Now Available: New Proposal and Submission Types and System Enhancements to Support the Revised PAPPG (NSF 22-1)

Effective October 4, 2021, the National Science Foundation (NSF) made a number of system updates for proposals submitted in Research.gov, FastLane, and Grants.gov in accordance with the implementation of the Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF 22-1). Please see the list of PAPPG (NSF 22-1) significant changes and clarifications for all of the updates. New proposal and submission types were also enabled in the Research.gov Proposal Submission System.

New Proposal Types in the PAPPG

The Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (NSF 22-1) incorporates two new "Other Types of Proposals":

Planning Proposals

• Planning proposals must be prepared and submitted in Research.gov.
• Refer to Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide Chapter II.E.1. for Planning proposal requirements.

Career-Life Balance (CLB) Supplemental Funding Requests

• Career-Life Balance supplemental funding requests must be prepared and submitted in FastLane.
• Refer to PAPPG Chapter II.E.8. for Career-Life Balance supplemental funding request requirements.

Updates to NSF-approved Biographical Sketch and Current and Pending Support Formats

• The NSF-approved biographical sketch and current and pending support formats were updated to incorporate revisions in the PAPPG (NSF 22-1) and must be used for proposals submitted or due on or after October 4, 2021.
• The current formats are posted on the NSF biographical sketch and current and pending support websites. Updated system-related Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are also available: FAQs on using SciENcv and FAQs on using NSF fillable PDF. SciENcv documents created using the previous version (i.e., NSF 20-1) prior to October 4th are automatically converted in SciENcv to the current version after October 4th.
  • Biographical sketch format updates include increasing the page limit from two to three pages.
  • Current and pending support format updates include the addition of new sections for information on objectives and overlap with other projects to help NSF and reviewers assess overlap/duplication.
  • Biographical sketches and current and pending support information also must be uploaded with Change of Principal Investigator (PI) and Add/Change co-PI requests in FastLane.
  • When notifying NSF that active other support has changed since the award was made, or since the most recent annual report, current and pending support information must be uploaded in annual and final project reports in the Research.gov Project Reporting System.
  • Research.gov, FastLane, and Grants.gov will generate a compliance error message if a proposer or grantee attempts to upload a prior version of the biographical sketch or current and pending support formats on or after October 4th.

Removal of Blank Pages from the Current and Pending Support Fillable PDF

• Research.gov, FastLane, and Grants.gov will remove any pages which do not contain data entered by users (i.e., blank pages) from the NSF-approved current and pending support fillable PDF.
• The trimming service is triggered in Research.gov and FastLane during document upload and during proposal submission in Grants.gov.
• The trimming service only applies to the NSF-approved current and pending support fillable PDF and not to any other uploaded PDFs. Current and pending support PDFs generated in SciENcv do not include blank pages.
• The current and pending support fillable PDF document is paginated, and the PDF page numbers will not be updated during the trimming process. This means that it is possible for the trimmed PDF to have skipped page numbers corresponding to the blank pages removed from the fillable PDF.

Research.gov Proposal Submission System Enhancements

• The Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) and Planning proposal types and the Letter of Intent submission type are now available for submission in Research.gov.
• New automated compliance checks and associated error and warning messages for the enabled proposal and submission types were also implemented. Error messages will prohibit proposal submission to NSF, whereas warning messages still permit proposal submission.
• All supported proposal and submission types as well as associated compliance checks are also enabled in the Research.gov Proposal Preparation Demo Site.
• New FAQs were added to the Research.gov About Proposal Preparation and Submission page, and the Proposal Submission Capabilities page has been updated to reflect the latest development updates.
• Research.gov proposal features continue to expand to support the transition of all proposal preparation and submission functionality from FastLane to Research.gov by a target date of December 31, 2022. Many NSF funding opportunities are supported in Research.gov and clearly specify whether submission via Research.gov is available or required.