August 18, 2002

New Internal Deadline for Grant and Contract Proposals - 3 Full Business Days Prior to the Sponsor Due date

Effective for all proposals due on or after September 16, 2002, the administrative portions* of grant or contract proposals, supplements and amendments, including electronic proposals, must be received by the Office of Research Administration (ORA) not less than three full business days prior to the sponsor due date. We regret that due to the increasing numbers of proposals processed by this office and the increased compliance issues requiring review and certification, we can no longer accommodate requests for accelerated review of proposals that arrive at the ORA less than three full business days prior to the sponsor due date. Proposals received by ORA, later than three full business days prior to the Sponsor due date, will no longer be reviewed by ORA for submission prior to the due date. (Please note: contract review and negotiation after sponsors have accepted proposals will often take several weeks.)

Understanding that there may be mitigating circumstances for late preparation of a grant proposal, the School of Medicine and University are examining the feasibility of referral of late proposals to an approved external consultant who would have staff available to apply the same criteria employed by ORA. The cost of such an external review necessarily would have to be borne by the principal investigator or department from unrestricted funds. If an acceptable consultant can be identified to perform this service, an additional announcement will be made.

This internal deadline is required to allow sufficient time to assure that the institutional review and certification is accurate, and that the proposal complies with University and sponsor policies. The average major sponsor deadline requires such institutional review for several hundred proposals. Late submissions have grown to about half of the total proposals - a volume which cannot be completed adequately in less than the required three days by rational staffing of the Office of Research Administration. Both the PI and the Institutional Official signing the proposal are personally responsible for the accuracy of the information it contains. Past policy of accepting and reviewing proposals up to the deadline day resulted in inadequate time for appropriate review, correction, and certification.

As the technical portion of the proposal is not required for initial departmental and institutional review, investigators should submit the administrative portions of their proposals to their departmental administrators, while continuing to complete the technical proposal. It is expected that each department/sub-division will need to specify additional internal submission deadlines to guarantee timely investigator administrative proposal submission to ORA 3 full business days before the sponsor due date.

As an example of the new deadline: if a proposal is due at the sponsor on Tuesday, October 1, 2002, the administrative portions of the proposal and a completed and signed information sheet must be received by ORA no later than 5 p.m. on Wednesday, September 25, 2002.

Finally, unless you are providing additional or corrected information about your proposal, please do not call ORA about the status of the institutional review during the required three business days of review. If you have not heard back from ORA after three business days it would be appropriate to inquire about the review status.

*For example, the administrative portion of an NIH proposal includes: a completed and signed Institutional Information Sheet, cover page, abstract, budget, budget justification, resources and environment, checklist, copy of any applicable RFP/RFA, subcontractor information, and protection of human subjects training certification. For other sponsors, similar paperwork and related correspondence is required. Consult the Sponsored Projects Handbook (http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/research/handbook/index.html) for additional detail.

Sincerely,

Chi V. Dang, MD, PhD, Vice Dean for Research

Michael J. Klag, MD, MPH, Vice Dean for Clinical Investigation

Michael B. Amey, Assistant Dean for Research Administration