They're or Their: Avoiding Common Grammar Mistakes in Grant Applications

Many words and phrases are commonly confused with each other when writing in English. (The same problem might exist in other languages as well, but unfortunately I am not fluent enough to pick up these nuances in another language. My high school French teacher, who was impressed with my ability to converse with strangers on a school trip to Paris, would be very disappointed.) 

Unfortunately, many of these confused words and phrases are not picked up by the Microsoft Word spelling and grammar review that so many of us have come to rely on. This includes common typos that might change the meaning of a sentence but are still grammatically correct. 

To catch these types of mistakes, it is important to allow enough time to review your final proposal draft, paying close attention to each word, as well as to ask at least one colleague or professional editor to review the proposal prior to submission. This means that if you are working on an R01 proposal for the October 5th deadline, you should not plan to finish writing your Research Strategy on October 4th. It takes time to read and absorb every word of a document - most of us have a tendency to skim over text we have written and already read multiple times.

Examples of word and phrase substitutions and common typos to watch for include:

• advise - advice
• affect - effect
• cancer - canker
• data - date
• flight- fight
• flow - fowl
• food - flood
• its - it's
• light - lite
• phase - phrase
• prostate - prostrate
• then - than
• they're - their - there
• to - too
• veterinarian - vegetarian (yes, I have seen this one!)
• who - whom
• your - you're

This list is, of course, not exhaustive. There are many possible typos and mistakes that can occur during the course of writing your NIH grant proposal. Often, typing quickly leads to typos in acronyms. For example, HPLC becomes HLPC. To help catch this if you are working on the document in Word, I recommend searching for each acronym that has been used in your proposal. The acronyms should have red lines under them, which indicate spelling errors. If you ignore the spelling error, the red lines with disappear under all instances of the acronym. If you do this for all of your acronyms and there are still red lines remaining in the text, it will help to alert you of typos.

I hope these examples help to illustrate why it is vitally important to begin the writing process early and finish your materials early enough to allow time to incorporate review by colleagues or professional staff. The more eyes on the proposal, the better!

Happy 4th of July - enjoy your barbeque, and then get back to writing!

Happy 4th of July! Today we celebrate Independence Day in the United States with cookouts, parties, fireworks, and a whole lot of red, white and blue. I hope the weather is beautiful for everyone and that you are able to enjoy some time swimming, hiking, partying, and spending time with family and friends.

Enjoy the rest, relaxation, and a hot dog or two while you can. The October 5th NIH R01 deadline is three months from tomorrow - that gives you only 12 weeks to finish writing, obtain input from your collaborators, and seek feedback on your proposal from funded researchers in your field! If you haven't already, you should be working on finalizing your Specific Aims and contacting the relevant NIH program officer to determine whether your project fits with your targeted NIH Institute or Center and funding opportunity announcement (FOA). 

If you have already taken care of these items and your aims are in reasonably good shape, get started on that 12-page Research Strategy. It may seem like you have a lot of time, but pumpkin season will be here before you know it. Enjoy your day off, and prepare to dive into proposal writing tomorrow!

Will NIH accept my late grant application?

If you are hoping to submit your NIH grant proposal late, I may have some bad news for you. Unless your reason for the late grant submission falls into a very small number of approved exceptions, you have likely missed your opportunity to submit the application.

Before attempting a late grant submission, whether it is minutes, hours, or days after the application deadline, be sure to review the NIH late application submission policy. This policy has remained largely unchanged since 2015. The policy clearly states that late applications will only be considered within two weeks of the original application deadline. 

As far as what is considered an acceptable excuse for a late proposal submission, I would liken it to the Reba McEntire song Why Haven’t I Heard From You. The lyrics include: 

There better been a flood, a landslide of mud, 
A fire that burns up the wires, 

And thunder so loud, with a black funnel cloud, 
A natural disaster I know nothin’ about

Along these lines, late NIH grant applications will only be considered for acceptance under the following circumstances:

• Death of an immediate family member of the PD/PI (or MPI)
• Sudden acute severe illness of the PD/PI (MPI) or immediate family member
• Temporary or ad hoc service by a PD/PI on an NIH advisory group during the two months preceding or the two months following the application due date. Examples of qualifying service include: participation in an NIH study section/special emphasis panel, NIH Board of Scientific Counselors, Program Advisory Committee, or an NIH Advisory Board/Council. Qualifying service does not include participation in NIH activities other than those involved in extramural/intramural peer review or NIH Advisory Council/Board service
• Delays due to weather, natural disasters, or other emergency situations, not to exceed the time the applicant organization is closed. 
• For PD/PIs who are eligible for continuous submission (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/peer/continuous_submission.htm), the late application policy applies to activities not covered under the continuous submission policy (i.e., other than R01, R21, and R34 funding opportunities that use standard due dates).

