NIH Changing Grant Application Error Correction Window from Five to Two Days

The National Institutes of Health has announced that the “error correction window” will be reduced from five business days to two business days for all electronically submitted grant applications with submission deadlines on or after January 8, 2008. The “error correction window” is the the time allowed after the submission deadline to address NIH system-identified errors and warnings. The two business days provided to view the assembled application image in eRA Commons will remain unchanged.

This change will mean that electronic applications will be considered “on-time” if all of the following criteria are met:

• All required registrations must be complete prior to the initial submission.
• Initial successful submission to Grants.gov must have a timestamp on/before 5:00 p.m. local time of the applicant organization on the receipt date.
• Applicants must correct errors and/or warnings within the two business days following the receipt date.
• All application corrections must be in response to a system-identified error/warning; application submissions with additional changes may be refused.
• If final submission is sent after the receipt date, a cover letter attachment must be included identifying the system-identified errors and warnings that have been corrected.

Grants.gov PureEdge not Compatible with Mac Leopard or Windows Vista

Grants.gov is continuing work on replacing PureEdge Viewer application packages with Adobe Forms. However, most Grants.gov application packages are still in PureEdge format. The National Institutes of Health, for example, will use PureEdge forms at least through March 2008.

Investigators and staff considering upgrading to new Mac or Windows operating systems need to be aware of compatibility issues with PureEdge forms.

• Macintosh - PureEdge Special Edition Mac Viewer does not work with Mac OS X Leopard. To submit Grants.gov PureEdge forms on a Macintosh computer, either stay at OS X 10.4.6, use a virtualization product, install emulator software, or use a Windows terminal service. See Grants.gov “Apply” at Berkeley for more information on PureEdge on the Mac.
  


• Windows - PureEdge does not work with Microsoft Windows Vista, according to Grants.gov. To submit Grants.gov PureEdge forms, use Windows XP or follow Grants.gov guidance on Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 Compatibility.

For information and news on the transition to Adobe Forms, see the Grants.gov Program Status and Help pages, and Grants.gov “Apply” at Berkeley. Grants.gov now supports the latest version of Adobe Reader (8.1.1) and continues to support Adobe Reader version 7.0.9.

Save the Date: National Forum on Human Subject Research in Sacramento on February 8

Thinking Outside the Box: Addressing the Challenges of Human Subject Research in 2008
Co-sponsored by University of California Davis and OHRP
Doubletree Hotel, Sacramento, CA
Friday, February 8, 2008
http://www.research.ucdavis.edu/ohrpconference

The Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) in conjunction with the University of California Davis will be sponsoring a National Research Community Forum entitled, “Thinking Outside the Box: Addressing the Challenges of Human Subject Research in 2008,” on Friday, February 8, 2008, at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento California. Co-sponsors for this forum are the Northern California IRB Consortium Forum, the California State University Chancellor's Office, California State University Long Beach, the San Jose State University, and the California State University San Marcos.

This forum will focus on specific applications and interpretations of the regulations entitled, “Protecting Human Subjects” for conducting biomedical and behavioral research that is funded by the Department of Health and Human Services. The program will showcase experts from academia and the federal and state governments who will address unique aspects for balancing the principles of The Belmont Report in conjunction with federal and state laws and ensuring that the protection of human subjects in clinical trials is maximized. Representatives from the OHRP, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, Department of Education, and the Department of Defense will provide federal regulatory updates and clarification of key policy issues.

This forum should be of special interest to those persons currently serving or about to begin serving as a member of an IRB as well as institutional officials and administrators, principal investigators, legal counsel, research staff, patient advocates, research sponsors, public health officials, privacy officials, compliance officers, laypersons and sponsors and contract research professionals.

Visit the UCD web site at http://www.research.ucdavis.edu/ohrpconference or contact Connie Koog at connie.koog@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu.

Berkeley Coeus Upgrade Coming Soon

The Research Administration and Compliance Information Systems team (RAC-IS) is making final preparations to switch to the new, upgraded Berkeley Coeus version 4 in late November. The Berkeley Coeus system is the institutional system of record for tracking all Berkeley campus research proposals and awards processed by the Sponsored Projects Office (SPO) and the Industry Alliances Office (IAO). Data captured in Coeus is passed automatically to the Berkeley Financial System (BFS) to establish and modify fund accounts for project spending.

RAC-IS is working to make the transition to Coeus 4 as transparent and smooth as possible for the campus. However, during the move to the new system, Coeus may be unavailable for one to two days. The interruption in service will affect the Coeus to BFS feed for award set up as well as access to Coeus Web. Campus staff and faculty with possible issues related to award setup during this period may contact Kevin Phung (kphung@berkeley.edu). RAC-IS will provide more details on the move to Coeus 4 during the next several weeks.

The upgrade is a complete technical migration. The client application is now written in Java; upgrades from MIT will be incorporated as they are released, while at the same time preserving Berkeley customizations; the entire system will run on Campus Data Center Web Farm and database infrastructure; and all legacy data will be migrated to the new system. Benefits out of the box include enhanced capabilities for documenting proposal reviews, tracking agreement negotiations, managing subcontracts and subcontractors, and compliance information, among others.

The upgrade project lays the groundwork for future enhancements in a number of areas, including reporting and campus access to SPO data, conflict of interest disclosure tracking, routing and approval of proposals through the campus, and system-to-system submission of fully electronic proposals to the federal Grants.gov system. When implemented, the new human and animal subjects protocol systems will be integrated with Coeus.

NSF Seeks Comments on Standard Form for Federal Progress Reports

The National Science Foundation, on behalf of the federal Chief Financial Officers Council’s Grants Policy Committee, the Grants.gov Executive Board, and the National Science and Technology Council’s Research Business Models Subcommittee, is soliciting public comment on a standardized format for Research Performance Progress Reports (RPPR).

The objective of the initiative is to establish a uniform format for reporting performance on federally funded research projects. The proposed format is for interim progress reports only. A similar format may be considered for final reports after this RPPR initiative.

Comments are due at NSF by January 8, 2008. The November 9 Federal Register notice and draft report are available at http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/rppr/index.jsp.