Ideas Grants 2026 Peer Review Webinar Transcript

Introduction and overview

Julie Glover 0:18
Good afternoon, everyone, or good morning, I know for some of you. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us and to attend the Ideas Grant Peer Review webinar. I can see some people are still joining us, but I will get started because we have a very busy and exciting agenda this afternoon. My name is Julie Glover. I'm the Executive Director of Research Foundations Branch here at NHMRC. That's a branch from which the Ideas Grant Scheme is delivered. Before we start, I'd like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, the traditional owners of the lands on which I'm on and many of my staff are here in Canberra, as well as the traditional owners of the lands right around the country, which you are joining us from today. I'd like to pay my respects to elders, past, present and emerging, and pay my respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that are joining us on the call today. So, thank you very, very much for joining us. Thank you for your role as peer reviewers, for your time and your commitment to this 2026 peer review, Ideas peer review process. We really do appreciate your expertise and your dedication to this process. I'd also like to welcome our peer review mentors who are here today to help us with the process and will participate in the questions as well. I'd like to now introduce Dr. Ragini Singh, who leads up the Ideas Grants scheme. She's joined us very, very recently from the Department of Health. And we have a fabulous team running the processes both today and are also who are there to guide you and support you throughout the peer review. So, in case I forget at the end, I'd like to acknowledge the huge amount of work that this team puts into this big, important endeavour that is Ideas Grants. But I'll now just pass over to Ragini.

Ragini Singh 2:12
Thank you very much, Julie, and a very good afternoon to everyone. I'd also like to extend my thanks to each and every one of you for taking the time today to join this webinar, and for helping us deliver it to the quality and efficiency that we expect of our peer review system. We've had a great update for today's webinar, and I'm really excited to share with you our plan for this session. We hope and expect that you've already taken the opportunity to familiarise yourselves with the assessment criteria and score descriptors for the Ideas Grants scheme. And therefore, we're hoping this information will be of use to you that we provide today. This information can be found in the Ideas Grant guidelines and the Ideas Grants peer review guidelines that are also available on Grant Connect to you. More information, including a peer review support pack, will also be provided to you when the assessment phase for Ideas Grants opens, which we're anticipating for next Monday, the 20th of July. This webinar will be delivered as a briefing and it's going to be followed by an interactive session focused on writing assessment comments. I will take a few moments to discuss some general aspects of the Ideas Grants peer review process and introduce our PRMs for 2026 before moving on to the assessment process, how to make best use of budget comments, and our new assessment review stage.

We'll then move on to our interactive module, which is a comment building activity that we'll use Menti for. So please keep your smartphone or another device handy for this, as we will ask you to scan a QR code to access a multiple-choice exercise. The idea is to generate some conversation or discussion by putting in sort of your questions and answers. And this exercise will help provide you with some examples of what good assessment comments look like. At the end of the session, we will have time for a Q&A, and that's going to focus on the Ideas Grants peer review process and the associated peer review policy.

Just some housekeeping before we start today's session. The session is being recorded. We will make the recording available to everyone. However, the quiz and the QA session will be provided to you later on as an anonymised transcript rather than a recording. And we do this in order to de-identify those who participate in the discussion or ask questions. Therefore, I request that you allow the briefing part of the forum to be recorded without interruption and keeping your questions till we get to that step of the process today. Please do ensure that your full name is displayed in the Teams environment. If you have any reservations about displaying your name, please e-mail the Ideas Grants inbox at ideas.grants@nhmrc.gov.au to note your attendance. This inbox is being monitored live so please reach out for any other issues that may crop up for you during today's session. When we get to the interactive session, use the Q&A function to put through your questions in writing. If we don't get through any questions that have been asked by the end of today's session, we will answer them in a transcript and post them as well. So with that, I'll move on to the next slide, please. Thank you.

So this is a quick overview of the round this year. Applications to the Ideas Grants 2026 round closed on the 6th of May with 2,452 applications received. The conflicts of interest process has now been completed and thank you very much to each and every one of you who participated in that for getting through that stage so promptly. We anticipate that you'll receive your allocated applications for assessment next Monday, as I noted before. Each application is assigned to five reviewers for assessment, and we'll aim to obtain 5 independent assessments for each of those applications. Please remember it is important to complete your application reviews within the allocated timeframe so that the outcome can be delivered to applicants in a timely manner before the end of the year. There are several steps that need to occur before outcomes are announced. We do understand that life can happen and things might arise through the assessment period. However, we'd like to advise not to leave your assessments to the last minute. In case you can't complete your assessments in time, please contact your secretariat and let them know as soon as possible.

