It has recently come to my attention that not everyone views the no-cost extension (NCE) of a NIH grant the same way I do.
When the interval of support is over for many of the NIH grant mechanisms, the PI (actually the University or Institute, of course) can request a NCE. This means that while the NIH is not going to give out any additional money past the original award, the University may continue to spend any un-expended funds. My experience has been that NCE requests, particularly the first year, are approved by default.
I am pretty sure that you are supposed to follow the usual rules for rolling money from one funded interval to the next funded interval, i.e., it is supposed to be only 25% of the prior year or less. Also, if you have a great excuse for why you have slightly more than 25% left over I would think this would not be a huge problem.
Personally, I have requested a NCE essentially by default for every grant award that permits it and assuming that the competing renewal has not been approved in time to keep the funded intervals rolling.
There are my own local institutional reasons for doing so, mostly having to do with moderate red tape factors.
I thought that it was sort of required in order to submit a competing continuation (now called “renewal”) application. I have one grants management assurance that this is not the case but I would still want to check up on how that works. After all, with the new A2 as A0 rules, can’t we just submit a competing continuation application for a grant which has been unfunded for 5 years? 10 years? Wait….google…google….NIAID says:
Is there a window of time that a PI can submit an application as a renewal? Must the original grant still be active?
No. The grant need not be active and there is no time limit for a renewal application. However, reviewers will probably be concerned by major gaps.
If a significant amount of time has elapsed, indicate what you have done in the interim. Highlight any preliminary data you may have obtained, and show that your planned research is current with the latest science.
OK, maybe I learned something this year. I mean, I’m sure I have read that before about renewals but somehow it never really connected up.
Also, for some reason maybe I thought that reviewers would be more confident that you were actively working on the project past the end date if you could say it was in NCE.
My question for the peanut gallery today is, how seriously do you take the NCE when you see it mentioned in a Biosketch or elsewhere in the grant proposal? Is it just meaningless…as in “of course they applied for a NCE, duh” or below notice altogether? Does apply only when it is a competing continuation / renewal of the grant which is in NCE?
In a related vein, does it “count” as current research funding? Do you see a grant in NCE and mentally chalk it up under the PI or other Key Personnel’s “funded grants”? In the Biosketch does it go under “completed” or “ongoing” Research Support?
Do you assume it might be pending renewal if it is not the prior interval of the grant you are reviewing now?
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