Notice Number: NOT-OD-09-028

Key Dates
Release Date: December 9, 2008

Issued by
National Institutes of Health (NIH), (http://www.nih.gov)

Purpose: To clarify that appointed regular members of NIH Chartered Study Sections now must use Adobe-based forms to submit their grant applications.

Background: Principal Investigators who also serve as appointed members on NIH chartered Study Sections may utilize alternate plans for submitting some of their R01, R21, and R34 grant applications, as allowed by NIH policy (NOT-OD-08-026).

As announced in NOT-OD-08-117, NIH is in the midst of transitioning from PureEdge to Adobe application forms. NIH announced the availability of the Adobe forms on Friday, December 5, 2008 (NOT-OD-09-026).  When NIH posted the Adobe forms for existing funding opportunity announcements (FOAs), the PureEdge forms previously associated with those FOAs became obsolete.  Consequently, Applicants submitting in response to these FOAs on or after December 5 must use the new Adobe based forms.

Although NIH carefully planned the transition from one form technology to another to avoid standard due dates (see the Adobe Transition Timeline) some reviewer applicants have been affected by this transition.  In particular, appointed members of NIH chartered study sections who submitted PureEdge application forms on or after December 5 for FOAs that now require Adobe forms have received the following message from Grants.gov:

“The Closing Date of the grant opportunity for which you have applied has already passed and the grantor agency is no longer accepting applications”

This is a generic message from Grants.gov and may be confusing for applicants.  In this case, the statement that the grantor agency is “no longer accepting applications” refers only to the actual PureEdge application forms.  PureEdge based applications will not be accepted, but applications using the new Adobe forms will.  After ensuring that a Grants.gov compatible version of Adobe Reader (currently 8.1.3 or higher; see Grants.gov Download Software page for updates) has been installed, applicants should refer back to the FOA to download and submit the new Adobe-based application form. 

Inquiries

Questions about this notice should be directed to:

Grants Information
Office of Extramural Research
National Institutes of Health
Phone: 301-945-7573
TTY: 301-451-5936
Email: [email protected]