Before we go on to the details of what's new this year, I'd like to remind you of the importance that confidentiality and privacy play in the peer review process. Most researchers will have professional interests that intersect with NHMRC funded research and having these interests is quite normal. However, what matters is disclosing conflicts whenever they arise. Conflicts of interest can emerge at any point in the process, and they can also emerge after assessment allocations have been made. So, if you've already made a declaration and something changes, please contact your secretariat. Confidentiality is also important. Applications can often contain unpublished ideas, sensitive information, and intellectual property. All information that's contained in applications is regarded as confidential, unless it's otherwise indicated. Therefore, as peer reviewers, you have legal obligations, both under the Privacy Act and as outlined in NHMRC's deed of confidentiality. These obligations continue beyond the conclusion of the peer review and this particular round. We also ask that you familiarise yourselves with NHMRC's position on the use of generative AI, AI tools for peer review, and this includes ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or any other such tool that you may have access to.

Before we move on, I'd also like to provide a very quick clarification on a topic that we often get asked about. In the assessment of research proposed to be conducted overseas, NHMRC actively supports international collaboration and global health research. Where research is conducted overseas with focuses on international populations, we ask that you also consider whether the applicant has clearly articulated how the work advances health and medical knowledge, how it strengthens Australia's research capability or delivers benefits for Australians.

International focus alone should not be considered either a strength or weakness. The question to ask is whether the approach is justified and aligned with the scheme objectives. Further information is available on NHMRC's International Engagement Strategy, including NHMRC's vision for international collaboration, which is on the NHMRC website.

I’d now like to focus on what's new for the 2026 round. One of the most significant changes this year has been the introduction of the requirement to account for sex, gender, variations of sex characteristics and sexual orientation considerations into both the application and the assessment processes. Applicants are now required to explicitly address these factors within their applications and, also to integrate them into their research where relevant. Therefore, you should consider whether these variables have been appropriately integrated across the research lifecycle - into the research question, into the study design, methods, analysis, and translation activities.

Where an applicant determines they're not relevant, you should consider whether a clear and evidence-based justification has been provided. Importantly, this is not about requiring every research project to integrate all these variables, but it is important for applicants to demonstrate that they have carefully considered all these variables in their research. The key principle for you as reviewers is to assess the appropriateness of the applicant's approach to integrating these variables, or how the strength and validity of their justification for not integrating them shines through. It’s not simply about rewarding inclusion or penalising exclusion. This should form part of your assessment of research quality and should be considered alongside the broader scientific merit of the proposal. If you'd like further guidance on this, you can refer to the statement on sex, gender, variations of sex characteristics and sexual orientation in health and medical research, and additional resources, which includes FAQs that are available on NHMRC's Gender Equity webpage.

I briefly noted familiarising yourselves with NHMRC's stance on the use of AI. This is another important change for 2026. We've updated our policy on the use of generative AI. The policy recognises that AI tools are now commonly used across research and academic environments. Peer reviewers may use AI tools for limited administrative purposes such as improving grammar, readability, or the structure of your comments that you've written yourselves. However, as peer reviewers, you must not use AI to undertake assessment activities. This includes analysing applications, identifying strengths and weaknesses, generating scores, ranking applications, or forming assessment judgements. Your expertise is what NHMRC is seeking. The evaluation of an application therefore must remain your own independent professional judgement. You should also remember that confidentiality obligations remain unchanged. Information from applicants and applications should never be provided to AI systems in a way that could compromise privacy, confidentiality, or intellectual property. The simplest way to think about this is that AI may assist you to communicate your assessment more clearly, but it should not replace your assessment. So human judgement, accountability and confidentiality should remain at the centre of your NHMRC peer review process. A link to the NHMRC policy on the use of generative AI in grant applications and peer review will also be made available in the support pack that we provide to the assessors, and we encourage you all to familiarise yourselves with it.

