Program Project Roles and Responsibilities

Responsibilities of the Scientific Review Officer

The Scientific Review Officer (SRO) is the Designated Federal Official (DFO) with the legal responsibility for managing the review.  No discussion of the application or review proceedings may take place unless the SRO is present.

The SRO's responsibilities include:

• Checking the application and getting additional information from the PI as needed.  Addressing PI questions prior to the meeting.
• Identifying, recruiting, and assigning reviewers who have appropriate expertise and are not in conflict with the application.
• Instructing reviewers on the review process and all regulations and policies.
• Arranging all aspects of the review and its documentation; running the meeting in conjunction with the Chair.
• Monitoring the review process to ensure fair, unbiased and scientifically/technically appropriate evaluation of the application.
• Preparing the summary statement post-review and presenting information to the Council (second level of review) as needed.

Roles and Responsibilities of the Reviewer

As a Peer Reviewer, you are an expert in a scientific or technical field related to the grant application.  Your role is to provide expert advice on the scientific and technical merit of the program project application.

Your responsibilities include:

• Reading your review instructions and applications; alerting your Scientific Review Officer (SRO) as early as possible if an assignment does not fit your expertise or you identify a conflict of interest.
• Providing your SRO with your pre-meeting conflict of interest form and your phone number for the teleconference.
• Writing preliminary critiques, using and completing all sections of the critique template, and uploading critiques and scores to the website by the deadline.
• Participating in the teleconference in its entirety, listening to presentations of assigned reviewers, contributing as appropriate to the discussion, and providing scores.  All reviewers must participate in the entire meeting because final scoring (at the end of the meeting) is based on the discussion of all cores and projects.
• Editing and turning in your critiques, criterion scores, and conflict of interest form, post-review.
• Maintaining confidentiality of review proceedings, before and after the meeting.