Welcome to Investigator Grants 2025 - Professor Steve Wesselingh video

This video was recorded in August 2024.

Video transcript

Welcome: Professor Steve Wesselingh – CEO, NHMRC (11sec)

Welcome to the 2025 round of Investigator Grants. I'm Professor Steve Wesselingh, the CEO of the NHMRC. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the Ngunnawal people, the traditional owners of the lands on which I'm joining you here in Canberra, and to acknowledge all of the other traditional owners of the lands that you are joining from. I pay my respects to elders, past and present, and emerging and acknowledge any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may be viewing this video. Thanks for taking part in this year's peer review. This is a really, really important contribution and really, we can't do our peer review and we really can't do our grant rounds without your involvement. So thank you so much. In this video, we're going to be providing lots of information about the peer review process and there will also be lots of other videos that aim to highlight the key issues that help you understand the important tasks that peer review more effectively. There's going to be a lot of information, so I do have some notes in front of me and you'll see me moving the pages from time to time.

Investigator Grant Scheme Overview (1 min 20sec)

The Investigator Grant scheme is designed to support the research program of the most outstanding investigators at all career stages, from early career researchers all the way through to the most senior researchers. The grants are consolidated to support 5 years of research support and a salary where requested. But not everyone needs a salary. The grants allow the chief investigator the flexibility to pursue important new research directions as they arise, adjust their resources accordingly and to form collaborations as needed, rather than being restricted to the scope of a particular research program. There are obviously a number of levels. There's the Emerging Leadership level, the EL1 and EL2 and then there's the Leadership level, the L1, L2 and L3. The Leadership level has a support package of around $400,000 per year. So a really good support package and it's important that the peer reviewers closely read the applicant’s justification for why they’ve have applied at a particular level to ensure it aligns with the statement of expectations. Remember that it's not solely about the applicant’s years post PhD, or academic level, but other factors as well. Really good guidance is provided at Appendix F of the Peer Review Guidelines.

Investigator Grants Assessment Criteria (2 min 53sec)

Investigator Grants are largely track record based with 70% of the overall score determined on the applicant’s past research achievements, including publications, research impact and leadership. 30% of the overall score is determined on the quality of the proposed research and significance of the knowledge gain within the applicant’s research proposal. The score descriptors at Appendix C of the Peer Review Guidelines should be used as a guide to scoring applications against each of the assessment criteria. Peer reviewers should consistently refer to these score descriptors to ensure thorough, equitable and transparent assessment of the applications. Remember that while score descriptors provide peer reviewers with some benchmarks for appropriately scoring each application, they are a guide to a best fit outcome only, and then it's not essential that all descriptors relating to a given score are met. And importantly, NHMRC recognises that all research careers are not the same and therefore peer reviewers are asked to assess track record relative to opportunity. So that's an important point.

Relative to Opportunity (4min 16sec)

Relative to opportunity, taking into account circumstances that affect the applicant’s research productivity, and NHMRC considers relative to opportunity to mean that the peer reviewers should assess an applicant's track record of research productivity and professional contribution in the context of their career stage and circumstances, by taking into consideration whether the applicant’s productivity and contribution are within the opportunities available to them. The policy has two components, career disruption, which is a continuous break of 90 days or more for pregnancy, illness or carer responsibilities and career circumstances which include personal or professional circumstances affecting research productivity. It's vital that peer reviewers carefully consider an applicant's career circumstances and disruptions in deciding on a score for track record criteria. More information can be found at section 4.3.6.1 and Appendix G of the Peer Review Guidelines, but the information’s there because this is really important. So you know this area is important to us, it's important to the applicants and it's really important to high quality peer review.

Key changes this round (5min 41sec)

There are several key changes of note for this round. The first relates to how applicants respond to the research impact criteria. Applicants are no longer required to respond to three research impact sub elements separately, but now have the flexibility of putting it all in one field. The reviewers still need to provide separate scores for the three sub elements of the research impact. However, this change is response to applicant and peer reviewer feedback about the difficulty of the three sections and duplication and really the difficulty in responding to this criteria. The second key change is to allow applicants to address the knowledge criteria, which aims to improve the structure, clarity and consistency of the information provided by the applicants within the research proposal. Applicants should provide a justification that proposed new research can be accomplished within the available time and money to assist you in assessing the feasibility of the expected outcomes. But importantly, applicants retain the flexibility to pursue important new research directions as they arise and adjust their resources appropriately. The last significant change that affects peer review is the score descriptors Appendix C, this has been updated to incorporate the key assessment information into a single appendix, creating a sort of one stop shop for applicants and peer reviewers. We would strongly encourage all of you to review this appendix and become familiar with it.

