WARNING Re: Electronic Proposals

The combination of proposal formatting errors and sponsor system mistakes has made it very difficult to effect electronic submission. Although ORA staff make every effort to submit late electronic proposals, ORA cannot continue to put all other timely proposals at risk to accommodate late submissions. Recently it has taken an average of several days per proposal to complete electronic submission successfully following ORA review, correction and approval. For example, seven out of eight shared instrument proposals had to be resubmitted electronically, many of them several times. Additionally, when submission rejection is due to a proposal formatting problem, the Investigator needs to remain available to revise/correct and resubmit the proposal until he/she can verify that it was received at the funding agency correctly. Proposals that are filed after the ORA deadline for filing will not be processed until all timely filed proposals are complete and there is no guarantee they can be processed prior to deadlines.

Typical errors include an inaccurate eCommons ID for the principal investigator, spaces in the saved file names, all attachments not being in PDF format and information provided in the application not matching the information in the PI's eCommons profile.

PI verification of eRA Commons Verifications of Electronically Submitted Applications

Effective for applications submitted for May 10th, 2006 and beyond, the PI and AOR/SO will no longer be required to verify grant applications in the eRA Commons after submission through grants.gov. Applications will remain in the eRA Commons for two business days, allowing time for the PI to view the application if desired. If no action is taken during the two-day period, the application will automatically be forwarded for processing. If the PI discovers an error in the assembled application during the two-day period, only the AOR/SO will have the ability to "Reject" the application to prevent processing. Additional details regarding the verification process are outlined here: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-06-055.html.

NIH/AHRQ Announces Several Business Process Changes for PHS398, PHS2590, and SF424 Forms

NIH/AHRQ has announced several business process changes for PHS398, PHS2590, and SF424 forms. These changes will go into effect for submissions or receipt dates on or after May 10, 2006.

• The PI signature field will be replaced with an institutional compliance requirement on competing applications. Although PI s are no longer required to sign the application, the institution is required to retain a unique signature and date for each application. The Johns Hopkins University is in the process of modifying the electronic Information Sheet (eIS) to fulfill the institutional compliance requirement. Therefore, effective for May 10th submissions and beyond, all PIs on an application must sign the eIS to meet the institutional compliance requirement.

• Effort must be measured in person-months on both the SF424 and PHS398 forms. School of Medicine investigators should indicate effort in months per calendar year. Collaborating investigators from the Schools of Arts & Sciences and/or Engineering may indicate effort in months per calendar year, academic year, or summer months as appropriate for their appointment type. To aid with this transition, a chart to convert percent effort to person months is posted at http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Research/ora/Forms/effort.calendar.conversion.xls

• Instructions for including paper publications as appendix material have changed.

• The PHS398 has been changed to accommodate multiple PIs. Please note that only certain funding opportunities allow a multiple-PI option.

• Select agent research requirements are revised, and a new section addressing these requirements has been added.

• Biographical sketch requirements have been modified to eliminate the 2-page subsection limit for sections A & B. However, the entire biographical sketch is still limited to 4 pages.

• Instructions and data requirements specific to programs that have transitioned to the SF424 have been removed from the PHS398.

Revised PHS 398, PHS 2590, and SF424 forms are now available, as outlined in the following NIH Notices: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-06-056.
html, to http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-06-057.html, and
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-06-058.html.)

ORA and COEUS

ORA is planning to provide departmental training on using COEUS for electronic submissions. Training will be offered in summer 2006. Departmental staff invited to attend ESNAP training in April will be notified of the COEUS training schedule as soon as it is determined. Announcements will also be posted in future issues of WebNotes.

Submit Funded Research Articles to NIH and PubMed Central

Since May 2, 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy has requested that researchers funded by NIH submit their peer-reviewed manuscripts that have been accepted for publication to PubMed Central (PMC). Link to the NIH manuscript submission page (http://www.nihms.nih.gov/) to submit, or to review Frequently Asked Questions. See also a list of journals (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/front-
page/fp.fcgi?cmd=full_view) that automatically deposit your work into PMC.

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