A requisite of the Department of Health Research Governance Framework is that all proposals for health and social care research must be subjected to review by experts in the relevant fields who are able to offer independent advice on its scientific quality. Furthermore, all research sponsors must have systems in place, or have access to systems to undertake expert independent review, appropriate to the scale and complexity of research proposals, to allow the organisation to satisfy itself on the scientific standing of the work, its strategic relevance and value for money.

Before a project is authorised by NUH, evidence of satisfactory scientific review must be obtained for each research project, including those without funding or funded from own accounts by charities, research councils or commercial companies.

Peer review or scientific review is the assessment of a research proposal by experts in the relevant fields able to offer independent advice on its scientific validity. Evidence of peer review or scientific review is defined as the report provided by the experts undertaking the review of the proposal.

Process

1. For each NUH unfunded or own account investigator-led research project, the investigator is required to follow the protocol templates when writing the protocol.

2. The investigator submits an electronic copy of the protocol and supporting documentation for NUH Peer Review to a research active expert in the clinical area and another in the method area of the project to review the submission. The reviewers must be independent from the research study in that they should not have or had any input into the design, supervision, collaboration, recruitment, conduct and subsequent analysis of the study.

3. When the investigator is in receipt of all reviewers’ comments on the NUH Peer Review Form and the reviewers have indicated their approval, the investigator continues to proceed with the project authorisation process and will submit the peer review comments as part of the application to R&D.

4. If the reviewers have requested changes and re-submission, the investigator addresses the comments made and makes the changes as appropriate. The investigator submits their revised documents to the peer reviewers for re-review.

5. When reviewers have indicated their approval, the investigator continues to proceed with the project authorisation process and will submit the peer review comments as part of the application to R&D.