NIH application review

Check your NIH application package before eRA does.

eRA and Grants.gov enforce rules that have nothing to do with the quality of your science — filename length, duplicate attachments, file formats. Recensa checks the finished package against those rules, and against itself, before you submit.

Run a free check

Published, literal, checkable

Checks against the rules you specify
Your NOFO governs
Word & PDF
Runs at 11pm

The rules are published, literal, and checkable

These are NIH/eRA and Grants.gov rules. They are not judgment calls — and they are exactly the sort of thing a machine should check and a human shouldn't have to, at 11pm, the night before a deadline. Recensa checks the finished package against them.

Attachment filenames are capped at 50 characters. eRA systems enforce a long-standing 50-character limit.
Only certain characters are permitted in filenames — A–Z, a–z, 0–9, underscore, hyphen, space, period. Other characters are not accepted by eRA Commons.
Attachment filenames must be unique. All attachment filenames within the application must be unique; Grants.gov instructs applicants not to attach two documents with the same name.
Attachments must be PDF, with a valid extension. Compressed formats (ZIP, RAR, Adobe Portfolio) are not accepted.
Project titles are capped at 200 characters.

Your NOFO governs.

Programs impose additional or different requirements — page limits in particular vary substantially, and what counts toward a limit (covers, forms, appendices) is program-specific. Recensa checks against the rules you specify. We do not guess at your NOFO.

Rules cited reflect published eRA Commons and Grants.gov guidance; confirm the current NOFO before you submit.

And the errors inside the application

Beyond the portal rules, Recensa checks the application against itself: figures that don't match across documents, references to appendices that aren't there, budget arithmetic that doesn't sum, and terminology that drifts between sections. Each finding is tied to its evidence.

Figures that don't match across documents

The budget narrative says $412,000. The SF-424 says $421,000. Both look right on their own page.

References to appendices that aren't there

The narrative cites Appendix D; the package has A through C.

Budget arithmetic that doesn't sum

Recomputed, not estimated.

Terminology that drifts

The program is “the Initiative” in the abstract and “the Project” in the workplan.

The independent-reviewer problem

Standard guidance for federal applications is to build a compliance checklist from the NOFO and have someone other than the primary writer check the package against it. Recensa approaches the submitted package as finished evidence rather than continuing the drafting process — which is the whole point of that pass, and it's available at 11pm.

What's in scope

Recensa reviews the package. It does not confirm your SAM.gov registration or UEI, submit on your behalf, determine eligibility, or judge whether the science is compelling. Those are outside the document — and outside what a document checker can honestly claim.

Check the package before the portal does

Upload your finished NIH application package and see the filename, format, and internal-consistency findings before you submit. The Internal Check is free.