Clarification on Timing and Page Limits for Restructured NIH Application Forms and Instructions

Clarification on Timing and Page Limits for Restructured Application Forms and Instructions
(NOT-OD-10-002)
National Institutes of Health

The use of new forms and instructions to submit applications for NIH funding will be determined strictly by due date, not by fiscal year of funding.

    * Applications intended for due dates before January 25, 2010 must use the current application packages and instructions.
    * Applications intended for due dates on or after January 25, 2010 must use the new application packages and instructions.
    * Applicants eligible for continuous submission have until February 7, 2010 to submit R01, R21, and R34 AIDS applications that would otherwise have been due on January 7, 2010, using the current form version.

As stated in NOT-OD-09-149, NIH will be issuing new parent announcements that should be used for applications intended for due dates on or after January 25, 2010. NIH will be updating all other Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) that have due dates on or after January 25, 2010 with new language and new application packages. Each updated FOA will include a link to the archived version of the current FOA.

For a period of time between late October and the beginning of February, applicants must carefully select which version of the FOA and application package they should be using. Anyone submitting an application for due dates before January 25, 2010 (or before February 7, 2010 for those eligible for continuous submission on AIDS R01, R21, and R34 applications) must use the application package and instructions provided with the archived version of the FOA.

As stated in NOT-OD-09-149, most of the FOAs will be updated with language changes and new application packages by December 2009. For a small number of FOAs with non-standard due dates between the end of November and  December, updated forms and associated FOA changes will be made available approximately 10 days after the last due date in 2009.

Some FOAs will be terminated instead of updated, at the discretion of the lead NIH Institute or Center.  In these cases, the FOA will be updated to reflect the new expiration date. Before submitting an application, the applicant should be sure to verify that the FOA is still active.
 
NOTE: To ensure equitable reviews, applications of the same Activity Code submitted using different application packages and instructions will not be reviewed together.

Please see the notice for more information pertaining to Career Development (K), Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Institutional Research Training (T), International Research Training (D43, D71), and Research Education (R25) applications.