RESEARCH SUPPORT GRANT REVIEW PROCEDURE

The Vice President for Research uses faculty to review research support grant applications and other internal grant proposals. Review assignments are made to avoid conflicts of interest and provide expertise to assure appropriate review. All materials distributed to the reviewers are confidential. A copy of the reviews with identifiers deleted and the decision of the committee will be provided to the Principal Investigator.

The Review Process:
The Vice President or designee will assign three reviewers to each proposal. Upon receiving the assignment, the reviewer will review the document for potential conflicts of interest such as members of same departments or units, research collaborators or co-authors. The reviewer will also consult their schedule and determine if they can review within 10 working days and immediately inform Research whether or not they can review this application. Reviews are to be returned to gotgrants@email.uky.edu. Questions concerning issues raised during the review may be addressed to gotgrants@uky.edu or by calling 7-5294.

Review Procedure:
Reviewers of research project applications should review proposals using the criteria for review at www.research.uky.edu/vpresearch/guide/rsupportgrants.html and provide the following information.

1. A brief description of the proposed research describing the goals and plan.

2. Critique:

• Provide an evaluation of the goals and research plan strengths and weaknesses. Hypothesis-driven research may not be necessary for the research plan to provide important new knowledge. Focused experiments that provide new information that can be the basis for an application for external research funding to continue the research program is a major goal of the research support grants. The justification for the use of this new information is a critical issue in receiving a fundable score.

• Avoid emphasizing minor technical details or redesigning the applicant’s experiments. Risk taking is encouraged with an emphasis on bold new approaches that could revolutionize the research direction of an area. However, the rationale of the approaches must be appropriate while being novel.

• Evaluate whether the proposed preliminary data can be the basis for a competitive research grant for external funding or, where appropriate, scholarly publication.

3. Other Issues:

• Are the research qualifications of the investigator appropriate? Why?

• Is the budget appropriate? If not, how should it be changed?

4. Scoring: A five-point priority score range will be used. Do not score with more than one decimal point.

1.0-1.5 – Excellent application, recommend funding as submitted.

1.6-2.0 – Very good application, recommend funding with possible adjustments.

2.1-3.0 – Good application, recommend possible funding.

3.0-3.9 – Application needs work.

4.0-5.0 – Application is not fundable, recommend mentoring for PI.

5. Recommendations: The reviewers will prepare a brief summary pointing out the main strengths and weaknesses.