, underscores,
periods, dashes (not em-dashes), quotes (not smart quotes), parentheses,
brackets, ampersands, tilde, exclamation points, commas, colons, semicolons, at
signs, number signs, dollar signs, percent signs, plus signs, equal signs, and
asterisks.
Limit your use of fancier characters to the body of your PDF
attachments.
Submitting Applications
with more than 5 Budget Periods
Although NIH typically allows only 5 budget periods to be
submitted with grant applications, from time to time you will come across a FOA
that allows more than 5 budget periods. Most NIH FOAs include the R&R
Budget form which only accommodates data collection for 5 budget periods
leaving applicants wondering what to do with the rest of the data. Applicants
have been forced to use a rather clunky ‘workaround’ that includes adding the
additional budget period information in the budget justification.
eRA has just added system support for Grants.gov’s R&R
Budget 10YR form that will allow for the collection of up to 10 budget periods
of data. Going forward, this form will be included with the few, special FOAs
that allow more than 5 budget periods. The bulk of NIH FOAs will continue to
use the standard R&R Budget form.
Transition to FORMS-C
To Complete in August
If it seems like I’ve been talking about transitioning to
FORMS-C for a year – I have. On May 30, 2013, we announced our first transition
to updated application forms (FORMS-C) for application due dates on/after
September 25, 2013 (NOT-OD-13-074).
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology
Transfer (STTR) programs are our last remaining programs to use the older
forms. These programs are scheduled to transition to FORMS-C for due dates
on/after August 5, 2014 (NOT-OD-14-089)
marking the end of a rather lengthy transition.
Believe it or not, this summer my friends in policy will
start pulling together requirements for the next OMB clearance of the PHS
(agency-specific) forms used in our applications (they expire in August 2015).
Before you know it we’ll be talking about ‘FORMS-D’ forms. For now, let’s
celebrate getting through this one. Woo-hoo!
CYA