Time-Sensitive News

March 8, 2024

Internal Competition Scheduled for 2024 Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program

Beginning Monday, March 11, faculty interested in submitting proposals to any of the three MRI program tracks in fall 2024 can submit their internal proposals. Deadline for submission of the internal proposals will be 11:59 p.m. on Friday, May 3. Proposals will be reviewed by an ad hoc committee of OU faculty with relevant expertise.

In order to submit a proposal to NSF's 2024 MRI competition, interested investigators or teams must first submit an internal proposal. Only those proposals selected by the OU review committee will be eligible for submission to NSF. If you did not submit a proposal to the internal competition, or if your project was not selected by the review committee, you cannot submit to NSF in the fall.

Full guidelines for the internal competition, including a list of required documents, format, etc., are available on the competition site in InfoReady Review. For convenience, they are also available on the Research Office intranet.

December 9, 2022

National Science Foundation revises Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program

NSF has released the new solicitation for the MRI program. In addition to removing the cost-share requirement for Ph.D.-granting institutions for the next five years, beginning in 2024, the submission window for proposals will shift from winter to fall. For 2023 only, this means there will be two rounds of the MRI competition: one in January-February, and another in October-November. The internal competition deadline for the winter round has closed, and we expect to notify the successful investigators shortly. The Research Office will announce the internal competition for the fall MRI round toward the end of winter term, to allow plenty of time for collaboration and preparation.

Another change is to the categorization of proposals. Previously, there were two proposal tracks: one for projects costing between $100,000 and $999,999, and a second track for projects costing between $1 million and $4 million. In the new solicitation, there are three tracks:

• Track 1 is for projects costing between $100,000 and $1,399,999 (limited to two proposals per institution)
• Track 2 is for projects costing between $1,400,000 and $4 million (limited to one proposal per institution)
• Track 3 is for projects costing between $100,000 and $4 million that include the purchase, installation, operation, and maintenance of equipment or instrumentation to conserve or reduce the consumption of helium (limited to one proposal per institution)

National Institutes of Health seeks comments on proposed revisions to review criteria

 NIH and the Center for Scientific Review have been engaging in dialogue with the research community for the past two years on ways to streamline the process of reviewing NIH proposals and further mitigating undue influence from the reputation of the applicant or the applicant’s institution. They are now proposing to make changes to the review criteria, and are seeking comments on the proposal through March 10, 2023.

 As outlined in the RFI, the proposed changes would repackage the current five scored criteria into three factors. Two of those factors would be individually scored, as the five review criteria are now:

• Factor 1 – Importance of the research (significance, innovation) – individually scored 1-9 as now
• Factor 2 – Rigor and feasibility (approach) – individually scored 1-9 as now
• Factor 3 – Expertise and resources (investigators, environment) – not individually scored, but would affect the overall impact score. Reviewers would rate investigators as either “fully capable” or “additional expertise/capability needed” and environment as “appropriate” or “additional resources needed.” Reviewers must provide written justification for a claim that additional expertise or resources are needed for a project to be successful.

 Three of the current additional review considerations (foreign organizations, select agent research, and resource sharing plans) will move out of the initial peer review process (possibly to be handled through a just-in-time mechanism, though the announcement did not specify how they will be handled in future). For the other two (authentication of key resources and budget/period of support), reviewers would handle them similarly to the mechanism proposed for the new Factor 3: they can choose “appropriate” or “concerns” with regard to authentication of key resources, and “appropriate,” “excessive,” or “inadequate” for budget and period of support. Again, anything other than “appropriate” for either criterion would require written justification.

November 14, 2022

NSF will turn FastLane off in 2023

NSF is in the process of adding the last few unsupported proposal types to research.gov. The last day for submitting new proposals in FastLane (for the handful of opportunities that still allow it) will be Friday, January 27, 2023 - which is also the last day to submit new supplemental funding requests in the system. After that date, all of those functions will only be available on research.gov (although proposals can still be submitted through the Cayuse system-to-system functionality, where appropriate).

Thereafter, FastLane will only allow submission of proposal file updates and budget revisions. Those functions will become available on research.gov later in 2023. The last day to use FastLane for file updates and budget revisions will be Friday, September 29, 2023.

