1/30/2023 – Today is the effective date for PAPPG 23-1! The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) new Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) and related Current and Pending (C&P) guidelines are effective as of January 30, 2023.
Critical Document and Process Changes
- Additional fields like the optional ORCID ID, organization name and location, and certification section will be included on the document. These inputs will need to be manually added by the PI and/or RA.
- Senior personnel will be required to certify the contents of their C&P for every proposal. If using SciENcv, certifications are included automatically when the senior personnel member downloads their C&P document. If using the NSF fillable form while it’s available, senior personnel will need to manually add their signature to the form. If using the ERA C&P Tool to download the initial data, RAs will need to transfer the information to the NSF fillable form prior to receiving the individual’s signature to ensure that a compliant version is uploaded to Research.gov.
- Before making a funding recommendation, the NSF program officer will request that an updated version of the C&P documents be submitted in Research.gov. This step will be required even if there are no changes to the C&P document.
- The Person Months year included should now specify the latter calendar year for each project year documented. For example, if Year 1 is 2/1/2022 – 1/31/2023 the effort would be listed under 2023.
NSF has posted a revised Fillable PDF for research administrators and PIs to use on the NSF C&P page. RAs are advised to begin using this version, or SciENcv, for transferring data from the ERA C&P Tool for NSF proposals due on or after January 30th, 2023.
Note: SciENcv will be the only allowable preparation method for C&P Support documents for new proposals submitted on or after October 23rd, 2023. In the meantime, applicants can continue to prepare and submit C&P documents via SciENcv or the updated NSF fillable PDF.
NSF Proposal & Award Policy Updates for C&P
During the recent NSF Proposal and Award Policy Update seminar, NSF advised that they are planning for biographical sketches, and eventually C&P documents, to automatically populate some sections based on information linked to a senior personnel’s ORCID ID. Senior personnel are encouraged to explore ORCID as a way of reducing administrative burden while preparing their documents.
In addition, NSF mentioned that there are future plans for SciENcv to communicate with Research.gov to enable C&P data to be automatically transferred to applicable proposals rather than manually downloaded and uploaded; however, this activity will take some time to develop and NSF has offered no target dates for its implementation. They are also continuing to assess possible use of a JIT solution for C&P support in future iterations of the PAPPG.
As NSF aligns their processes with NSPM-33, they have included a table entitled NSPM-33 Implementation Guidance Pre- and Post-award Disclosures Relating to the Biographical Sketch and Current and Pending (Other) Support as reference for mandatory disclosures for reported activities.
Research Security
NSF added a new section on Research Security to the PAPPG which includes some additional guidelines for C&P documentation. At the time of project reporting, PIs and Co-PIs must specify whether new, active other support has been received in their annual and final project supports and include an updated C&P document if there is new activity.
By Research Operations