eRA Items of Interest
eSubmission Items of Interest – February 25, 2010
Straight Quotes are the Smart Choice in Electronic Applications
Have you ever noticed that when you enclose text in quotation marks in a simple text editor (e.g., Notepad) the quotation marks appear straight up and down and when you type the same string in a more sophisticated word processor (e.g., Microsoft Word or OpenOffice) the quotation marks are curled towards the text between them? Those curled quotation marks, sometimes referred to as “smart quotes,” cause problems with electronic application processing.
For years, Grants.gov has posted application submission FAQs on their Web site warning applicants against using special characters or cutting and pasting from word processors that may have proprietary fonts and/or special characters.
In the last few weeks, however, eRA has seen a surge in issues related to electronic application fields that contain “smart quotes” and some rather troubling new symptoms – depending on the fields that contain the “smart quotes” you may not be able to see your processing results (error/warnings or application image) in eRA Commons despite receiving a notification that eRA processing is complete and the results were posted in the PD/PI’s Commons account. This new symptom certainly isn’t acceptable and we are thankful that less than one percent of our applications have encountered this issue. No one wants applications failing to move forward without the opportunity to view/address issues or, worse yet, applications moving forward to NIH without the opportunity to view the assembled image. We are taking steps to identify problematic applications and notify submitters that issues were encountered, but remember it is ultimately your responsibility to track your application all the way through to image.
Although the timing of these new issues coincided with Grants.gov’s recent extended downtime for system upgrades, neither Grants.gov nor eRA has been able to definitively determine a specific system change to account for the issues we are now encountering. We’ll get to the bottom of it. Until then…
- Heed the advice in Grants.gov’s FAQs and avoid special characters in form fields and filenames.
- Be aware that cutting & pasting from word processors (like Microsoft Word and OpenOffice) that do automatic conversions on special characters can lead to problems. Our recent issues have been related to “smart quotes”, but word processors do spiffy things with other characters, too. Don’t even get me started on the two hyphen m-dash, which, by the way, tends to turn into question marks when included in form fields.
Take the time to type directly into the form fields and take advantage of Adobe Reader’s Auto-Complete feature found in Form Preferences as a safer alternative than cut & paste for repetitive information.
- If you submitted an application (and remembered to include the PD/PI’s Commons ID in the credential field of the SR/Key form), but don’t see the results in Commons - contact the eRA Help Desk for guidance.
Submission Tips for Competitive Revisions
The submission deadlines for ARRA Competitive Revision applications through the NIH Basic Behavioral and Social Science Opportunity Network (OppNet) are fast approaching.
Announcement |
Title |
Receipt Date(s) |
NIH Announces the Availability of Recovery Act Funds for Competitive Revision Applications (R01, R03, R15, R21, R21/R33, and R37) through the NIH Basic Behavioral and Social Science Opportunity Network (OppNet) |
03/02/2010 |
|
NIH Announces the Availability of Recovery Act Funds for Competitive Revision Applications (R01, R03, R15, R21, R21/R33, and R37) for HIV/AIDS-related Research through the NIH Basic Behavioral and Social Science Opportunity Network (OppNet) |
03/25/2010 |
|
NIH Announces the Availability of Recovery Act Funds for Competitive Revision Applications for Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Transfer Technology Research Grants (R43/R44 and R41/R42) through the NIH Basic Behavioral and Social Science Opportunity Network (OppNet) |
03/25/2010 |
Here are some tips to help ensure successful submission:
- Carefully read and follow the “How to Apply” section of OppNet announcement.
- The Descriptive Title of your Revision application (item 11 of the SF424 R&R cover) must exactly match the title of the “parent” award. The system will do a straight string comparison and will throw an error if any character is different. Look at the title of the parent award in Commons and include it in the application exactly the same way you see it - punctuation, typos, spaces and all.
- Submit using the same budget format as was used for the “parent” award. If the “parent” award used a detailed budget, use the R&R Budget form even though the requested amount fits in the Modular format. You may get the following Warning: “R01, R03, R21, R34 and U34 direct cost requests of $250K or less each year (on the 424 RR Budget page section F-K) must be in modules of $25K, using the PHS 398 Modular Budget form and not the R&R Budget form. Incorrect applications may be delayed in the peer review process or rejected.” The Warning will not stop your application submission and can be ignored.
- The Proposed Project Period (item 12 of the SF424 R&R cover) of the competitive revision may not extend beyond the latest awarded project period of the “parent” grant. If a no-cost extension is needed to complete the work to be proposed in the revision, the No-Cost Extension (NCE) must be in place before the application is submitted. Remember, eRA Commons does not provide the NCE link until you are within 90 days of the end of the project period. The system is enforcing NIH policy and no matter how much you beg the help desk to make the link appear sooner, they simply can’t make it happen. Check out the NIH Recovery Web site FAQs for additional information on NCEs and Competitive Revisions.
- If an NCE is in place at time of submission and you’ve double checked that the proposed project period is within the time available in the NCE, but you still get the error “The parent grant for a revision must be awarded. The entire proposed project period on the SF424 Cover of this Revision application must be within the Awarded Project Period.” contact the eRA Help Desk for assistance. Under certain circumstances the system doesn’t take the NCE into account when checking the awarded project period. The help desk can provide a work around to get past the error.
Improving Our Image
Software changes will be deployed tonight to address several application image assembly bugs. Specifically, the Additional Sites attachment in the Project/Performance Site Locations form and the Additional Senior Key Persons attachment in Section A of the R&R Budget form will again be included in the assembled application image. We don’t expect any eRA Commons downtime as a result of the eSubmission deployment tonight, but you may see a few hours delay in application processing if you submit between 8 pm and midnight Eastern Time.
Take care,
Sheri
Sheri Cummins
Customer Relationship Manager, eSubmission
Electronic Research Administration
NIH Office of Extramural Research
NIH Office of Extramural Research
askera@mail.nih.gov
