Guide for Reviewers - CIHR Institute Community Support (ICS) Travel Awards

Table of Contents

1. Responsibilities of Reviewers
   • 1.1 Avoid Conflict of Interest
   • 1.2 Respect the Confidentiality of Applications
   • 1.3 Fairness
2. Reviewing the Assigned Applications
   • 2.1 Read the Relevant Funding Opportunity
   • 2.2 Read the Applications
   • 2.3 Rate the Applications
   • 2.4 Provide Other Information for CIHR and Feedback to Applicants
   • 2.5 Send Reviews and Ratings to CIHR via ResearchNet

Annex 1: Review Criteria

Annex 2: Rating Scale

1. Responsibilities of Reviewers

• Avoid conflict of interest;
• Respect the confidentiality of applications;
• Exercise fairness in the review of the applications;
• Review and rate each assigned application using the criteria provided by CIHR;
• Submit reviews and ratings to CIHR via ResearchNet by the deadline specified; and
• Provide a re-review of application(s) if requested by CIHR.

1.1 Avoid Conflict of Interest

CIHR must make every effort to ensure that decisions are fair and objective, and that they are seen to be so. As soon as you receive the applications to be reviewed, look over the candidates' names, the names of their proposed supervisors and their institutions, and indicate using ResearchNet your ability to review each application that has been assigned to you.

You must not be involved in the review if:

1) You have submitted an application to this program; or
2) One of the following apply to you:

• the applicant is from your immediate department, institution, organization or company AND interacts with you in the course of his/her duties at the department, institution, organization or company (for example, there is no conflict if the applicant works at your organization but is located at another campus);
• the applicant has collaborated, been a co-applicant or published with you within the last five years;
• the applicant has been supervised by you within the last ten years;
• the applicant is a close personal friend or relative;
• the applicant has long-standing scientific or personal differences with you;
• you are in a position to gain or lose financially from the outcome of the application; or
• you feel that you are unable to provide an objective review of the application for any other reason.

If you have a conflict of interest, or might be perceived to have a conflict of interest, notify CIHR immediately (via ResearchNet) and the application will be re-assigned to another reviewer.

1.2 Respect the Confidentiality of Applications

Confidentiality is information about a person that shall not be disclosed directly or indirectly to anyone else without that person's prior expressed consent. The information provided by applicants in their applications is protected by the Privacy Act and is made available to external assessors for reviewing purposes only. Thus, information contained in applications, reviewer reports and review discussions are all strictly confidential. The use of this information for any other purpose than what is outlined here is a breach of the Privacy Act and could result in a CIHR investigation and/or report to the federal Privacy Commissioner's Office. Please do not forward copies of applications or discuss them with others.

Applicants must not contact reviewers regarding the status of their applications (ratings, rank within committee, etc.). All requests for information on an application or a reviewer report should be referred to the Deputy Director at CIHR responsible for the ICS Travel Awards program. By law, applicants have access to their own application files. Therefore, all written material used in evaluating an application is made available to the applicants when they are notified of CIHR's decision. The identity of the reviewers will not be revealed to the applicants under any circumstances.

1.3 Fairness

In programs where written reviews are required, these reviews are provided to the applicant without prior editing by CIHR staff, and CIHR does not take responsibility for their content. An applicant will not consider your review to be fair if it contains comments that could be construed as sarcastic, flippant, arrogant, or inappropriate in any way. Conversely, a constructive review can help the applicant by pointing out deficiencies that could be repaired in a resubmission and will convince a disappointed applicant that you provided a fair assessment of the proposal.

2. Reviewing the Assigned Applications

2.1 Read the Relevant Funding Opportunity

Prior to conducting your assessment, please review and consult the ICS Travel Awards Funding Opportunity for a description of the Objectives, Eligibility, Allowable Costs, and Evaluation Criteria. Please also be sure to consult the Partner Description section of the Funding Opportunity which outlines the specific requirements from each participating Institutes with respect to eligibility, relevant research areas and funding levels.

2.2 Read the Applications

Read all of your assigned applications before rating any of them. As you examine each application, jot down notes to capture your impressions. Please do not forward copies (paper or electronic) of these notes to CIHR. Be alert to unconscious bias related to gender, discipline or geographic location.

