NIH will implement a slate of policy changes beginning with applications due on or after January 25, 2025. To facilitate the transition, NIH is updating the form set that applicants use to apply for a grant award and reissuing many notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs).
We’ve now reached a stretch of time in which two form sets (i.e., FORMS-H and FORMS-I) and two versions of certain NOFOs (e.g., PAR-22-105 and PAR-25-144) will be active simultaneously. You as the applicant are responsible for choosing correctly among them.
Choosing incorrectly will cause NIH to return your application without review. At that point, neither you nor NIAID staff can do anything to correct the error—you’ll have to wait to apply again in the next cycle.
Below, we run through the upcoming policy changes, how to determine which NOFO and form set you must use, and resources for completing an application using the new form set.
Upcoming Policy Changes
As a general theme, NIH aims to improve the peer review process by 1) minimizing undue influence of scientific reputation on scoring, 2) lessening administrative burden on applicants and reviewers, and 3) promoting effective approaches to research training and mentoring.
The specific policy changes meant to accomplish those ends are linked below:
- Simplifying Review of Research Project Grant Applications
- Revisions to the NIH Fellowship Application and Review Process
- Updates to NIH Institutional Training Grant Applications
- Updates to Instructions to Provide to Referees
One other change is slated for applications due on or after May 25, 2025.
To carry out the policy changes supporting the Simplified Peer Review Framework, NIH must revise the text for Section V. Application Review Information within many NOFOs. To ensure continuity for applicants, NIH will accomplish this by reissuing NOFOs with the new text and, later, rescinding NOFOs that use the old text.
Likewise, NIH is updating application forms to accommodate the changes, as enumerated at Updated Application Forms and Instructions (FORMS-I) and High-level Grant Application Form Change Summary: FORMS-I.
Know What You Need
Again, the policy changes and transition to FORMS-I take effect beginning with applications due on or after January 25, 2025. Your actual date of submission does not matter; a given NOFO’s listed due date drives the determination.
To run through a few edge cases:
- For AIDS and AIDS-related applications due on January 7, 2025, you will still use FORMS-H.
- For a late application with a targeted due date before January 25, 2025 (e.g., January 17, 2025, for PAR-22-185) but submitted after January 25, 2025, you will still use FORMS-H.
- For applications submitted by February 1, 2025, under NIH’s Continuous Submission Policy for the January 7, 2025 AIDS and AIDS-related application due date, you will still use FORMS-H.
If you are getting a head start on a T32 application and plan to submit it before year’s end, even though it isn’t due until January 25, 2025, you must use FORMS-I and the new version of the parent T32 NOFO (PA-23-048 is slated to expire on January 8, 2025, so you will use PA-25-168 instead).
Finally, for administrative supplements that accommodate rolling application submission: NIH will allow a short grace period for recipients to complete in-progress administrative supplements requests using FORMS-H, even as the parent administrative supplements NOFO is reissued with a FORMS-I version on or about January 25, 2025.
Resources
NIH will soon have two versions of instructions listed at How to Apply: Application Guide—one for FORMS-H, the other for FORMS-I. You should refer to the directions that match the form set you will use. Similarly, there will soon be two versions of NIH’s Annotated Form Sets.
For a list of visual cues to help you verify that you are using the correct form set, refer to Do I Have the Right Forms for My Application?
NIH’s Application Forms, Form Updates, and Choosing the Correct Forms FAQs offer some helpful explanations as well. For example: “Which form set should I use for a resubmission application if the original application used FORMS-H but the due date is after January 25, 2025?” The answer is that you will use FORMS-I and, moreover, you should take care to update your application as needed to account for the new policy changes that will have taken effect since you last applied.
The transition period should conclude on or about February 10, 2025, by which point all applications will use FORMS-I and NIH will have rescinded the older versions of any duplicative NOFOs.