Internal Peer Reviews for Grant Submissions

Due to the new NIH mandate that limits investigators to one resubmission of a proposal, it is more important than ever that each submission be of the highest quality possible. One way to improve the quality of a proposal is to engage a team of peer reviewers to critique the proposal before it is submitted to the sponsor for a formal review. This policy outlines the procedure for requesting a peer review from the Office for Nursing Research.

Policy Statement:

Format.  Peer reviews will be scheduled no later than 5 weeks before the sponsor’s deadline. A peer review session takes 2 hours and is attended by the PI, 2-3 reviewers, and the ONR Director. The PI may also wish to have collaborators attend. The session is recorded using SmartPen technology so that both written comments and an audio recording of the entire session can be made available to the PI.

Procedure.  Beginning 8 weeks before the sponsor’s deadline, PI’s should contact the ONR Director to request that a peer review session be scheduled.

Assignment of reviewers.  The ONR Director help to identify potential reviewers and coordinate scheduling of the review. To recognize the time commitment for serving as a reviewer, the ONR maintains a list of faculty who have served as peer reviewers along with the date of their last review. Requests to serve as a reviewer will be made on a rotating basis, with the exception that faculty who are in the process of submitting a grant themselves will not be asked to review someone else’s grant for that funding cycle. Although attempts will be made to match up reviewers and proposals by area of expertise, due to scheduling demands, faculty may be asked to review a grant that is not in their primary area of research.

Lead time for review materials.  PI’s must send their proposal draft to the ONR Director at least 1 week before the scheduled date of the review. PI’s who do not provide their reviewers with sufficient lead time to review the materials, the review session may be canceled or rescheduled.

External reviews.  Faculty may request an external reviewer (i.e., someone not affiliated with the University of Iowa). Please see separate policy on “External Peer Reviews” for details on the procedure and guidelines for requesting an external reviewer.