It is important to note that these circumstances must apply to the PI (or one of the MPIs if it is a multi-PI application). The late application policy does not allow exceptions when these factors affect other members of the research team. Additionally, late applications are not approved in advance.

If the reason your application is late does not align with one of the listed options, it is unlikely to be accepted. Exceptions are not made even if you attempted to submit your application 5 minutes after the deadline. Grants.gov provides no flexibility with deadline times. Your next step should be to plan to submit your proposal for a future deadline and modify it accordingly.

For more information about the NIH late application policy, visit the NIAID Late Applications SOP and NINDS list of potentially valid reasons for submission of a late application. 

Your chances of success are slightly lower if you submit on the deadline

What are you waiting for?  The next NIH Parent R01 deadline is Wednesday, October 5th.  If your proposal is mostly ready and you are making final adjustments, stop procrastinating and get it finished, already!  If you are not even close to finished and won't be able to submit until close to 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, perhaps you should defer to the February 5th deadline.  Read this excellent post for the reasons why.

Sample R03 proposal

The June 5th R01 deadline is technically extended to tomorrow because it falls on the weekend.  For those of you preparing for other upcoming June NIH grant proposal deadlines, this sample R03 application may be useful.  Or, you may want to review several examples of successful R21 proposals located here.

Submit your R01 on Sunday!

Per NIH submission policy, if a grant is due on a weekend, the deadline moves to the next business day.  This would mean the Sunday, October 5th deadline would actually move to the 6th.  However, given the high and increasing volume of proposals submitted for the parent R01 deadlines, Grants.gov may be slow on Monday the 6th.  To ensure that your proposal makes it in on time, and that you will have time to review it in the era commons after submission, I highly recommend submitting on Friday, October 3rd if possible.  If you work at an institution that gives you the ability to submit your own proposal directly, you may be able to wait until Saturday, but if you wait longer than that you will run the risk of not having enough time to review your grant and pull it back for changes if you identify any problems.  In case you missed it, NIH eliminated the 2-day error correction window a few years back, which means that all modifications to the proposal must be made prior to the deadline.

What does that "Status" tab mean in the era commons?

This video does a great job explaining what the Status tab is from the PI perspective.  If you are working on an R01 resubmission for the July 5th NIH deadline, this will help you understand how to find your previous submission so you can make sure to adequately address all of the reviewer comments.

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!

Grant Proposal Resubmissions - How do you plan to mark changes in your revision?

If you are working on your revised application of an R01 for the July 5th deadline or R03 or R21 for the July 16th deadline, how do you plan to mark the text showing revisions from your previous version? Are you currently italicizing revisions, putting them in bold, or making them a different color? If so, you need to go back and re-read the SF 424 instructions regarding resubmission (A1) applications. The instructions clearly state:

The substantial scientific changes must be marked in the text of the application by bracketing, indenting, or change of typography. Do not underline or shade the changes. Deleted sections should be described but not marked as deletions. If the changes are so extensive that essentially all of the text would be marked, explain this in the Introduction. The Preliminary Studies/Progress Report section should incorporate work completed since the prior version of the application was submitted.

One of the most effective, space-saving methods of marking your changes is to use Arial 11 for your font setting for all unchanged text, and Palatino Linotype 11 (in italic or bold) to mark all of your changes. The fonts are similar enough that they won't give the reviewers a headache, but different enough to meet the NIH requirements and clearly mark your revisions. Don't forget to also include an introduction page that provides an overview of your changes to the application and responses to major reviewer comments.

June 5th Deadline - You can do it!

For those of you who didn't follow any of my advice and will be up all night this weekend trying to cut your research plan down to 12 pages or figure out what belongs in the Facilities and Resources section, I just wanted to say GOOD LUCK!

If you are still writing content and trying to develop your budget in time for a Monday submission, I wish you even more GOOD LUCK! (And you are SCREWED.)

Enjoy your weekend!

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.

NIH Error Submission Window to Disappear

Have you ever had to rely on the NIH Error Submission Window to fix a mistake in your proposal? If so, you should read this new announcement. NIH, AHRQ and NIOSH will be eliminating this window beginning with the January 25, 2011 due date. This means that, when your proposal is submitted on the deadline, it is final. Be sure to do all of your error checking before it is submitted to NIH.

Note that, if you submit your proposal prior to the deadline, you will still have a 2-day window in which to review and change your application. This new policy will only affect those individuals who submit on the actual proposal due date.

I personally believe this is a great change. Under the current error submission window policy, you are given up until 2 business days after a proposal deadline to make changes, so if you submit on the deadline, you still have 2 days to correct any errors. This policy is easy to take advantage of, and I am sure some investigators have (though I hope not many). Theoretically, you could submit on the deadline and manipulate your way into having 2 extra days to finish your research plan. This is not fair to all of those PIs who meet the deadline, of course. I think this is a great decision on the part of NIH, as it will help to ensure a fair and equitable process for everyone.