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Three full business days prior to the
sponsor due date required. Effective for all proposals due on or
after September 16th, 2002, the administrative portions*
of grant or contract proposals, supplements and amendments, including
electronic proposals, must be received by the Office of Research
Administration (ORA) not less than three full business days prior
to the sponsor due date.
We regret that due to the increasing numbers
of proposals processed by this office and the increased compliance
issues requiring review and certification, we can no longer accommodate
requests for accelerated review of proposals that arrive at the
ORA less than three full business days prior to the sponsor due
date. Proposals received by ORA, later than three full business
days prior to the Sponsor due date, will no longer be reviewed
by ORA for submission prior to the due date. (Please note:
contract review and negotiation after sponsors have accepted proposals
will often take several weeks.)
Understanding that there may be mitigating
circumstances for late preparation of a grant proposal, the School
of Medicine and University are examining the feasibility of referral
of late proposals to an approved external consultant who would
have staff available to apply the same criteria employed by ORA.
The cost of such an external review necessarily would have to
be borne by the principal investigator or department from unrestricted
funds. If an acceptable consultant can be identified to perform
this service, an additional announcement will be made.
This internal deadline is required to allow
sufficient time to assure that the institutional review and certification
is accurate, and that the proposal complies with University and
sponsor policies. The average major sponsor deadline requires
such institutional review for several hundred proposals. Late
submissions have grown to about half of the total proposals -
a volume which cannot be completed adequately in less than the
required three days by rational staffing of the Office of Research
Administration. Both the PI and the Institutional Official signing
the proposal are personally responsible for the accuracy of the
information it contains. Past policy of accepting and reviewing
proposals up to the deadline day resulted in inadequate time for
appropriate review, correction, and certification.
As the technical portion of the proposal
is not required for initial departmental and institutional review,
investigators should submit the administrative portions of their
proposals to their departmental administrators, while continuing
to complete the technical proposal. It is expected that each department/sub-division
will need to specify additional internal submission deadlines
to guarantee timely investigator administrative proposal submission
to ORA 3 full business days before the sponsor due date.
As an example of the new deadline: if a
proposal is due at the sponsor on Tuesday, October 1, 2002, the
administrative portions of the proposal and a completed and signed
information sheet must be received by ORA no later than 5:00 p.m.
on Wednesday, September 25, 2002.
Finally, unless you are providing
additional or corrected information about your proposal, please
do not call ORA about the status of the institutional review during
the required three business days of review. If you have not heard
back from ORA after three business days it would be appropriate
to inquire about the review status.
*For example, the administrative portion
of an NIH proposal includes: a completed and signed Institutional
Information Sheet, cover page, abstract, budget, budget justification,
resources and environment, checklist, copy of any applicable RFP/RFA,
subcontractor information, and protection of human subjects training
certification. For other sponsors, similar paperwork and related
correspondence is required. Consult the Sponsored Projects Handbook
(www.hopkinsmedicine.org/research/handbook/index.html)
for additional detail.
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