Peer review is critical to health and medical research. Following feedback on the project grant peer review round in 2010, we have made some changes for 2011 to improve the number and quality of external assessments, timeliness and Grant Review Panel (GRP) allocations. These following improvements are planned:
- Expand membership of the NHMRC Academy to help with the allocation of applications to Grant Review Panels (GRPs) and to obtain external assessments.
- This year, Academy members will only be responsible for approximately 30 applications each.
- Re-introduce the Assigners’ Panel meeting in Canberra, where Academy members will work with NHMRC staff and new resources to identify and assign applications to external assessors. This will occur over 2-3 days in April, 2011.
- This meeting will speed up the process of obtaining external reviews, which has been a major problem in recent years.
- This year the Research Grants Management System (RGMS) as well as other software resources will provide NHMRC with a high quality assessors database to support the Assigners’ Panel Day.
- Improve internal planning and process management to give external assessors and applicants greater clarity on timeframes for assessments and applicant responses, including the redevelopment of NHMRC Research Helpcentre with full time staff.
- Streamline the processes of identifying conflicts of interest, through RGMS.
- Provide better written guidance to assessors and GRP members, to improve the consistency of peer review and increased clarity around budget advice, how to assess career disruption, etc.
This year, independent Chairs will again be used for GRPs, following their successful introduction in 2010.
Your help with peer review is needed:
- High quality peer review is a collective effort by the health and medical research community.
- Fair and expert decisions about which grants to fund relies on researcher participation.
- External assessments are critical for the NHMRC Project Grants system.
Since most GRPs have a wide diversity of grant applications to assess, it is important that they have access to expert, peer review comments from assessors in the specific fields for all applications. Good external reviews mean that each application has expert assessment regardless of whether there is a close fit between the expertise of the particular GRP spokesperson and the field of the application.
Each year, so many Australian health and medical researchers contribute many hours selflessly to the GRP process - for this NHMRC and fellow members are very grateful.