Last Modified: Dec. 15, 2025 11:52AM

We want to make you aware of an issue that is impacting NIH submissions involving SciENcv‑generated attachments and to summarize what we know today.

What’s happening

NIH has introduced a policy that, for applications due on or after January 25, 2026, Biosketch and Other Support attachments for senior/key personnel must be generated from SciENcv in the appropriate agency format. The eRA system validates these attachments using embedded metadata that indicates they were created by SciENcv.

Documents generated by SciENcv include an embedded signature which is causing a local validation error within SF424. We are working to enhance SF424 to properly handle the new document format. Unfortunately, that is just one change necessary to enable a successful submission. Submissions are still encountering eRA‑level validations:

• Biosketch: eRA raises a warning if the attachment is not recognized as SciENcv‑generated. Warnings do not block submissions, so this is not a blocker.
  • We tested using a SciENcv generated biosketch in the NIH format and it did not clear the warning.
• Other Support: eRA raises an error if the attachment is not recognized as SciENcv‑generated. Errors are blockers. You can bypass validations to get around this, but you will encounter the error once the submission is received by the eRA system and because it's an error, the submission will be rejected.
  • We attempted to generate a SciENcv other support document but the capability to generate this document in a downloadable format is not available in SciENcv. This means that the eRA validation error cannot be cleared because we are unable to obtain the document in the appropriate format.

What’s within (and outside) our control

In V10, there is a local validation error that is thrown when a SciENcv attachment is uploaded in SF424 because the attachment includes signature fields. We previously implemented this validation to address issues with flattening PDFs with signatures. We will be releasing an SF424 10.9.1 hotfix that will remove the validation, do a check for signature fields in PDFs, and exclude those documents from flattening the PDF when the user selects the option to flatten PDFs.

The eRA validations and their timing are controlled by eRA. We do not modify or override these rules in our software.

The capability to generate the other support document in SciENcv in the downloadable NIH format is not available so there is no way to obtain the appropriate document to include in the SF424 application to clear the eRA validation error.

Impact

Applications with due dates on or after January 25, 2026 are subject to the new policy and will fail eRA validation if the Other Support attachment does not present SciENcv metadata.

Applications with due dates before January 25, 2026 may not be subject to this requirement, but please review the specific FOA and opportunity details.

What we’re doing

We are engaged with eRA to identify a solution to address the issues that we are encountering with the validations and the limitation on being able to obtain the appropriate attachments.

Internally, we have begun working a fix to be released in SF424 10.9.1 to address the validation that we are throwing on PDFs with signature fields and appropriately handling PDFs with signature fields.

Recommended actions for your team

1. Prepare biosketches in SciENcv and upload them in SF424 for each senior/key person.
2. For other support attachments in applications due on or after Jan 25, 2026, please be aware that submissions will fail eRA validation until a downloadable NIH formatted attachments can be generated in SciENcv.
3. Monitor NIH/eRA communications for any updates to SciENcv output or validation rules.
4. Coordinate timelines: Where possible, plan submission milestones to allow for NIH/eRA/SciENcv updates prior to final submission.
5. Contact our Support team if you encounter blocking errors—we’ll help verify whether the issue is an SF424 issue or an eRA validation issue.
6. Prepare to submit your proposal via Grants.gov or ASSIST if necessary.