National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Electronic Research Administration (ERA) Commons

• Description
• Functionality Available to UCR Investigators
• System Requirements
• Password Policy
• Registration Requirements
• NIH Provided Assistance

Description

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has developed a system to facilitate the discrete exchange of essential information between NIH and applicant organizations. The "Commons" is a Web interface where NIH and the grantee community are able conduct their extramural research administration business electronically.

Functionality Available to UCR Investigators

• Status - Allows Principal Investigators to review the current status of all their grant applications and review detailed information associated with their grants. Institutional Officials can see a summary view of grant applications, review the Notice of Grant Award, and access the Progress Report face page.
• Internet Assisted Review (IAR) - Allows reviewers to submit critiques and preliminary scores for applications they are reviewing as part of a scientific review group. Allows Reviewers, Scientific Review Administrators (SRA), and Grants Technical Assistants (GTA) to view all critiques in preparation for a meeting. IAR creates a preliminary summary statement body containing submitted critiques for the SRA or GTA.
• Demo Facility - Demo Facility allows users to try most of the capabilities of the NIH eRA Commons in a sample environment. The Demo Facility can be found at https://commonsdemo.era.nih.gov/commons-demo/. The user name for the demo facility is PeterAnteater and the password is train2*pi.

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System Requirements

Contact your department technical staff for assistance. The ERA Commons requires use of Internet Explorer 5.01 (or later) or Netscape 4.7. JavaScript and cookies must be enabled on your browser. Sessions expire after 45 minutes of inactivity.

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Password Policy

NIH has instituted a stringent password policy to reduce the risk of unauthorized access to the system. Users must change their passwords at least every 180 days and cannot be reused for a period of one year. Passwords must be at least 8 characters and be a mix of alpha, numeric, and special characters. The first and last characters may not be numeric. Passwords cannot contain the user's login name.

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Registration Requirements

In order to log in and use the Commons, faculty and staff must contact the Office of Research to create a user account. Please contact:

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NIH Provided Assistance

NIH Commons User Support Branch
Help Desk (866) 504-9552 (Toll Free)
(301) 402-7469 (Voice)
(301) 451-5675 (Fax)
(301) 451-5939 (TTY)
commons@od.nih.gov

User Guides for the NIH Commons and Internet Assisted Review are available at http://era.nih.gov/commons/index.cfm.

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