The National Institutes of Health, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health will eliminate the error-correction window for grant applications with due dates on or after January 25, 2011.
The Vice Chancellor for Research issued a campus memo reminding the campus of this change through CALmessages on November 29, 2010. The text of the memo is included below.
From: Graham Fleming, Vice Chancellor for Research
Subject: Reminder: Elimination of the NIH two-day “error correction window”
After January 25, 2011, National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) will eliminate the current two-day “error correction window” from the Grants.gov application submission process.
The error correction window was instituted by these agencies as a temporary measure to facilitate the transition from paper to electronic applications. Now that it will be rescinded, PIs are encouraged to carefully review all proposal forms and attachments before submitting a final copy of a proposal to SPO. Even minor errors such as having a title that exceeds the maximum number of characters and typos such as adding an extra space between a first and last name can cause error messages to be generated by Grants.gov.
SPO realizes that PIs only have a limited time to work on a proposal and proposals sometimes must be submitted “late” in accordance with the VCR’s late proposal policy. This alert is to make the campus community mindful of the fact that when the error correction window disappears and SPO receives an error message from Grants.gov after the proposal deadline, there will be no way for SPO to correct this error and resubmit the proposal.
This is particularly important prior to standard NIH submission dates when there is heavy traffic on Grants.gov. At such times it often can take more than 24 hours to receive feedback from Grants.gov that a proposal must be corrected. So even a proposal submitted by SPO a day before the agency due date may receive an error message from Grants.gov after the agency deadline has passed.
SPO therefore reminds PIs submitting proposals to NIH, AHRQ and NIOSH after January 25, 2011 to transmit proposals to SPO five working days before the application due date in accordance with the VCRO's existing policy. PIs that receive VCRO approval to submit “late proposals” are cautioned that proposals received less than five working days before the agency deadline may not be submitted in time to make corrections in time for resubmission through Grants.gov.
If you have any questions, please contact Pamela Miller at 642-2925.
Sincerely,
Graham Fleming
Vice Chancellor for Research
August 20, 2010 Research Advocate article: NIH, AHRQ, and NIOSH to Eliminate Error-Correction Window for Applications
