November 2005

NIH rolls out electronic grant submission

Stacks of grant application packages on paper will soon be a thing of the past at the National Institutes Judge rules against California chiropractorsof Health (NIH) as it readies to receive grant applications electronically through the federal portal of Grants.gov, marking a major change in the way it has traditionally conducted its grants submission business.

Instead, bits and bytes will be part of the new grant submission lexicon at NIH as it launches a new state-of-the-art way for applicants to submit their grant applications electronically.

Beginning with the receipt date of Dec. 1, 2005, NIH will require all its Small Business Research Innovation Program (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) grant applicants to submit their competing grants electronically. NIH plans to transition all of its competing grant programs one by one from paper to electronic by May 2007. NIH’s electronic submission timeline is available at http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt.

Even as it switches from paper to electronic submission, NIH is also moving simultaneously from its PHS398 application form to the new SF424 (R&R) application form. Every application via Grants.gov to NIH will need to come in on the new SF424 (R&R) form. An applicant will fill out the application package and upload it to Grants.gov; the NIH system will then retrieve it and produce a system-generated application online.

NIH officially began its conversion from paper to electronic on October 18, when it posted its first SBIR/STTR grant solicitations on Grants.gov, requiring applicants to download and submit electronic SF424 Research and Related (R&R) grant applications through the federal site.

SBIR and STTR grant applicants for non-AIDS-related grants must submit SF424 (R&R) application packages through Grants.gov. NIH will no longer accept paper applications for these grant programs.

Specific notices preceding the conversion of each grant program (a.k.a. mechanism) will be issued, and all competing applications will use the new form and process by May 2007.

NIH urges grantees to begin preparing for electronic submission as soon as possible. Institutions must register with Grants.gov. Institutions and principal investigators (PIs) must establish NIH eRA Commons accounts.

Source: National Institutes of Health www.nih.gov

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