Investigator Withdrawal of an Application

Purpose

To allow principal investigators (PI) to withdraw an application from funding consideration.

Procedure

If a principal investigator decides not to pursue funding after submitting an application, he or she may withdraw it at any time.

This SOP addresses withdrawing an application after the Division of Receipt and Referral (DRR) in NIH's Center for Scientific Review (CSR) receives it. For information on withdrawing an electronic application in response to validation issues, see Should You Withdraw the Application? in Part 7. Applying of the NIH Grant Cycle: Application to Renewal.

PIs should be aware that NIH allows investigators to submit an application up to two times: the initial submission and one resubmission.

With that restriction in mind, they should consider the following before withdrawing an application:

• Applications withdrawn before initial peer review will not count as one of the allowed submissions.
• Applications withdrawn after initial peer review will count as one of the allowed submissions.

Multiple active applications. To send a resubmission, an applicant does not need to withdraw the previous one. The eRA Commons allows multiple active applications (MAA) in the system at the same time.

• Applicants may submit an amended version of an application before the previous application has made its way completely through the Council and funding decision processes.
• All active versions of the application in the Commons show an "MAA" flag and are considered part of a cluster.
• If any version of an application in a cluster is awarded, all other applications within the cluster will be automatically withdrawn.

Multiple PI applications. Only the contact PI may request withdrawal of an application.

Principal Investigators

• Request to withdraw your application by sending a letter by email or fax to DRR.
  • Include the NIH application number and title as well as date of submission.
  • Make sure your institutional business official signs the request.
  • Send faxed requests to the following: 
    • Center for Scientific Review
      Attention: Division of Receipt and Referral
      Fax: 301-480-1987
  • Send requests by regular mail to the following:
    • Center for Scientific Review
      Attention: Division of Receipt and Referral
      National Institutes of Health
      6701 Rockledge Drive
      Suite 2032
      Bethesda, MD 20892-7720 (for letters sent by USPS regular or express mail)
      Bethesda, MD 20817 (for letters sent using a courier service.
• Alternatively, ask your program officer to withdraw your application. Send your program officer a request signed by you and your institutional business official.

Program Officers

• If investigators contact you to withdraw their application, follow the 901 form instructions in the Withdrawal of a Nonresponsive Application SOP.

Contacts

Applicants with questions should Contact Staff for Help.

CSR Division of Receipt and Referral, 301-435-0715

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Links

NIH Grants Policy Statement

Withdrawal of a Nonresponsive Application SOP