NIH Proposals and Policies
Recent NIH Policy Additions and Revisions
- One-Time Financial Conflict of Interest (FCOI) Reporting Guidance for Certain Fiscal Year 2012 Awards Issued on or After August 24, 2012 (NOT-OD-12-143, effective date 8-24-2012). NIH will not require grantees to submit FCOI reports for FY 2012 noncompeting awards issued on or after August 24, 2012 until requested by NIH staff.
- Notice of Pilot Processes for Submitting of Post-Award Relinquishing Statements to NIH (NOT-OD-12-132, effective date 8-24-2012). NIH announces the availability of a pilot process for electronic submission of the Official Statement Relinquishing Interests and Rights in a Public Health Service Research Grant (PHS 3734 Form). Grantees are encouraged to use this pilot before use is required.
- Notice of Pilot for Processing Post-Award Changes in Grantee Organizational Status: Successor-in-Interest (NOT-OD-12-133, effective 8-24-2012). NIH announces the availability of a pilot process for electronic submission of post-award Change of Grantee Organizational Status- Successor-in-Interest applications. Grantees are encouraged to use this pilot before use is required.
Successor-in-Interest Application: This provides a link to the instructions and application for the electronic pilot process for Processing Post-Award Changes in Grantee Organizational Status: Successor-in-Interest (NOT-OD-12-133).
- Notice of Pilot Processes for Post-Award Change of Grantee Organization Applications to NIH (NOT-OD-12-134, effective 8-24-2012). NIH announces the availability of a pilot process for electronic submission of post-award Change of Grantee Organization applications. Grantees are encouraged to use this pilot before use is required.
Change of Grantee Organization Application:This provides a link to the instructions and application for the electronic pilot process for Post-Award Change of Grantee Organization Applications (NOT-OD-12-134).
- Notice of Special Council Review of Research Applications from PDs / PIs with More than $1.0 Million Direct Costs in Annual NIH Support (NOT-OD-12-140, effective 8-20-2012). NIH will be implementing a general policy whereby Advisory Council members will provide additional consideration of new and renewal applications from well-supported investigators who currently receive $1 million or more in direct costs of NIH funding to support Research Project Grants (RPG).
- Notice of Requirement for Electronic Submission of Just-in-Time Information and Related Business Process Changes (NOT-OD-12-101, effective 4/20/2012). This procedure reduces the time to award while ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of information needed to award NIH grants. To reduce application confusion and to minimize requests from NIH staff for JIT submissions, NIH is revising its business processes where applications receiving an impact score of 40 or less will receive a standard notice and request for submitting JIT information.
- Salary Limitation on Grants, Cooperative Agreements, and Contracts (NOT-OD-12-035, effective 1/20/2012). NIH has reduced the salary cap from $199,700 to $179,700 on all NIH awards with issue dates on or after 12/23/11.
- Elimination of Cost-of-Living Adjustments on NIH Proposal Budgets (NOT-OD-12-036, effective 1/1/2012). Non-competing awards will be issued without cost-of-living/inflationary adjustments beginning in FY12 and lasting indefinitely.
Instructions for NIH Grants Submission
All About Grants - A series of podcasts from the NIH Office of Extramural Research provides insights on a variety of grant topics by NIH staff. The "All About Grants" series is designed for investigators, fellows, students, research administrators and others. It is available as a monthly podcast which you can subscribe to through iTunes or some other podcast client. You may also download individual episodes as MP3 audio files or as transcripts. Information on RSS and Podcasts
To prepare to submit a NIH application through grants.gov for the first time, please review the following step-by-step directions. Instructions on how to complete electronic NIH forms are available as a download on the right. Always notify OSP when you plan to submit a grant. Click on each step below to obtain more details and instructions, or see GSU's step-by-step instructions or NIH's step-by-step instructions.
1. PI registers in the NIH eRA Commons with a PI account affiliated with
Georgia State
If you do not have an account, please complete the registration form and email it to your OSP Representative to establish an account. You must have a PI account, not just a reviewer account. NIH suggests doing this AT LEAST two weeks before grant deadline.
