NSF Submissions: All UF Proposals Continue to Use FastLane Instead of Research.gov
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is currently transitioning its digital platform of record from FastLane to Research.gov. This transition is effectively a slow retirement of FastLane with incremental changes as its functions migrate to Research.gov. As of April 30, 2018, NSF launched functionality to submit proposals in Research.gov in addition to existing proposal submission functionality in FastLane. Unfortunately, this initial launch in Research.gov will not allow submission for all NSF proposal types and prevents inclusion of certain solicitation-specific required documents. Due to these limitations, and to avoid confusion, all UF proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation must continue to use FastLane.
The Division of Sponsored Programs (DSP) will monitor Research.gov as it is updated in later launches and releases and will issue guidance when Research.gov can be used for UF proposal submission. DSP will continue to update the UF community about the FastLane to Research.gov transition via emails and on DSP’s NSF-focused webpage. Please reach out to DSP with your questions at ufproposals@ufl.edu.
Additional Information
As of April 30, 2018, proposers are able to prepare and submit only research non-collaborative proposals in the NSF Research.gov system. The initial release of this new Research.gov capability will run in parallel with existing FastLane proposal preparation and submission capabilities.
Other proposal types will be added to Research.gov in the future. This new system is being developed incrementally and as capabilities are migrated from FastLane to Research.gov, the system features will expand until it eventually replaces FastLane for proposal preparation and submission. There will be no impact to Grants.gov and Application Submission Web Services (ASWS), and NSF will continue to fully support these proposal submission methods.
The Research.gov proposal site modernizes proposal preparation and submission capabilities and focuses on enhancing the user experience and reducing administrative burden with an intuitive interface and real-time compliance checking. The new functionality provides the ability to create, submit, track, and update proposals associated with active NSF funding opportunities and furthers NSF’s goal to provide quick access to proposal information and grants management services in one location.
Resources including Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and a system capabilities release timeline are available on the Research.gov About Proposal Preparation and Submission page.
A series of short instructional videos is currently in development and will be posted on the About Proposal Preparation and Submission page.
For IT system-related questions, please contact the NSF Help Desk at 1-800-381-1532 or rgov@nsf.gov.
Policy-related questions should be directed to policy@nsf.gov.
