The apostrophe/quotation mark issue is very troublesome. When this happens,
I would recommend not stopping with the help desk, but making sure the issue
is escalated to G.g management for a bug fix, which is what is needed. I
will see what kind of response I can get via the G.g listserv.
Jim, you don't say exactly what the problem was (other than than the Commons
help desk came back with the wrong warning message). I have not heard of
NIH not taking responsibility when in fact a late application is caused by
gov't system errors or problems. On the other hand, if an application is
submitted at the last minute, with an error that is the responsibility of
the submitter (missing data, whatever), that is a different matter. We
cannot expect the rules to be changed because the problem was uncovered by
an automated system. Think of it this way: If you sent an application via
FedEx and violated margin rules, or font size, etc., and you did not submit
early enough to resubmit before the deadline - too bad! If you have a clear
case that the lateness was caused by a failure of some gov't system, I would
take this pretty far up the ladder before accepting a rejection.
Tom Drinane
IS Manager
Office of Sponsored Projects
Dartmouth College HB 6210
11 Rope Ferry Road
Hanover, NH 03755-1404
603-646-3008 (W)
603-646-9141 (Fax)
802-356-7843 (M)
Hi,
We've experienced some very difficult problems, too. For the March 5
deadline, we had 3 of our grants go to Grants.Gov, but not make it to eRA
Commons. I followed one of them very closely, and it took two weeks to get
any resolution from G.g, Commons or the NIH. They finally let the grant be
resubmitted. But they considered it late and refused to review it. We had
everything documented, including who we spoke to and when. At one point,
they sent us the warning message they got for the grant. It wasn't even the
correct message. It was for another submission.
It seems as though G.g or eRA Commons does not want to take responsibility
or accountability for any of this. There glitches seem to be our problem.
Has anyone else experienced trouble like this?
Jim
________________________________
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] On Behalf Of
Vincelli, Diana
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2008 1:06 PM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: [RESADM-L] another g.g fluke
Greetings Grants.Gov Warriors,
Twice in recent weeks we have submitted applications to NEH via grants.gov.
Both were rejected with very obscure error messages.
After a number of conversations and email exchanges with grants.gov, I was
told with the first, "Oh you have a curly apostrophe in the project
description (summary on SF424) which turns into 3 question marks and puts
you over the 1000 character limit."
In the second one, it was regular straight quotation marks that turned into
4 question marks! (thus putting the project description over the limit).
In both cases I asked the grants.gov rep why he/she knew that, but the end
users are not informed of such quirks. Neither knew why.
So the bottom line is: no punctuation except periods and commas in the
Project Description.
Diana
Diana Thompson Vincelli
Director of Grant Support
Office of Foundation, Corporate & Government Relations
G-14 Maryland Hall
University of Richmond, VA 23173
804.289.8005; fax 804.289-8943
xxxxxx@richmond.edu
http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/grants
P Please consider the environment before printing this email
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