What is an NIH parent announcement? What is a parent grant?

If you’re new to NIH grants, you may be struggling to understand the grant-speak and acronym alphabet soup that are often used by faculty members and research administrators. Given the many, continually changing rules and regulations of the grant proposal and award process, it is not surprising that individuals routinely speak in NIH terms when discussing grants. As with clinical skills, which require regular practice and upkeep, research grant knowledge must be continually applied to stay fresh in the field. Unfortunately, this means that many of us who have been working on NIH grants for many years often become accustomed to speaking in technical terms and forget to ensure that we are providing information in a way that is understandable to a novice. Fortunately, however, many resources exist to help you expand your NIH grant vocabulary, including a grants and funding glossary.

One term that is often a source of confusion is “parent grant”. Sometimes this is also stated as “Parent R01” or “Parent R03”, etc. When you hear this mentioned, your first thought might be of something like this:

Luckily for all parents who have experienced the tantrums of the terrible twos, kids have nothing to do with these grants. The official name for this grant type is “parent announcement.” NIH defines a parent announcement as follows:

Parent announcements are broad funding opportunity allowing applicants to submit investigator-initiated applications for specific activity codes. They are open for up to 3 years and use standard due dates.

It is important to note that not all NIH institutes and centers participate in parent announcements. If you are seeking funding from a particular institute, check the “Components of Participating Organizations” section listed toward the top of of the first page of funding opportunity.

K Award Funding Opportunity Notices Have Been Reissued

If you are planning to apply for a K Award, such as a K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award, be sure that you are following the newly released guidelines. The revisions include only minor changes to most application requirements, but the most significant change is the requirement that all application use Adobe Forms Version C. Also, if you plan to apply for a K99/R00(also known as a "kangaroo" award), be advised that major changes have been made to this program.

Applying for "Selected Topics in Transfusion Medicine" R01?

If you are planning to apply for this NHLBI R01 opportunity, a notice recently released by NIH impacts the due dates. Instead of sticking with standard R01 deadlines, the next deadline will be February 5th 2012 (same as parent R01s), but the deadline after that will not be in June. Rather, your next opportunity for a non-AIDS application will be October 5th. That means, if you don't have your act together by February, you will have to wait another 8 months. So don't wait- get started now!

What is the difference between an R01, and R03 and an R21?

This is a common question as you begin to prepare research grant applications. How do you select the correct mechanism when applying for a parent announcement? Contrary to popular belief, this should not just depend on how much money you need. Rather, the type of grant mechanism to apply for is dictated by your research plan. What do you hope to accomplish? Is this an exploratory project to try a new method that can then be turned into a large-scale study? If so, consider applying for the R21. Is this a smaller-scale study that can be completed in 2 years? If so, consider applying for the R03.

For more information and definitions of the various R series grants from NIH, click here.

NIH Takes a Tough Stance on A2 Elimination

Under the old NIH proposal rules, PIs had three chances to obtain funding for their projects. This was helpful because in many cases a good proposal would need 2 rounds of reviewer comments before becoming a great, and fundable, proposal. In 2009, NIH did away with the A2 (second resubmission) for grant proposals. This means that PIs now have only 2 chances to obtain funding before they must completely rework the entire proposal and start the process over.

In this article, NIH provides a letter that was sent in response to a petition from a large group of scientists that requested a return of the "3-strike" system.

I do find the line "the proportion of funded A1 applications has remained constant while the proportion of funded A0s has risen dramatically" and the accompanying figure very interesting. While the proportion of funded A0s has risen, I wonder how much these numbers are impacted by PIs who rework their proposals and submit variations after not being funded as A0s. It is often difficult to improve from a mediocre score to fundable range from the A0 to A1 submissions. Many PIs that I have worked with in the past 2 years have chosen to not spend the time resubmitting for A1s and instead change their proposals significantly enough to count as new submissions. How widespread is this practice and what has its effect been on this data?

Creating an interdisciplinary research team using the R13 mechanism

As lines between many fields become more blurred, it is becoming more important to include interdisciplinary teams of researchers on grant proposals. Having a variety of perspectives and backgrounds included not only enhances your proposal, but also contributes to your research in important ways. For example, your background in psychology might cause you to look at various external factors shaping a particular type of behavior, while a neuroscientist may look at the factors in the brain related to this behavior, and a geneticist may look at inherited genes related to the behavior. All of these perspectives are important, and together can help to create a project that is able to examine many factors contributing to the particular behavior. In other words, creating a multidisciplinary team allows you to look at the same problem in ways you may never have imagined. Working together allows for exchange of ideas, intellectual debate, and unified theories that are useful across disciplines.

So, now that you understand that this is important, consider ways that you may be able to reach outside of your comfort zone and begin to work with scientists in related but different fields. One way that you might begin to engage in discussions and work toward applying for funding for joint research projects is to set up meetings. NIH recently released an RFA that will fund this type of meeting. The RFA-CA-10-017 uses the R13 mechanism to fund scientific meetings that are designed to build collaborations between researchers in basic behavioral and social science research. The grants are capped at $50,000 in direct costs per year for a maximum of 2 years. Not a researcher in the social and behavioral sciences? Don't worry, PA-10-016 also includes researchers in the life and physical sciences, as well as behavioral and social sciences researchers. This opportunity has a budget cap of $25,000 in direct costs per year for a maximum of 2 years.

NIH, are you my mother?

I have been asked several times what the term "Parent Announcement" means. The term is now used in place of the previous terms "Unsolicited Application" and "Investigator-Initiated Application". Essentially, the parent announcements are open PAs that include most institutes and centers and have standing deadlines. Typically these deadlines are in February, June, and October of each year for new applications. The parent announcement is useful because it allows you to select the appropriate grant mechanism for your project and apply when you are ready, rather than waiting for a targeted PAR to be released that is more specific to your research. When applying to parent announcements, don't forget to include the optional Cover Page attachment in the application package. This letter can be very useful if you want to make the case that your proposal should be assigned to a particular institute or center or even a particular study section.

How do I decide which funding mechanism to apply for?

Determining the differences between mechanism, such as between an R03 and an R21, can be confusing. NIH has provided a helpful information sheet that breaks down the different available mechanisms with a brief description of each.

An R03, for example, is designed to support a smaller-scale research project, with a smaller budget and time period than an R01. An R21, meanwhile, is designed for completing exploratory research, often to gather data to support a future R01 application.