Funding, News and Announcements

Hi everyone,

Following are highlights from the October CIHR University Delegates teleconference:

CIHR UpdatesFirst up was an apology for unexpected delays in getting out the “authorization for funding” forms to institutions, with all forms going out the door the previous week. The staff will look to correct this delay for future competitions.

Two independent, external reviews are now underway: one to evaluate SPOR, and the other to review CIHR reforms. For the latter in particular, Scientific Directors will be reaching out to the community for comments and suggestions.

Peer Review Working Group Update
Updates from this group, the third and last coming several weeks back, have previously been posted; a summary of these reports and recommendations can be found online here. While CIHR has moved on several recommendations, much of the process / IT details are still being worked out. The Chair of this group (Paul Kubes) will be presenting soon to Governing Council. Still no word on if/when there will be a PRWG 2.0, one that will have a longer mandate and more comprehensive scope given the limited discussions taking place currently to address the pending Project Grant competition; Dr. Kubes will be invited to a future UD teleconference.

College of Reviewers
Currently the focus is on recruiting to specific competitions, not for the overall College. For the Project Grants CIHR will be looking for approximately 1,300 reviewers in order to achieve 4 reviewers per application, and is in the process of completing reviewer profiles in order to match them to applications. As of October 6, just under 50% of those who were solicited as reviewers (based on the reviewer validation criteria agreed to as a result of PRWG discussions) have completed their reviewer profiles. If you have been contacted by CIHR and have yet to complete your profile, I encourage you to do so; Dalhousie needs to be well represented in this process. To help facilitate completion of this profile, CIHR will be providing keywords in an Excel file. CIHR will ultimately look to add the reviewer profile to every ResearchNet account.

Project Grant Update
CIHR has logged 3,282 registrations for the upcoming Project grant competition. Most of the 32 competition Chairs (i.e., Cluster or Panel Chairs) have been recruited, with a Chair meeting in Ottawa planned for November. (If you do the math, that is an average of 100 applications per cluster.) ‘Ability to review’ and reviewer conflicts will be addressed in November, with final reviewer assignments coming in December. Stage 1 reviews will commence in January and occur over a 5-week period. Stage 2 reviews are expected to take place in March, with face-to-face discussions in April in advance of notice of decisions in May. A budget analysis for this competition is still ongoing, though I would expect that the success rates will be no better than what was observed for the last competition. Note that the Peer Review manual for the Project Grants was posted October 6, though Stage 2 is still a bit light on details.

Foundation Grant Update
CIHR has received 634 registrations for the upcoming Foundation grant competition but has not yet completed its validation of applications submitted by self-declared ECRs. CIHR is also in the process of recruiting competition Chairs and reviewers, with 5 of 6 webinars having been delivered. Given the lower number of registrations than perhaps anticipated (though CIHR stated that this was within “projections”), UDs asked whether a budget redistribution (with the concurrent Project Grant competition) is on the table; for now anyways, it appears the current distribution will remain, with the number of Foundation grants funded based on available budget and amounts requested. On the latter condition, CIHR has apparently addressed the baseline budget calculation in an updated peer review manual. It was not clear in the ensuing exchange, however, whether the budget allocation calculation takes into account the gaps in funding that have occurred as a result of the switch over to the new system, though there was mention of a 7-year rolling average.

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