2. Obtain correct software
a) To read the application, a compatible Adobe Reader (8.x or 9 version as specified on grants.gov website) needs to be downloaded. This is available free athttp://www.grants.gov/applicants/apply_for_grants.jsp. You must make sure you use this version of Adobe Reader to complete the application. Therefore, download it to all computers that you will use to complete the application. Using an earlier version to complete the forms will result in errors at the time of submission.
b) To convert word documents into pdf files for attachments you will also need Adobe Acrobat Professional or other software that does conversions (e.g., cutePDF is also recommended by NIH). Adobe Reader is not sufficient. Professional is available at a reduced rate for Georgia State employees.
3. Download appropriate grant application
PI downloads application specific to the NIH grant program they are applying to. Applications are available at NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts or at http://www.grants.gov/ under "Find Grant Opportunities" using the funding opportunity number or Catalogue of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) number.
4. Notify OSP of pending grant submission and deadline
PI emails his or her Office of Sponsored Programs officer of intention to submit an application via grants.gov.
5. Complete grant application
PI downloads and completes grant application using Step-by-step NIH Form Instructions available as a download on this page. Make sure you express your effort as person months. Conversion spreadsheet is available as a download on this website. For more information visit the Proposal Preparation and Budget Development webpages.
6. Submit final proposal to OSP for review at least 5 business days before
agency's deadline
PI prints completed forms and draft of narrative and route the hard copy through Georgia State using the Proposal Approval Form (see OSP Quick Reference for more details on what parts of the application need to be routed). PI should email draft application to OSP officer copying the associate director of OSP at same time. For more information visit the Routing a Proposal for Approval webpage.
7. Error-free submission requirement
NIH now requires all grants.gov submissions to be error-free by the deadline or they will be automatically rejected. OSP needs to get your final proposal at least 5 business days before sponsoring agency’s deadline to guarantee you an error-free submission. Failure to submit your final proposal to OSP at least 5 days before the deadline will not give OSP enough time to check for all errors and may result in rejection of your proposal in Grants.gov if you have errors in the proposal.
Details about the new changes (click to reveal)
In 2011, NIH made a major change to their submission policy. For a proposal to be considered submitted “on time” an application must be error-free by the date the application is due. This means you no longer have 2 days after the submission deadline to correct errors. It is our experience that errors are frequent occurrence when submitting to NIH because of the eRA validation process. We, therefore, strongly recommend that you send your final version of the electronic proposal, along with the GSU routing form, to your OSP representative at least 5 days prior to the NIH deadline.
8. Submission to Grants.gov by OSP (PIs cannot submit their own grants to
Grants.gov)
After final application is reviewed, the OSP officer emails the application package to the authorized organization representative (AOR) who submits the application to grants.gov. Georgia State's AORs are Associate Vice President of Research, Monica Swahn and Vice President for Research, James Weyhenmeyer. PIs CANNOT submit their own grant application via grants.gov.
9. Grants.gov error check
Rudimentary error check is done by grants.gov and notification of errors is sent to the AOR who will forward it to PI. PI will correct errors and forward corrected grant to OSP officer to be to be resubmitted through grants.gov by AOR. Errors must be corrected before submission deadline for application to be accepted.
If the application is error free, it will be assembled into one application, complete with table of contents, headings which will be used for reviewing purposes. It is important to verify that it appears as the PI intended. If the PI is not satisfied, they should contact their OSP officer right away. Only OSP or AOR personnel can “reject” the application. The application will then have to be resubmitted through grants.gov. If the application is not rejected after two days of being posted in the Commons, it will be considered a final document and sent for review.
11. Grant assembly by NIH
The grant application will now be transferred to NIH eRA Commons for error verification. A list of errors and warnings is generated and posted on eRA Commons and emailed to PI and AOR. PIs must be available to correct errors. Applications with errors must be resubmitted through grants.gov after the errors are corrected (as a changed/corrected application). Applications with warnings can but do not need to be resubmitted.