The other major change for 2026 is the introduction of the assessment review stage, or the ARS. This was introduced within the last Investigator Grants funding round and received quite positive feedback from peer reviewers. You may be familiar with the previous comment review process. The ARS builds upon that concept, but it helps provide a more structured opportunity to improve the quality and consistency of assessments. After independent assessments have been completed, reviewers will be able to view the names, the criterion scores and applicant feedback provided by other reviewers who are allocated to that same application. At that point, you could identify something that you may have overlooked. You might recognise that another reviewer has highlighted an important issue or you may notice an error in your own feedback or identify potentially inappropriate comments. At that stage, you will have the opportunity to revise your own scores and comments, if necessary. And as reviewers, you should continue to make independent decisions. Please do note that direct discussion between reviewers is not permitted. The purpose of the ARS is not to force consensus. However, we hope it strengthens transparency, accountability, consistency and the quality of feedback that is provided to applicants. Once again, I would like to remind you here of your obligations for to lifetime confidentiality. Members are appointed under the NHMRC Act and are expected to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with being an office holder of the Commonwealth, including in relation to confidentiality and privacy. Therefore, as reviewers, you must not contact applicants and vice versa. Applicants should not contact you either about any applications that are under review. If this occurs, it can be referred to for management under NHMRC's research integrity and misconduct policy, or to the NHMRC fraud and corruption team under the fraud and corruption control framework. Consequences of this occurring can include the peer reviewer or the application being removed from the process. It may also include exclusion from NHMRC peer review, potentially referral to the National Anti-Corruption Commission as well. So, a good sort of reminder for everyone.

I'll now talk about our peer review mentors and the role that they play in the peer review process. PRMs are available to provide support to other reviewers throughout the peer review process. They're experienced researchers who've consistently demonstrated high quality peer review practice and a strong understanding of NHMRC peer review policy. Their role in this process is to support you throughout the assessment period by helping interpret assessment criteria, by discussing peer review approaches and sharing practical experience. They can also provide guidance on writing constructive applicant feedback. Please remember that PRMs don't assess applications and cannot provide any advice on the scientific or, in fact, any other merits of individual applications. If you'd like assistance from a PRM, please contact your secretariat, as all interactions are facilitated through NHMRC, and this is to ensure appropriate management of confidentiality and conflicts of interest.

With that, I'm very pleased to introduce our 2026 PRMs who are with us here today. Please welcome Professor Sharyn Rundle-Thiele, Professor Stefan Thor, and Associate Professor Nadeem Kaakoush. I'd now like to invite them to introduce themselves briefly, along with providing any general tips and ideas they may have before we move on to the next part of this session. I might call on Sharyn first.

Sharyn Rundle-Thiele 18:38
Hi everybody, I'm Sharyn Rundle-Thiele. I am a social scientist by background who literally had the bold idea of - can marketing help deliver health outcome change? I've reviewed for the NHMRC and I'm currently also serving on the College of Experts for the Australian Research Council. So more than five years of experience assessing grants that quite often feel very uncomfortable because we're obviously handed grants right across the board. It's not going to be your direct area of expertise. So do know that many times it is, but at other times, for example, you are actually reading something that you do not feel expert on. But the important thing is to just bring in everything that you know as you think it through to go, is it coherent? Does it make sense? And from there, you can actually start to score really quite well and enjoy the process for those starting for the first time. It will teach you a lot. It makes you a better grant writer for sure. So do enjoy it. And I think the last piece of advice, give yourself time. When they open on Monday, maybe make some time next week to fit some in to understand how long that process is going to take you. So it'll help you plan your workloads to be on time.

Ragini Singh 19:59
Thank you, Sharyn. Might call on Stefan next.

Stefan Thor 20:05
Yeah, thank you for letting me join in on the PRM activity. So, I have experience from Europe and the US for many years and in Australia the last eight years, doing a lot of grant assessment for NHMRC, but also ARC. And I'm currently on the ARC College of Experts. I think I kept reasonable tally on my grant assessment activity, and I'm somewhere over 1300 grants that I've reviewed in my career for a lot of different funding bodies and for NHMRC, I think the last six years or so. So, and I can only echo what was just discussed, sort of to give yourself time to look at the grants, review them, don't wait to the very last second. I also recommend you to do it in sort of two, you know, two round score, then carefully once and then go over everything again after a while because you sometimes adjust on the second scan through. So I think that's a good way of doing it. So doing it well ahead of time and maybe in a double run through, so to speak. Okay, thank you.

Ragini Singh 21:26
Thank you very much, Stefan. Nadeem.

Nadeem Kaakoush 21:30
Hello, good afternoon everyone. I'm a Scientia Associate Professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences at UNSW. So my background is in medical microbiology and my experience with the NHMRC Ideas scheme is that I have been on the grant review panel in 2019 and then I was on the modified panels in 2020, 21, 22, and then I have been a peer review mentor in 23, 24, and now 26 as well. My general advice would be to review grants the way you would like your own grants to be reviewed. And the same goes for writing comments as well. Write them in the way that you would like to receive comments. And also try to implement some additional standardisation in your workflow, whatever you're comfortable with, so that the grants that you review are reviewed equally, all the way from starting point to the end point, which is nearly one month later. Thank you.