2.3 Rate the Applications

Examine each application in detail and rate them against each of the eight criteria described in Annex 1. Use the rating scale in Annex 2 to determine an appropriate rating for each criterion.

Please note that prior to the assignment of applications to reviewers; appropriate CIHR Institute staff has screened the applications to ensure that they align with the Institute's mandate and/or relevant research areas.

Reviews and ratings for CIHR ICS Travel Awards applications are submitted to CIHR via ResearchNet. The electronic rating forms are available to reviewers when they access ResearchNet.

2.4 Provide Other Information for CIHR and Feedback to Applicants

Budget: Please reduce the budget as appropriate based on the following:

• for non-eligible items (refer to the "Guidelines" section in the Funding Opportunity to view a list of the Allowable Costs);
• for an unbalanced budget (where the line items and totals do not match or add up correctly);
• if the applicant has requested more than the maximum amount allowed for this Funding Opportunity ($2,500) and/or if the applicant has requested more than the maximum amount specified by the relevant Institute. In the "Partner Description" section of the Funding Opportunity, each Institute has indicated their specific maximum funding amount and the applicant may not necessarily have paid attention to this.

You cannot recommend more than the amount requested by the applicant or more than the maximum allowed for a single award as listed in the Funding Opportunity. Budget items/expenses should be eligible, according to the "Allowable Costs" in the Guidelines section of the Funding Opportunity and the Tri-Agency (CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC) Financial Administration Guide "Use of Grant Funds."

If no changes are required to the budget, please enter the amount the applicant requested in the field entitled "Recommended Amount." If the applicant has provided an amount with decimals, please round the amount up to the next dollar (for example, $640.23 would be rounded up to $641.00).

If the budget is poorly justified please reflect this in your score for that review criterion rather than in the recommended budget amount. The recommended budget amount should be treated as a separate decision from the scoring of the application. Do not recommend $0 if you gave the application a low score. Conversely, if you gave the application a high score, you do not necessarily have to recommend the full amount requested. Applications are deemed fundable based on the final rating score and not on the budget recommendation. The applicant's final score and recommended budget amount will be an average of the two reviewers' scores and recommended budget amounts.

Feedback for the Applicant: Prepare a short written evaluation of the application for transmittal to the candidate by CIHR via ResearchNet; this evaluation must be written in the language the applicant chose to submit their application. Carefully avoid language that might be construed as sarcastic, flippant, arrogant, or inappropriate in any way. Include your overall impressions, as well as any notable strengths, limitations or weaknesses related to application (e.g. proposed activity, applicant). Please note that this feedback is beneficial to the applicants as it will help them prepare subsequent applications.

Please be sure to save a draft of what you have entered into ResearchNet. Saving a draft will allow you to calculate or re-calculate the overall score. Please note that you can save a draft of your work as many times as you like, but you can only submit once.

2.5 Send Reviews and Ratings to CIHR via ResearchNet

Please respect the deadline provided by CIHR by submitting your reviews and ratings via ResearchNet by the date specified via correspondence with CIHR staff responsible for the ICS Travel Awards program.

Annex 1: Review Criteria

Following is a table outlining and describing the eight review criteria for the CIHR ICS Travel Awards program. The raw scores that you submit via ResearchNet for each criterion on the 0 to 4.9 rating scale will be weighted automatically by CIHR in the calculation of an overall score.

Annex 2: Rating Scale

*Only applications rated 3.5 or higher are eligible for CIHR funding. The range 3.0 to 3.4 should be used for applications which, while technically and conceptually acceptable, are not considered to be a high priority for CIHR funding, perhaps because the topic is not considered relevant to an important health issue, or because the work proposed seems unlikely to yield major advances in knowledge, or because the approach is not particularly innovative. Please note that applications rated 3.0 to 3.4 are not eligible for CIHR funds, including those from partnership programs; however, applicants are encouraged to re-apply after addressing the reviews. Applications rated below 3.0 are so flawed in some respect that they do not represent a good investment of public funds, and would require significant rewriting to be considered acceptable.

Reference: Section 2.5 Ranking and rating scale, Review guidelines – Priority-driven initiatives, CIHR website.

Date modified:

2012-07-20