College Chairs Update – Evolution of Peer Review, Equity and Review Quality

December 18, 2017

On behalf of all of the College Chairs, we are pleased to announce that we now have almost 4,000 members enrolled in the College of Reviewers—and this number continues to grow. We are pleased to see such a positive response from the community, and we would like to thank everyone who has joined the College to date. The next round of College enrolment will begin in January 2018, and we encourage anyone who receives CIHR funding to contribute back to the system by becoming a College member and participating in the review process when invited.

The College Chairs met recently in Ottawa (November 21-22, 2017) for two days of in-depth discussion. We have included a table below that outlines our immediate areas of focus on the evolution of peer review, equity and review quality. We also had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Terry Snutch, who is chairing the Foundation Grant Program Review Committee. We have a College Chair representative on the committee (Dr. Louise Potvin), and we are very supportive of the discussions that they are having about the future of the Foundation Grant program. If you have not done so already, please reach out to the members of the Foundation Grant Program Review Committee to share your perspective. 

Finally, we also met with CIHR's Science Council to discuss the work of the College of Reviewers and the College Chairs, including our contributions to strengthening peer review practices over the past 18 months and our priorities for the upcoming year. In particular, we discussed review quality and how the work undertaken by Competition Chairs, Scientific Officers, and reviewers over the last year has been incredibly valuable for the College of Reviewers. The College staff have been busy developing review quality tools and guidelines for all CIHR competitions, which we plan to launch early in the new year.

The CIHR Scientific Directors are very supportive of the College of Reviewers, and they strongly emphasized the importance of our efforts to ensure inclusiveness and equity within the College membership base.   

We wish to thank all of our peers for their feedback as we continue to build the College of Reviewers, and look forward to reporting our activities in 2018!

Regards,

Paul Kubes, PhD
Executive Chair
College of Reviewers

Jane Rylett, PhD
Vice Executive Chair
College of Reviewers

Area of Focus Discussion Next Steps
Future evolution of peer review The College Chairs continued to discuss improvements in peer review for the Project Grant program. They noted the excellent work of the Chairs, Scientific Officers, and reviewers for the Fall 2017 competition.

Focus on how to ensure appropriate review practices for multidisciplinary  applications

Continue to provide advice throughout the process of updating panel mandates

Discuss strengthening peer review practices based on outcomes of the Fall 2017 Project Grant competition
Inclusive membership The College Chairs discussed the importance of ensuring that recruitment into the College considers inclusiveness (e.g., gender, language, Indigenous identity, size and location of home institution, patients and community partners). Develop targeted recruitment strategies to build an inclusive College membership base
Sex- and Gender-Based Analysis (SGBA) The Chairs discussed how to build peer reviewer capacity for evaluating sex and gender considerations in grant applications. Work with CIHR, particularly the Institute of Gender and Health, to support reviewer and applicant training in SGBA
Review Quality Resources for reviewers have been developed to ensure a shared understanding of review quality across all of CIHR's programs.

Launch the review quality tools and learning resources

Continue to monitor review quality across competitions and develop additional tools to support College members

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