Overview of process for 2025 (7min 28sec)

This slide shows a quick overview of the investigator grant process. There were (over) 1700 applications submitted to NHMRC at the close of the round on Thursday the 15th of August, and applications will shortly undergo eligibility checking. Applications are then matched to potential peer reviewers based on the peer review information provided in your profiles in Sapphire and what the applicant provides in the application. After this, you'll be provided on average about 100 applications. I know that sounds like a lot but obviously that will get a lot less as we go along, but as many as 250 in a small number of cases. You then declare any conflicts and your suitability to assess the applications. Importantly, experts with the experience in Indigenous health will complete assessments against the Indigenous Research Excellence Criteria. If you get assigned an application with an IREC review, please ensure you consider the IREC assessment in your assessment of the application. Finally, around 10 to 15 applications will be assigned to each peer reviewer, and you will have 4 weeks to complete your reviews. Unfortunately, some potential peer reviewers will not be allocated any applications. However, those peer reviewers have contributed to making the assessment process more robust by ensuring only those peer reviewers with the most relevant expertise will assess applications and that's a really important part of the peer review process we now have in place. Immediately after all scores are received, you will have the opportunity to review the applicant feedback of other peer reviewers of the same application. This is an important mechanism to identify errors and learn how other peer reviewers provide feedback. We then expect to be able to announce the outcomes in February 2025.

Peer Review Mentors (PRMs) (9min 33sec)

This Investigator Grant round has the privilege of having 4 PRMs (Peer Review Mentors) available to provide advice to peer reviewers. PRMs are senior researchers who have experienced undertaking peer review for Investigator Grants and usually hold an Investigator Grant themselves. You can see on the slide our really distinguished PRMs, very experienced and really know the peer review process very well. So you can see Patsy, Stewart, Eric and Sarah and they're available to answer questions on how to assess an application. PRMs can provide general guidance but cannot comment on the science in an individual application. Please contact your secretariat if you'd like to seek the guidance of a PRM. PRMs will be available when they host six drop-in sessions during the four-week assessment stage.

PRM Drop-in sessions (10 min 34 sec)

So, you can see here on the slide the optional PRM drop-in sessions which will occur in mid-October to early November. The dates and times will also be sent through to you in an email. These sessions are designed for peer reviewers to drop-in, ask any questions related to their assessment of the applications, and obviously, as you saw, they’re really experienced, and you can get some really good information from the PRMs.

Tips for peer reviewers (11 min 1sec)

Here's a slide about tips for peer reviewers and really, what this is about is the resources that we're providing you to assist in your role as a peer reviewer. The Peer Review Guidelines, these provide a lot of information, really important that you read them and utilise them while you're going through your assessment. There's the Peer Review Support Pack, please have a look at the support pack and make sure you know what's in there and you utilise it to complete your assessments. And finally, the Statement of Expectations. The Statement of Expectations provides clarification of NHMRC's expectations of applicants applying at each level. Information on how to review applications where a peer reviewer considers that an applicant has applied at an inappropriate level, having taken into consideration the applicants track record and category, and level of justification. So, this can be quite difficult and there's really good guidance to be found in Appendix F. Unconscious bias is really interesting, I don't know how many of you have undergone an implicit association test for bias or done one of the unconscious bias tests that are on the web, but often it does show up that we don't know all about our own biases. And so it's important to think about that. There's the Royal Society video understanding unconscious bias, and both the tests and the video aim to remind participants on how these matters can play into our thinking and assist you in your role as an assessor to make sure that you're aware of your biases and how to try and counteract those. The secretariat is also available at any time to help you at any point, and as I mentioned, the PRMs are also there to help you at any time.

Thankyou (12min 57 sec)

Finally, thank you firstly for doing this, for doing the peer review, for being involved, and as I said at the beginning, without you being involved in the peer review, we can't do our work. We can't give out the grants that we want to and we can't do it in the sort of gold standard that we believe we're doing it in. So, thank you for tuning in and a reminder to please make contact with your relevant secretariat using the GRP inboxes, should you have any questions or have any concerns regarding your assessments. Thank you again and good luck.