Procedure Library

NSF Research.gov Access

Purpose

Obtain a National Science Foundation (NSF) account to prepare proposals and post-award requrests in Research.gov (and in some cases Fastlane) and maintain compliance with applicable federal agency requirements and University of Utah requirements.

Applicability

Principal Investigators (PIs) or their designees applying for or managing NSF grants.

Instructions

1. To obtain a new NSF Research.gov and Fastlane Account or Add a New Role, users now register themselves by following the steps outlined in the Register for an NSF Account process or simply selecting Register in the upper navigation of the Research.gov homepage.
   • A PI should have only one account (used for both Research.gov and Fastlane) and request affiliation when moving between institutions.

   • Per University Policy 4-010, personal profiles will need to have a University of Utah enterprise email listed. If users list a personal email, the request will be denied until it's revised.

2. Accounts must be affiliated with the University of Utah in order for a user to create proposals to be submitted by the University of Utah OSP. See Adding a New Institutional Role in the Single ID Job Aid
3. To affiliate an existing NSF account with Utah, users can add roles at a new organization to an existing NSF account. See Working at Multiple Organizations or Moving to Another Organization in the registration process.
   1. The "primary organization" indicates the organization a PI is associated with for the proposal submission. The primary organization defaults to the organization associated with the most recent role added to a user's profile.
      • To change the primary organization, the user must sign into Research.gov and click "View My Roles" located on the left navigation bar. In the "Active Roles" table; locate the organization you wish to designate as the primary organization. Click on the "plus sign (+)" located to the left of the organization name to expand the row. Locate the PI role for the selected organization and click the "Primary Organization" checkbox to the right of the Date Added field.

4. OSP will need to approve your role in Research.gov. We recommend that you contact your Sponsored Projects Officer and let him/her know that you have made the request and it is now pending OSP approval.

   NOTE ON ROLES: The investigator role is for senior/key personnel on a proposal. Other Authorized User (OAU) role is for department research admins who will need to work in FastLane or Research.gov to assist investigators. Organizational or Financial roles will not be authorized for most users.

   • Departments administrators should only ever request the Other Authorized User (OAU) role
   • Faculty should only ever request an Investigator role.
5. OSP will get an email notification that an account has been affiliated so that roles can be confirmed/managed. Once approved, individual users will receive a confirmation email.
   • PI's with existing accounts have to request affiliation.
   • OSP can only manage affiliation for the University of Utah.
6. Individual users must request a password reset. OSP cannot prompt this action.
7. OSP can see what email address was used to create the account, but cannot change it.

Related Policies and Procedures

• Grant Life Cycle > Submit Proposal > Electronic Submission & Registration > NSF Fastlane/Research.gov
• NSF Research.gov About Account Management
• Confluence > Internal OSP Process on Responding to NSF Role Requests