Proposal review process

Once we receive your proposal, we will proceed through the following stages:

• Proposals will be checked by subject centre staff for completeness. Proposers will be given feedback about incomplete submissions, and the chance to confirm details if there is time to do so before the deadline.
• All proposals will initially be assessed by at least two internal reviewers. Proposals will be judged against the criteria of completeness, appropriateness and rational, evaluation, dissemination and value for money as outlined in the 'criteria' below.
• A long list of submissions will be forwarded for external review (all proposals are available to external reviewers with a sample provided for quality assurance/transparency purposes).
• There are at least three external evaluators, plus we may ask specialist reviewers to comment on specific proposals from time to time (e.g. IPE). All 'long-listed' submissions will be evaluated by the relevant external evaluator again using our evaluation form based on the criteria listed below.
• Authors of all proposals will be given an indicative outcome and the full reviewers feedback, successful proposals will be asked if they wish to respond to any points in the feedback.
• The final decision on the projects to be funded in each round will be made by representatives of the subject centre and the appointed external evaluators.
• For successful proposals, the subject centre will draw up a letter of agreement to be signed by the grant holder (or appropriate institutional authority) and the subject centre. This should be countersigned by the appropriate NPC in the institution in order to show support from the school. A sample contract (to be finalised) is available.

Criteria for evaluating proposals

Experience suggests that it is difficult to anonymise proposals to our reviewers, therefore we do not attempt to, please contact us if you particularly wish to anonymise your application.

Funds will be allocated on a competitive bidding process, judged by the HEALTH Network Group (Subject Centres for Health Sciences and Practice and Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary medicine (MEDEV)) using the following criteria:

• Evidence of student involvement on project team
• New researcher involved in project team (desirable)
• Need established
• Aims and objectives clearly specified
• UK Higher Education Institution or linked with a UK HEI
• Evidence of support from the institution (human and / or financial resources allocated)
• Equality, equity, gender sensitivity and other potential bias issues addressed
• Value for money demonstrated
• Methodology justified
• Ethical issues addressed
• Innovation clearly demonstrated
• Clear evaluation strategy
• Clear dissemination strategy