Funding, News and Announcements

Hi all,

With apologies for the delay, following are highlights from the March CIHR University Delegates teleconference:

CIHR Updates
Delegates were provided a brief update regarding the status of new leadership at CIHR. As indicated in an earlier update, we should not be expecting a new appointment for a President any time soon given the process required for this federal appointment. Likely there will an interim leader for a “fairly significant period of time”. CIHR – like many of us – are awaiting release of the Fundamental Science Review (the “Naylor Report”) and the budget implications tied to recommendations contained within this review; given the timing it is likely that this release will have little impact (read: significant increases in Tri-Agency funding) on the pending budget announcements.

Foundation Grant Update
There is little to report here. Stage 1 decision notices were released early February, with Stage 2 applications due this past week. Dalhousie and its affiliated Health Centres currently have 4 applications still in the mix, with the anticipated notice of decision remaining August 3, 2017. CIHR could not yet confirm the deadlines for the next round in Fall 2017 but suggested that the cycle was not likely to deviate much from the 2016 competition.

Project Grant Update
Final reviews are now in for the Fall 2016 competition, with applicants to be notified “by the end of March” as to whether their application will move on to Face-to-Face review; a reminder though: applicants unsuccessful at this stage will NOT receive their ranking or comments until the Notice of Decision goes out to all applicants for this competition on May 15^th. CIHR is currently reaching out to reviewers regarding their availability for the face-to-face (F2F) meeting, and plan to quickly finalize the invitation list once they know what applications are going forward. CIHR is also continuing its evaluation of this revised Project Competition, tracking a number of indicators (eg, # reviewers per application; reviewer assignments) as well as the survey comments from applicants and reviewers. The results of this evaluation are expected to be available for a planned meeting of the University Delegates in Ottawa in June.

Delegates asked how the “review of the reviews” was going. According to CIHR, Competition Chairs, Scientific Officers and some Early Career Investigators (included here apparently based on some earlier discussions) are being asked assess the reviews on “appropriateness” and “robustness”. The former criterion is intended to capture any biased comments towards the applicant or the applicant’s research and/or institution, adherence to conflict of interest and confidentiality agreements, and whether the review is written in a respectful and professional tone. The “robustness” criterion looks at whether the ratings are supported by an appropriate balance of strengths and weaknesses; note that the quality of the scientific opinion being expressed in the review is not being assessed here. To this end, Chairs and SO are being asked to edit reviews that do not wholly meet these criteria, though CIHR cannot guarantee that all such reviews will be followed up. CIHR did suggest, however, that some of the authors of these reviews might be removed from consideration for the F2F meetings. Some UDs also questioned whether there would be more value in allowing exchanges between reviewers at Stage 1. Currently, reviewers who have submitted their preliminary reviews can see other reviewer names, scores and rankings of applications; however, reviewers cannot see reviewer names, scores or rankings of other reviewers who have not submitted their preliminary reviews. (Confusing? Yes!) CIHR noted that while having exchanges between reviewers may be worth considering, for the time being it will continue to follow the recommendations laid out by the Peer Review Working Group for this Project scheme.

As one final note on this competition, CIHR is “looking at” the current allocation of funding between the Project and Foundation competitions. Read into that what you will!

International Peer Review Expert Panel
The Panel report was made public on February 23 after being received at Governing Council (http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/50248.html). As might be expected, nothing as yet has been actioned regarding recommendations contained within the report.

A Note Regarding Internal Peer Review
We are currently planning (with the luxury of a bit more time) another round of collaborative internal peer review involving the Health Faculties, the IWK and the NSHA. Our approach will build on the process developed for the Fall 2016 competition, with more consideration to timelines and in particular to PIs who currently have applications being adjudicated. More details will follow by our regular email communications, but please take note of a CIHR Update session tentatively scheduled for April 13^th (2:00-3:30; Rowe 1009) where we plan to walk through the internal peer review process for the upcoming Project competition.

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