Reviewer
How will I know I need to complete a review?
ROAP will send you a Notification Email when you have been assigned a Review. Clicking on the hyperlink in the email will start your login to ROAP.
Reviews tab takes you to all the reviews that have been assigned to you as a member of one of our ethics and compliance committees or as part of a low risk review panel.
How do I access the review documents?
- Click on the Application Identifier or Title to open up the review record.
- Select Review Details from side menu. The status will be shown as "Pending".
- The first thing you will need to do is declare if you have any conflict of interest. Click the Complete Check icon.
- If you do have a conflict of interest, it is useful to provide a reason – this information goes to the office, not the researcher. You do not need to provide a reason if you do not have a conflict of interest.
- Click submit.
If you have a conflict of interest, your review activities cease here. However, if you have not declared a conflict of interest you can now download the application or amendment and all their supporting documents.
- Select Review Application on the lower right hand side of the screen.
From here you can download the application and associated documents. Please save these to a secure network drive or device and delete them once committee review has been finalised.
How do I know what has changed between this version and the last one submitted?
When assessing applications that have been requested to revise and resubmit, or for any amendments you may want to assess what changes have been made to the application. To access track changes:
- Select Application Versions from side menu and select checkbox(es) for two Application Versions and select Track Changes to download a document with track change markup.
Track change documents are also available in review documents that you can download from ROAP.
The blue highlighted document is a clean copy of the most recent version of the application without any track changes.
The yellow highlighted document below shows Version 1.01 of application 20201/ET000274, with track changes marked up between version 1.00 and 1.01.
How do I provide comments and concerns?
Accessing the review form
To provide comments and concerns click on the Review Application button, which appears in the lower right hand side of the screen after you have downloaded the Application documents.
Uploading concerns - ethics and biosafety reviews
The application review screen for ethics and biosafety review is shown below.
You will need to decide if you require more information from the researcher. If so, tick yes and complete the concerns section of the review. Concerns are components of the application that require more information or clarification from the researcher and may need to be discussed at a committee meeting.
Section: Document the section by name and/or number on the application form, or the title of the supporting document when providing a concern. This provide greater efficiency when the committee is considering all reviewer comments together.
In the Concerns text box indicate the concerns that you have with that section such as "Please provide details of the vectors and method of transfer" "Please provide more details for decontamination and disposal", "Please provide an animal monitoring sheet and flow diagram".
There are two other non-mandatory opportunities for providing further feedback to the office and to the researcher.
Are there any instructions for the office?: This field is for putting in comments for the office to action – such as "please check researchers’ training records are up to date".
Is there any feedback you would like to make directly to the researcher outside of the review process: This field is for providing feedback to researchers - such as "well written application" or "the application is overly complicated and difficult to understand". In most cases, providing feedback to the researcher is best done via the committee so please consider the value and context of providing feedback as an individual carefully.
Adding or deleting concerns
Click plus ⊕ or minus ⊖ in the circle ◯ to add or remove row for concerns.
Submitting a review with no feedback required:
If you have no comments or feedback please just put N/A in these boxes.
If you are happy for the application to be approved without any modifications, Select "No " for the Question Is more information required from the researcher?*
Scoring applications – internal grants review
The application review screen for internal grants review is shown below.
You will be required to add comments and score the Application.
Finalising the review
Click the "Save " button which is in the right top corner of the screen. Click "preview " if you would like to see your concerns document. Then click "Submit ".
For ethics and biosafety review the office will compile the agenda and a list of consolidated concerns per application or amendment for discussion at the next meeting and distribute this to members.
For internal grant review, the office will rank the applications and call for panel review.
How do I see a summary of my review?
- Select the Review Details tab from the left hand side menu
- Select View Review. This will display your completed review form
- Select the Preview button on the right hand side of the form. This will download the Review Documents to a zip folder.
- Save the documents in a secure network area or device and delete after committee review has been finalised.
