GUIDELINES FOR INTERNAL REVIEW OF GRANT APPLICATIONS IN THE FACULTY OF HEALTH SCIENCES, QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY
PREAMBLE: As many faculty members are aware, several institutions across Canada employ some form of internalgrant-review process to ensure that the highest quality grant applications are being submitted to external granting agencies, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada (Ontario) and National Cancer Institute of Canada. A recent examination of practices in the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) at Queen's indicates that there is no consistency in terms of how this issue is being dealt with locally. OBJECTIVE: To provide suggested guidelines for the internal peer review of operating grant proposals that are relevant to all applications being submitted to external funding agencies. GUIDELINES FOR THE INTERNAL REVIEW OF GRANT APPLICATIONS: (a) The internal-grant-review process will be organized on a Departmental/Research Group basis, with Department Heads/Research Group Leaders coordinating the process. All operating grant proposals for submission to external funding agencies will be considered for internal review. The applicant is responsible for delivering a draft of the grant proposal to two internal reviewers whose areas of expertise will assist in the development of an improved application. The internal reviewers may be selected from any Department at Queen's or, if appropriate expertise is not available within the University and can be obtained elsewhere, a reviewer external to the University can be selected. In preparation for expediting an informative and timely review, the applicant should consider contacting potential reviewers several weeks prior to the granting agency deadline. The applicant has a responsibility to submit a draft of the grant proposal for internal review no later than three weeks prior to the application deadline. Reports (written and/or oral) from the reviewers should be returned to the applicant no later than ten days prior to the grant submission deadline. Both internal reviewers should "sign off" on the Office of Research Services Data Summary and Signature Sheet to indicate that they have provided advice to the applicant with regard to improving the quality of the application. Application for potential "bridge" funding from the FHS by investigators, who have just failed to achieve the funding "cut-off" rating of the external granting agency, will be restricted to those individuals who have obtained formal internal review of their proposal.
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
(h)
(i)
(j)
No faculty member will be expected to serve as an internal reviewer for more than two grant applications for any single external granting agency competition date. A faculty member submitting a research proposal is not obliged to act as an internal reviewer for that particular granting agency competition date. Participation as an internal reviewer should be stated formally and duly recognized in the faculty member's Annual Academic Report. The impact of the internal-grant-review process will be evaluated based on the funding success from external granting agencies after a two-year period (e.g. four CIHR operating grant competitions).
(k)
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RECOGNITION FOR THE INTERNAL REVIEWER: The Department Head/Director and the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs must act to provide valuable recognition of the faculty members who are giving essential service to the FHS and Queen's University as internal reviewers of grant applications (i.e. recognition in the FHS Annual Report that Internal Review of Grant Applications is one of the most important types of service at Queen's).
Prepared and revised by the Research Advisory Committee, FHS, November 2001