Register for SciENcv now!

NSF also announced that, beginning in October 2023, it will only accept biographical sketches and current and pending support documents generated in SciENcv - the fillable PDF forms are being phased out and will not be accepted after that date. While this change is almost a year away, the Research Office encourages investigators who submit proposals to NSF (or who plan to do so in future) to begin familiarizing themselves with the new system.

One advantage to using SciENcv is that you only have to enter publications, positions, appointments, etc., one time - and in some cases, you can import them directly from PubMed, ORCID, or another trusted repository. Thereafter, they're stored in the system and you can select the ones you want for a new proposal for automatic inclusion. Your old biosketches are saved and you can either start a new one or use an old one and update it. (SciENcv also works for other federal sponsors, including NIH).

One downside to SciENcv is that once you've created a document within the system, Research Office staff cannot modify it to correct issues: the documents are digitally certified upon creation by SciENcv and any changes thereafter will remove that certification and prevent uploading the file to research.gov. Accordingly, when you set up your SciENcv profile, we recommend adding your grant and contract officer and/or your research development officer as an assistant, which allows us to correct information that was entered improperly, ensuring an accurate, compliant document every time.

April 18, 2022

The National Science Foundation has issued a new solicitation for the Faculty Early Career Research program (CAREER). The major change from the previous solicitation is to move the due date back from the fourth Monday in July to the fourth Wednesday in July (July 27 for this year's competition). NSF did not change the eligibility requirements for CAREER proposals; other minor changes included a caution to department chairs to restrict themselves in the required departmental letter to addressing only the items required by the solicitation, and the ability to include a single copy document indicating that the PI wishes to be considered for the honorary PECASE award if they meet the eligibility criteria (PECASE recipients must be U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, and/or U.S. permanent residents).

The Research Office has updated its guidance for faculty members considering submission of a CAREER proposal accordingly.

November 1, 2020:

Upcoming Changes to Grant Regulations:

Federal grant awards are regulated by the Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards ( 2 C.F.R. Part 200). Research administrators tend to just call this document the Uniform Guidance – and it’s changing effective November 12, 2020.

Most of this 300-page revision affects things that happen in the background of grants management, and PIs may well never notice the difference. There are a few key takeaways, though, that will change how Principal Investigators manage their awards and implement their projects.

For more details, see the "Upcoming Changes to Grant Regulations - October 2020" summary on our Grant & Contract Administration page, under the "General" tab.

November 10, 2020:

Requesting No Cost Extensions for the National Science Foundation (NSF):

• Users will need to log-in to research.gov at the following URL: Research.gov
• You will need to know your NSF log-in ID and password.  If you have forgotten these, contact your Proposal Support Specialist at [email protected].
• After logging in, locate the Awards and Reporting tab, in navy blue towards the top of the page. Within that, click on Notifications and Requests.
• Then, towards the lower left, a button that says Prepare New will appear. Click that.  This will bring up a list of possible requests. In this situation, you want No-Cost Extensions – third from the top.
• Step Two should automatically populate based on your request in Step One.
• Step Three is to enter your NSF award number, which is 7 digits long. This number can be found on your NSF award letter, your internal OU Notice of Award, and -for awards made since 2019- in your Cayuse record. And of course NSF keeps a record of the award numbers; search on your own name within research.gov and your grant award numbers will show up immediately.
• Once you have done this, you are in the substance of the request. You may choose a date up to one year in the future. The site also asks for the unexpended balance to the nearest dollar. We can give you this figure as can your Business Manager/Assistant Dean.
• In the text box provided, state your reasoning for requesting a No-Cost Extension. It is NEVER sufficient to say that you need to spend down remaining funds. You must offer a scientific reason – or possibly a natural or cultural event (such as COVID-19) that prevented you from adhering to your original timeline for the science and for the expenditures. Similarly, explain how you intend to spend the funds by the newly proposed end date.
• Clicking Save and Submit automatically routes the request to the Office of Sponsored Programs for review, final approval, and submission to NSF.

If you have questions regarding this policy or procedure, you may contact the Research Office at (248) 370-2552 or email your inquiry to [email protected] or [email protected].