xTRACT will be required in FY2020

Last week, an announcement came out from NIH & AHRQ that stated “beginning in early FY 2020, NIH and AHRQ intend to require the use of the xTRACT system in the eRA Commons to prepare the required data tables for certain types of training grant applications.”

You can read the full announcement here: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-18-133.html

Here is the important part:

“Beginning with RPPRs due on or after October 1, 2019 and applications submitted for due dates on or after January 25, 2020, NIH and AHRQ anticipate that they will mandate that required training data tables submitted with T32, TL1, T90/R90, and T15 applications and progress reports be created via the xTRACT system.  System validations in Grants.gov and the RPPR module will check to ensure that tables were created via xTRACT, and applications and RPPRs that are not in compliance will be rejected.”

Here at Columbia, we’ve been encouraging the use of xTRACT since its inception since October 2015, and we participated as volunteers in its early development. We do have training materials, videos, and we’ve done webinars as well.  All of these items can be found on our website at https://research.columbia.edu/content/nih-institutional-training-grants. Look at BOTH the ‘Training, Presentations, Videos’ section and ‘Data Tables and xTRACT. We will continue to provide training opportunities in the future.

If you have not touched xTRACT yet, using it for an upcoming RPPR would be a good way to get familiar with it.  NIH & AHRQ will provide more guidance as we get closer to their required use, and I will be sure to update you.