Our goal is for the review process to follow the tentative timeline shown in the figure below:
CIREP applications are discussed and decisions made in the committee’s meetings, which are usually scheduled on the last Thursday of the month. As shown in the figure, a minimum of five weeks after the prescreening is complete and before the committee’s meeting is needed. Below we list tentative deadlines to submit an application in order for it to be considered at a given meeting.
Submission deadline |
CIREP meetings |
12 November 2020 | 17 December 2020 |
10 December 2020 | 28 January 2021 |
21 January 2021 | 25 February 2021 |
18 February 2021 | 25 March 2021 |
18 March 2021 | 29 April 2021 |
22 April 2021 | 27 May 2021 |
13 May 2021 | 17 June 2021 |
10 June 2021 | 15 July 2021 |
15 July 2021 | 16 September 2021 |
30 September 2021 | 28 October 2021 |
21 October 2021 | 25 November 2021 |
11 November 2021 | 16 December 2021 |
Please note that the review process may take longer as it depends on a variety of factors: the nature and complexity of the research project, the date of submission, the PI’s turnaround time, the volume of applications under review, etc.
Furthermore, new applications are initially prescreened to ensure they are detailed enough to evaluate the project’s ethical and data protection implications. At this stage, it is crucial that PIs respond quickly to CIREP’s information requests or questions so that the prescreening is taken care of in a matter of days. The prescreening phase is not included in the approximate timeline.