Change in Standing Receipt Dates for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)

Effective January 2007

The NIH recently announced a change in standard receipt dates for grant applications submitted to NIH, AHRQ and NIOSH. The new receipt dates will be effective as of January 2007 and will apply to both paper and electronic applications.

The transition to electronic application submission has heightened our awareness of challenges posed by having very large numbers of incoming grant applications on any single day. We currently spread the workload involved with receiving incoming grant applications across three annual council rounds that include multiple submission dates for each round.

However, some of our standing receipt dates allow for six to eight thousand applications to be submitted for a single date. This volume has the potential to cause bottlenecks in a number of critical places:

The research administration offices at the applicant institution, which must now submit all applications.
Grants.gov and eRA systems, where response time may slow under heavy volume.
The Grants.gov and NIH help desks, which have to handle large spikes in call volume.
The CSR Division of Receipt and Referral, which is responsible for referral of incoming applications in a timely way.

Spreading receipt dates to have a steady flow of applications rather than "boom and bust" cycles will allow many different groups to have a realistic approach to this complex process and maximize electronic system responsiveness.

For additional information and the new receipt dates, go to:

Change in Standing Receipt Dates for NIH/AHRQ/NIOSH [grants.nih.gov]

Last Reviewed: February 28, 2012

Last updated: February 28, 2012