Funding, News and Announcements

Hi everyone,

Following are highlights from the November CIHR University Delegates teleconference:

CIHR Updates
Please note that there will be a CIHR website shutdown on November 19^th to allow for some necessary upgrades. Extensions have been provided to a few priority announcements due around this time. ResearchNet will be unaffected. CIHR also apologized for the most recent (and likely not last!) issues with the CCV and have vowed to improve on this service in the future.

Peer Review Working Group Update
University Delegates had an opportunity to hear directly from Paul Kubes, Chair of the PRWG and now Executive Chair of the College of Reviewers. Paul reviewed many of the recommendations from this PRWG (previously posted here), particularly from the perspective of initial changes implemented through the CIHR Reform process (the College of Reviewers concept; streamlined applications; structured reviews; etc.) that were meant to address applicant and reviewer burden along with perceived inequities in the Committee/peer review system. Most of the PRWG recommendations have been adopted for the current Project grants competition, though many UDs wondered if/when these mid-course corrections would work their way into the Foundation Grant scheme. There appears to be some discussion regarding adopting the 0-100 scale for Stage 2 Foundation assessments, along with mandating 4 reviews for each application at this stage. Stay tuned! CIHR is still examining the feasibility of introducing a “response to reviewers” option for future Project Grant applications proceeding to Face-to-Face (F2F) cluster reviews. As it stands, 40% of applications received at Stage 1 will proceed to F2F, including the top 30% with an additional 10% reserved for applications with high variance.  CIHR is currently working through an optimization process that will yield the minimum number of reviewers required to come to Ottawa for these F2F meetings while still satisfying the requirement to have 2 out of the 4 reviewers of an application proceeding to this stage present for these panel discussions. It sounds like quite the logistical nightmare, but the expectation is that approximately half of reviewers engaged in Stage 1 reviews will ultimately participate in these discussions.

Project Grant Update
Approximately 2,900 applications were received (from the 3,282 registrations logged). CIHR has achieved roughly 90% of its desired reviewer pool but still needs some reviewers to complete their profiles, including conflicts and ability to review, by November 7.  More details are now available on the Project Grant review process (online here), including timelines. I can tell you that 38 “Clusters” or panels have now been defined, with Panel Chairs in place for all. No cluster will see more than 100 applications; on average, there will be ~75 per cluster (based on the number of applications received). Clusters tasked with application numbers at the higher end may utilize more than one Scientific Officer. CIHR insists that there will be a second Project Grant competition in 2017 (for which funding would commence October 1!), with results from the current competition available in advance of the next registration deadline.

Foundation Grant Update
CIHR has received 634 registrations for the upcoming Foundation Grant competition. More details on the review process for Foundation Grants can be found here. They are currently still working through conflict of interest requirements but notably will not focus on the reviewer profiles for Stage 1 reviews, given that this initial evaluation is focused on the quality of the applicant; these profiles will come into play at Stage 2 when the proposed research programs are more heavily assessed. Once assignments are finalized, CIHR has indicated that Stage 1 reviewers will have 10 to 16 applications to assess. Again, the question was put to CIHR regarding the ~40% reduction in Foundation Grant applications and whether this would have any implications with regards to anticipated success. Not surprisingly, they are still “analyzing” the situation.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Regards,
Mark Filiaggi

CIHR University Delegate
Associate Vice-President Research
filiaggi@dal.ca
(902) 494-7102