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Issued by

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH (NIH)

Purpose

The purpose of this notice is to remind applicants, both sponsored programs officials as well as investigators, that to be fair to all concerned the NIH will consistently apply standards for application completeness and for compliance with all submission requirements and NIH policies. This longstanding NIH policy is outlined in NIH Grants Policy Statement 2.3.2, Eligibility along with 2.4.4, Disposition of Applications, consistent with 2 CFR 200.204 and 200.205.

Policy

As a reminder, NIH may withdraw any application identified during the receipt, referral, and prior to peer review process that is incomplete or noncompliant with instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide, the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), and relevant NIH Guide Notices.

• NIH applications must be complete and compliant with all submission requirements and NIH policies at the time of submission.
• Placeholder attachments must not be used. While they allow an application to pass eRA system-enforced validations, applications that include such attachments are incomplete and will be withdrawn.
• Regardless of the submission option, applicants must examine all elements of their applications in eRA Commons for mistakes, problems, errors, omissions, oversights, and application assembly issues. Applicants must make any necessary or desired changes before the application submission deadline.
  • The application submission deadline is 5 PM local (applicant organization) time on the application due date. The final, corrected application must be submitted by the application due date.
  • Applicants are encouraged to submit two or more days early to allow time for application viewing and corrections before the application submission deadline.
  • Changed/Corrected applications overwrite and permanently delete prior submissions. Changed/Corrected applications submitted during the two-day viewing window but after the application submission deadline are late.
  • All applications submitted after the application submission deadline will be considered late and only accepted under the limited circumstances described in NIH Policy for Late Application Submission. Correcting issues in an on-time submission is not an acceptable reason for late submission.
• Applicants must follow all application instructions including those in the SF424 Application Guide, NOFO, policy Notices, and other Notices. Because eRA Commons does not provide Warning and Errors for every violation, applicants should not rely on validations but instead follow all instructions.
• Applicants must verify that all budget requests are accurate and compliant with NIH policies. When subawards are included, applicants may use the Total Direct Costs less Consortium F&A bookmark in the assembled application image to confirm the requested budget.
• Rarely, at the sole instigation and discretion of NIH, NIH might request limited missing materials on a case-by-case basis only as an alternative to the withdrawal of substantially complete applications by NIH. NIH will not accept unsolicited materials. NIH will not consider applicant requests to solicit materials. NIH will not solicit or accept revised, corrected, or replacement materials, files, or attachments. NIH will not edit, update, revise, change, correct, remove, or redact any submitted application materials (which includes budget requests). NIH will not solicit or accept omitted, corrected, revised, or edited budget forms.   

If an application is withdrawn or if action is required, correspondence will be placed in the eRA Commons Status page for that application. The PD/PI and the AOR from the applicant organization will be notified by eRA Commons via e-mail to access their account and view the explanatory letter.  Applicants should ensure their email address is kept up to date in eRA Commons and their Internet Service Provider email settings allow delivery. 

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration (OPERA)
[email protected]