Ragini Singh 22:28
Thank you very much for those introductions. I'm now going to take us through some key information and concepts that hopefully will assist you with the interactive session today. This material will also be shared with you in your support packs. First, a quick look at the assessment criteria for Ideas Grants. We have 4 criteria, Research Quality at 35%, Innovation and Creativity weighted at 25%, Capability at 20, and Significance at 20%. You can find information on these criteria in Appendix C of the peer review guidelines for Ideas Grants. And you should be referring to the score descriptors at Appendix 6 along with these criteria when you're completing your assessments. You'll also receive step-by-step instructions in the support pack to refer to during the assessment process. The comments that you provide as assessors against the assessment criteria and the scores form a critical part of the peer review process. These are also the focus of the interactive session today. As reviewers, please remember to give applicants constructive feedback based on the criteria and the score descriptors. Your comments reflect your expert assessment. And since your comments go directly to the applicant, please keep in mind that they should be meaningful and aim to highlight both strengths and weaknesses of the proposal. If you do spot a flaw along the way, please explain its implications and suggest improvements where feasible. One tip that might assist you is to read the whole application before you score any individual criterion. Scoring should be holistic and should not penalise an applicant for something that's not mentioned in a specific section if it's covered elsewhere within the application. However, as reviewers, please remember to keep your comments relevant to the specific criteria that you're addressing.

This year to help craft comments and to act as a reminder, we are introducing a comment writing template to support reviewers during the assessment phase. This template will also be included in the peer reviewer support pack and is intended to be used alongside the assessment criteria and the score descriptors matrix. This shouldn't be considered a replacement for those documents, but rather as a practical tool to help you structure your comments and ensure your feedback is clear, relevant, and useful. Our PRMs have assisted us with developing this template. Thank you to them, and it draws on their experience of what makes giving feedback meaningful for applicants. Our aim is that this template helps reviewers provide comments that are well aligned to the criteria. They reflect the score given and gives applicants some constructive information that they can use to understand the assessment of their application.

I'd like to speak briefly to the budget review part of assessments. All assessors must review requested budgets to determine whether the outlined costs are appropriate. However, it's not mandatory to provide a recommendation, but where you notice a specific budget item is not sufficiently justified, please do put one in. For example, when you're reviewing the application budget, you might notice that a particular budget item, like a personnel support package or a specific research cost, is not sufficiently justified by the applicant or maybe it's not in line with the proposed research objectives. In that instance, you should consider whether this budget aligns, whether that request aligns with the NHMRC direct research cost guidelines, and whether the request is necessary, justified, and represents value for money. In the example here on the slide, we've got a helpful and actionable comment as the first option where the action is clearly articulated. For example, it states reducing a PSP2 to a PSP1 across all years of the proposal. However, the second comment is a reflection only and it's not very helpful. So, this example just highlights how important it is to provide clear, actionable and specific recommendations so that they can be taken into consideration as part of the budget assessment process.

This is something for your information. As a recommendation from the Peer Review Analysis Committee, or PRAC, for the past few years following the assessment phase, NHMRC also conducts what we call the outlier screening check to help identify scores that differ significantly from other peer reviewers using statistical methods recommended by PRAC. Where outlier scores are identified, we'll seek clarification from peer reviewers if it's required. There can be often a valid and acceptable reason for an outlier score. For example, it may reflect the specific expertise or judgement of the assessor, and therefore it's not necessarily incorrect. This is just an extra quality assurance step that we conduct to ensure that the outlier score is not a result of an unintentional error or a typographical mistake. And for those of you who prefer statistics as light reading, please also have a look at the report that's available on our website and the QR code is provided on this slide.

Finally, please remember that we are here to help. Your secretariat is your first point of contact if issues arise during the peer review process. If you require clarification or assistance, or if you wish to flag any eligibility or integrity issues, your secretariat reis your first point of contact. Remember that you're able to seek advice from peer review mentors where required, but this is also managed through the Secretariat. Our PRMs will also be hosting 3 drop-in sessions for you through the assessment period starting in week two of the assessment period. And the first drop-in session is on Thursday 30th of July at 1pm. The second one, Thursday 6th of August. And lastly, one in week four of the assessment period on Thursday 13th of August. We'll be sending you more information about these sessions after this webinar. Thank you everyone.