NIH ON-TIME SUBMISSION FLEXIBILITY DURING THE eSUBMISSION LEARNING CURVE
NIH Demonstrates FlexibilityAll NIH grant applications are required to be submitted on time. Eventually, on time will mean that a “clean” application (i.e., passed Grants.gov and eRA Commons validations without errors) has been submitted to Grants.gov by 5:00 p.m. local time on the receipt date. However, NIH has provided some flexibility for the first few submission dates of grant programs transitioning to electronic submission. Applicant institutions can submit changed/corrected applications in the week (5 business days) following the submission deadline, provided the changes made are needed to correct errors encountered during the eRA business rule validation process. This is not for tweaking the content of a research plan, but for working through specific errors on other fields of the forms.

NIH expects that all registration requirements have been met prior to the initial application submission and that the initial application is submitted to Grants.gov on or before the submission deadline. If the one-week correction window is used, the application must include a cover letter including the Grants.gov tracking number for the original submission and an explanation for why the corrected application is required. The cover letter should be attached to the PHS 398 Cover Letter form component found with the optional documents in the application package.