NIH has issued NOT-OD-17-005. This notice informs NIH applicants that requests to submit an unsolicited application that will exceed $500,000 in direct costs will now have an option to submit this request electronically through eRA Commons, under a new Prior Approval Module.
NIH has a longstanding policy that states any applicant requesting $500,000 or more in direct costs (excluding consortium F&A costs) in any one budget period within a competitive segment is required to contact the NIH Institute or Center (IC) Program Official (PO), in writing or by telephone, as early as possible during development of the application but no later than 6 weeks before submission for prior approval. Since NIH supports projects with large budgets, the purpose of this policy is for fiscal planning and therefore it provides NIH ICs the appropriate amount of time to consider the possibility of such awards as early as possible in the budget and program planning process.
After initial communication with the NIH, a PO may open up a request form for the Principal Investigator (PI) in eRA Commons. The PI will complete the form and submit it back to the initiating PO for review.
Instructions for how to use this new system can be found in the Prior Approval User Guide. For more information on the policy, see section 2.3.7.2 of the NIH Grants Policy Statement.
Please note that this notice does not reflect a change in policy. This notice is only being issued to identify an optional submission process change in line with NIH’s efforts to move toward electronic submission of prior approval requests.
