UCLA Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research

UCLA Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research
_______________________

To: Principal Investigators and Researchers

Use of Grants.gov is required for submittal to NIH of all R01 applications submitted for the February 5, 2007 due date. This is an update to my memo of a year ago regarding use of Grants.gov and a reminder that all applications must be received in final form at OCGA at least three working days prior to the due date, which for NIH R01s is January 31^st^{. Over
300 proposals have been submitted via Grants.gov from UCLA, of which
approximately 200 have been to NIH. If you or your staff have not used
Grants.gov extensively, it can be somewhat difficult to navigate. I urge
all faculty and staff involved in completing applications to become familiar
with the system early on.}

In beginning to work with the system, users should know that:

^{Investigators and staff do not need to register to use Grants.gov.
PureEdge software, which is available at the Grants.gov website, must be
installed on computers used for proposal preparation. This software is
PC compatible and has Mac capabilities only through a PC emulator.
Unix and Linux capabilities are not yet available but Grants.gov is
continuing to develop a multi-platform version.
Grants.gov is not an on-line system. Instead, it is a portal
to which applications are submitted and the funding agencies go to for
retrieval of the proposals. Applications are prepared on personal
computers, networks or servers.
All documents uploaded into the application must be in non-interactive,
unprotected PDF format.
OCGA will continue to review drafts of the administrative sections of
applications but they should be forwarded only after all administrative
sections have been completed and reviewed by the department. OCGA will
provide comments and suggestions before the final version is submitted to
the office.
An error-free application must be transmitted to OCGA for submittal to the
funding agency via email attachment or hand-delivery of a CD. OCGA's
email limit is 15MB, but can be opened to accept larger emails if you
contact us. Make sure your department's outgoing email size is large
enough to accommodate your proposal. Additionally, by the end of the
month OCGA will have available an FTP site that will accept large proposals.
Error checking is very time-consuming and tedious. Applications will
not be accepted by Grants.gov if any errors/omissions are noted by the
system. Additionally, once NIH picks up the proposal from Grants.gov,
the NIH Commons runs a separate check for agency-specific business rules and
if it finds incorrect or incomplete information, it will not allow the
application to proceed through the Commons.
Printing the application is very time-consuming as each form page and
attachments must be printed individually.
It is important to alert OCGA (the Grant Analyst or Officer with whom you
work) of your intent to submit an application early in the process.
System constraints prevent OCGA staff from shortcutting the fairly lengthy
institutional review and submission processes. Thus, for this NIH R01
application due date OCGA will need to receive applications (via e-mail or
through delivery of a CD) by January 31st to ensure that applications can be
reviewed, that any inadvertent errors that would prevent transmission can be
corrected, and that proposals are transmitted successfully. Without at
least 3 working days, UCLA cannot guarantee timely submission of
applications (see UCLA Procedure 910.1).

Over the past 14 months OCGA staff has given seven introductory sessions on
using Grant.gov. Another session is scheduled for January 22nd from 10:00
- noon in the School of Nursing Audrienne Moseley Auditorium (Room A6-60 located
on the A level of the Factor Building on the SW corner of Charles E. Young Drive
and Tiverton). I suggest that you and/or members of your research team
attend this if you have not yet worked with Grants.gov.
I urge you to start the application process now if you have not already done
so. Work with your department or School IT staff as necessary; read the
NIH program announcements thoroughly; familiarize yourself with the new required
forms; refer to the help resources; and forward the completed, error-free
application to OCGA well before the deadline.

Additional information about Grants.gov and links to
agency-specific guidance is on the ORA website, ^{http://www.research.ucla.edu/ocga/sr2/grants_gov.htm.}^{Grants.gov is an evolving system so OCGA updates their website as revised
information becomes available. Do not hesitate to contact your OCGA Grant
Analyst, Officer, or Assistant if you have questions.}

Sincerely,

Roberto Peccei

Vice Chancellor for Research}