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As highlighted in an April Rock Talk blog post, NIH’s ASSIST submission system is now an option for submitting R01 applications, as well as most individual career development (K) award applications. In addition, applications to NIH’s U01 programs (Research Project Cooperative Agreements) recently joined the roster of programs supported in ASSIST.
When applying, a button to use ASSIST is linked from the required application instructions section of funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) if ASSIST is an option for that opportunity. We still give you the option to use downloadable forms or your institution’s system-to-system solution. So make sure to check in with your central grants office to find out what method they prefer to use.
Planning ahead? ASSIST will become an option for additional single project programs throughout 2015 so stay tuned!
| As of May 27, 2015, ASSIST support is now available for the following programs: | ||
| All multi-project grant programs | NOT-OD-13-075 | |
| Small Research Grant | R03 | NOT-OD-15-062 |
| Exploratory/Developmental Grant | R21 | NOT-OD-15-062 |
| Research Grant | R01 | NOT-OD-15-098 |
| Individual Career Development Awards | K, excluding KM1 and K12 | NOT-OD-15-098 |
| NIH Research Project Cooperative Agreements | U01 | NOT-OD-15-099 |
Why is NIH putting efforts into developing their own submission portal when Grants.gov exists and works well (at least for NIH applications!)? We need less disparate systems and forms which present a serious burden to researchers (who should be conducting research instead of learning new form sets and systems) and administrators.
I would think the money spent building electronic portals that grantees must use would be better spent on building internal federal systems that could take data elements from a standard form set and put it into each agency’s preferred format for review. This way, grantee institutions and researchers do not have to adapt to several form sets and portals and the feds could still get data in the format they prefer.