Reminder: Grants.gov Downtime Impacts September 22-30 Application Due Dates

Dear Colleagues,

Please see the reminder below from NIH.

As indicated in an earlier article, Grants.gov services will go offline this Friday, September 23, and are planned to remain unavailable through Thursday September 29. To mitigate the impact, NIH due dates that fall on or between Thursday, September 22 and Friday, September 30, 2022 will move to October 3, 2022 (see NOT-OD-22-190 for caveats and considerations).

So what does this mean for applications submitted just prior to the downtime? NIH’s application submission process has a two-business day application viewing window that allows administrators and investigators to check the assembled application image in eRA Commons before it moves on to our receipt and referral staff for further processing.

Let’s look at a few scenarios for applications targeting an impacted due date and how the application viewing window comes into play.

Scenario 1

Applicant submits an application on Wednesday, September 20, for an impacted due date and receives a notification from eRA Commons that errors were identified.

• Applications must be error-free before an application image is generated and placed in eRA Commons. Viewing window does not apply.
• A corrective application addressing the errors must be submitted by 5 PM on October 3.

Scenario 2

Applicant submits an error-free application on Wednesday, September 20, for an impacted due date and receives a notification from eRA Commons that the assembled application is available for viewing. They view the application in eRA Commons and like what they see.

• No action needed. At midnight ET on Friday, the application viewing window will close and the application will move to receipt and referral staff for further processing.

Scenario 3

Applicant submits an error-free application on Wednesday, September 20, for an impacted due date and receives a notification from eRA Commons that the assembled application is available for viewing. Upon viewing the application they find the latest Research Strategy was not included and they want to make a corrective submission prior to the deadline.

• The viewing window for applications submitted on Wednesday, September 20, would be Thursday and Friday.
• Applicant has two possible options:
  • Submit a corrective application on Thursday (prior to Grants.gov downtime on Friday).
  • Reject the application in eRA Commons to prevent it from moving forward and submit a corrective application by 5 PM on October 3.

Scenario 4

Applicant submitted an application for an impacted due date. After the application viewing window in eRA Commons and during the Grants.gov downtime, they discovered a substantive issue with the application they want to correct prior to the extended due date.

• The applicant can officially withdraw the application from processing and submit a corrective application by 5 PM on October 3.

The application viewing window is nothing new, but downtimes of this length are far from standard, causing us all to pay a little more attention.