Dear Colleagues,

Did any of you get G20 (RFA-RR-09-007) disqualified for exceeding page
limit? My colleague had this experience, and we are trying to get to the
bottom of it. Is there an appeal process? Any information would be
appreciated.

Zoya

--
Zoya Hamilton, CRA
Sr. Associate Director, Research Administration
Office of the Vice Provost
Tufts University
Tel (617) 636-6709
Fax (617) 636-2917
http://researchadmin.tufts.edu/

Here is a detailed account written up by the department of what have
gone wrong:

"The original RFA states that “The entire Specific Aims, Background, and
Renovation and/or Equipment Plans are limited to 20 pages”. _We _defined
the entire Narrative to also include three more sections (highlighted
with italics):

 * Specific Aims
 * Background
 * Renovation and/or Equipment Plans
 * /Significance and Need /
 * /Project Management and Institutional Commitment /
 * /Design Considerations /
 * * Line drawings and requested tables do not count toward this limit

Our submission IS in compliance with the original RFA.

The August 12 clarification
(http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-RR-09-016.html)
regarding page limits states:
“All applications are limited to 20 pages of text. The page count starts
with the Specific Aims section and runs through the Project Timeline.
The line drawings, and requested tables (active grants, pending grants,
information about requested equipment, and the dimensions of each
component) do not count against these 20 pages. Significant text
included as part of the line drawings or added anywhere else in the
application will be counted toward the 20 page limit. Any text that
looks like it belongs as part of the application but is submitted as an
attachment or as part of the facilities section also will be counted
toward the 20 page limit.”

In hindsight, this clarification makes the page limit include sections
that are assembled after the line drawings.

When I look at our submission, these are the things that may have been
counted toward the page limit that put us over 20 pages:

 * LEED checklist (table), 1 page
 * equipment justification text, not in tabular format, 8 pages –
 clarification is vague enough that I don’t know if this counted
 against us
 * core user table – 1 page
 * project timeline (table) - 1 page – don’t know if this counts
 towards the page limit – to me it’s a table
 * text on line drawings – don’t know if we got dinged for this

So, best case we’re 2 pages over, worst case we’re 11 pages over?

======================================================================
 Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including
 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
 via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists")
======================================================================