What’s new for the Fall 2024 Project Grant competition
Message from the Vice-President and Associate Vice-President, Research Programs (Operations)
Dear colleagues,
The Fall 2024 Project Grant competition opens on July 4, 2024, and we would like to highlight a few important considerations as you prepare your applications.
Research security
The granting agencies have introduced new measures to safeguard the integrity of research against risks to national and economic security. Depending on whether or not their research proposals involve private sector partner organizations or aim to advance a sensitive technology research area, applicants to the Fall 2024 Project Grant competition may need to complete new risk assessment and attestation forms. Learn more about research security at CIHR.
Formatting and appendices
CIHR continues to refine its formatting requirements in response to feedback from peer reviewers. For us, this is primarily a matter of fairness. We want to create, as best we can, a level playing field, where every applicant can be fairly assessed based on a consistent amount of information provided. CIHR will continue to follow up with applicants who do not respect the formatting requirements by manipulating font type and size, line spacing, or margin sizes. Repeated formatting issues could lead to a grant application being withdrawn.
Not adhering to formatting requirements can also make grant applications less readable and introduce confusion for peer reviewers. Peer reviewers have raised concerns with CIHR about consistency and fairness in regard to formatting. CIHR staff will continue to work with applicants and their institutions to ensure that everyone is following our application instructions.
In a similar vein, in the interest of fairness it is important that all applicants adhere to requirements around appendices. Following extensive consultations with our community, certain attachments are no longer accepted, and all information necessary must be included in the key components of the application (e.g., research proposal, summary of progress, CV). Reviewers have noted that some applicants have included application information in other allowable attachments, such as letters of collaboration. This information is not considered in the evaluation of the application.
For the Fall 2024 Project Grant competition, CIHR will also be changing the headings and evaluation criteria for applicants submitting a randomized control trial (RCT) as a major component of their research proposal. In addition, based on feedback from peer reviewers, projects submitted to the commercialization (CMZ) peer review committee will need to adhere to a prescribed structure of research proposal headings. These details will be available in the Project Grant application instructions once the competition launches on July 4.
Prior to submitting your application, please take the time to familiarize yourself with the Project Grant application instructions, and if anything is unclear, don’t hesitate to reach out to CIHR’s Contact Centre.
Expanding equalization
As you may have noted, CIHR recently announced that, starting with the Fall 2024 Project Grant competition, we will begin equalizing success rates for applicants who self-identify as a racialized person or as a person with a disability. CIHR made this decision after reviewing several years of Project Grant competition data which showed that these applicants had a significantly lower success rate as compared to others. This means that CIHR will from now on equalize success rates in the Project Grant competition for applicants who are early career researchers, female applicants, applicants who submit in French, applicants who self-identify as a racialized person, and applicants who self-identify as a person with a disability. Note that CIHR does not equalize success rates for applicants who self-identify as Indigenous. The average success rate of 28.8% for applicants who self-identify as Indigenous over several competitions (from the Fall 2018 competition to the Spring 2023 competition) is higher than the competition success rate overall.
Equalization is one concrete step CIHR can take to address potential inequities in its funding system as part of our commitment to achieving a more equitable, diverse and inclusive Canadian health research enterprise.
Peer review meetings will be virtual
Once again, peer review committee meetings for this competition will be virtual, taking place on MS Teams. This will be the tenth Project Grant competition delivered using virtual peer review. With every competition we deliver with a virtual component, CIHR has strived to implement lessons learned to make the process as smooth as possible for everyone.
As always, we thank you for your understanding and collaboration, and wish to acknowledge the countless hours you put into crafting your applications and the ways in which you give back to the community by serving as peer reviewers, committee Chairs, and Scientific Officers.
Sincerely,
Dr. Christian Baron
Vice-President, Research – Programs
Adrian Mota
Associate Vice-President, Research – Programs (Operations)
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