Working to Relieve Applicant Stress

Posted

Ongoing performance issues at Grants.gov have lead to increased anxiety throughout the applicant community. Though Grants.gov is working to address the issues impacting the electronic application process and to enhance the overall performance of their system, NIH is committed to allieviating undue administrative burdens facing many of our applicants. To this end, NIH has extended the electronic application error correction window to 5 days for all opportunities with receipt dates in February 2009. This extension offers applicants sufficient time to correct system-identified errors following on-time submission. Applicants are strongly advised to see notice NOT-OD-09-045 regarding the guidelines and procedural details of this extension.

Applying early is always the safest path. However, NIH realizes that there are many road blocks to early application and hopes that the extension of the error-correction window will lessen the stress of any last minute submissions. NIH will continue to monitor the Grants.gov queue closely, and we will make adjustments to the correction window and/or submission deadlines as necessary to protect our applicants’ ability to submit on time.