Help, Tips, and Frequently Asked Questions

If you have questions or encounter problems, contact Patricia McDade at 293-3546 or by e-mail at pmcdade@hsc.wvu.edu. Make an appointment or just drop in at Room HSC-S 3309. Questions? Help and information are available in the following areas:

• Budgets
• Proposal Info
• Forms
• Locating Sponsors
• Human Subjects Issues
• Literature searches
• Editing
• Training (individual or group)

Tips

CMED Manuals and Help

• SF424 instructions
• BRAAN2 manual

Proposal Writing Tips

• The Art of Writing Proposals (from the Social Science Research Council)
• How Not to Kill a Grant Application (from AAAS)
• Grant Application Tutorials from NIAID
• Proposal Writing Short Course (from The Foundation Center)
• NIH Grant-Writing Tips
• EPA Grant-Writing Tips (excellent page)
• Some Common Errors
• Tips from NIH/NIAID
• The Grant Doctor

NIH "mechanisms" (e.g., R01, K07, ...)

• activity codes, etc.
• NCI Grant Mechanisms

NIH proposal review information

Acknowledgment of Receipt
About four to six weeks after you have submitted a proposal to the NIH, you will receive a letter acknowledging receipt of your proposal that also provides its assigned number, review group and institute or center. You will be able to check the membership of the study section to which your proposal has been assigned, but remember that reviewers rotate on and off, and the list available on the Web may not be the current one. You will not know the identity of the three reviewers specifically assigned as primary reviewers for your proposal.

After Review
You will get comments in about six months whether or not your proposal received a score. If your proposal is scored, you will receive a letter providing that information. This is not a promise of funding. Whether or not your proposal gets funded depends on the institute and its budget and the proposals that scored lower than yours. It is often true that proposals are recommended for funding but do not receive any funds.

The letter acknowledging receipt of your proposal and assignment to a study section will look something like this.

Resubmitting
If your proposal is not funded, and if you wish to resubmit, you have three tries. The old two-year time limit has been removed, but it is recommended that you submit a revision within a year if you are going to. You must read the comments carefully and respond to them in a resubmission. The deadline for revised submissions is offset by one month from the regular NIH deadline dates.

If you submitted an R03 and decide to resubmit your revised proposal as an R01, it becomes a NEW submission. If you have questions, please contact Patricia.