Reminder: Changes for January 25, 2018 Application Due Dates

Two major changes impact applications submitted for due dates on or after January 25, 2018.

• Applicants are required to use FORMS-E. Wondering what this means for late applications or reviewers submitting under the continuous submission policies? See NIH Guide Notice NOT-OD-17-062 to learn more.
• Applications that include one or more clinical trials must be submitted in response to funding opportunity announcements that allow for clinical trials. See NIH Guide Notice NOT-OD-18-106 to learn more.

New Electronic Submission Requirement for Diversity Supplements

The funds provided in response to Diversity Supplement requests are used to improve the diversity of the biomedical research workforce by recruiting and supporting students, postdoctorates, and eligible investigators from groups that have been shown to be underrepresented in health-related research. Currently, NIH does not require that diversity supplements be submitted electronically, which poses a challenge to NIH staff when trying to identify and track diversity supplement awardees and their subsequent research careers.

Effective January 25, 2018, all single and multi-project diversity supplement requests MUST be submitted electronically (NOT-OD-18-111).

Our diversity supplement funding opportunity announcement will be reissued with FORMS-E application forms and instructions on January 25, 2018 (NOT-OD-17-062). Until then, requests can be prepared using our current FORMS-D diversity supplement FOA. This FOA will expire on February 25, 2018 and all subsequent requests must use the new FORMS-E FOA.

Since the ability to submit diversity supplement requests to multi-project awards is new, an application forms package was added to the FORMS-D diversity supplement FOA to facilitate those submissions. A similar package will be added to the FORMS-E FOA when posted. Although the new package is used in conjunction with multi-project awards, the diversity supplement request itself is structured as a single-project application to the parent award.

Use our “Research Instructions” found on the How to Apply – Application Guide page when preparing all diversity supplement requests.