We have received an overwhelming number of outline bids for our project grant funding. Up 300% on the number received by one of our founding charities, PTECO, that offered similar grants in 2011/2012; for a small charity like us this is a huge increase!
We’re really excited to have received so many interesting ideas for research; it really demonstrates the extent to which pharmacy is seeking to innovate, improve quality, advance practice and influence policy for the benefit of patients and the public.
However, the high number of bids means we have had to re-think our funding timetable as it will take longer than to process this number of applications and we must ensure all bids go through a thorough peer review process.
The funding timetable for Autumn 2013 will now look like this:
We’ll be letting applicants know the outcome of the review of their outline bid by the 1st November
Given the high number of applications we anticipate that only one in 4 will be invited to submit a full application.
Successful applicants will then be given 6 weeks to put together a full funding application which they must send to us by the deadline of 13th December. In this six week period we will be identifying appropriate experts to review the funding applications.
Applications will be sent out to a minimum of two expert reviewers. Our Scientific Advisory Panel will then independently consider the reviewers comments and scores and then discuss all the applications in the week commencing the 20th of January. The Scientific Advisory Panel will then make funding recommendations to our Board of Trustees.
This should mean that we will be in a position to notify all applicants by the 31st of January.
Next Steps for the Pharmacy Research UK team….
We’ve been logging the applications for most of this week. We looked for any potential conflicts of interest of our Scientific Advisory Panel in relation to the outline applications and ensured that they are all properly anonymised.
The Scientific Advisory Panel members will receive and review the applications. They will be asked to consider if they think the aims and objectives are clear and whether they feel the research is original and likely to have impact. They will also be asked if they feel the bid is relevant to the priorities of Pharmacy Research UK and if they think the applicants make a strong case for alignment.
They will then collectively agree which applications will be invited to submit a full application. Their recommendations will be shared with the Board of Trustees. Collated comments will then be fed back to all applicants.
Throughout this peer review we’ll be blogging about what we are doing, so please visit our website www.pharmacyresearchuk.org for updates or follow us on twitter @PharmResUK
We want to ensure our processes are open and transparent so that our applicants understand and have confidence in the review process, and the charity’s governance. In short, lots to do and not that much time to get it done in but we’ll get there!
Charlotte
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