Students Research Proposal Assessment Form Ethics: Fill & Download for Free

ICMR-SHORT TERM STUDENTSHIP (STS-2019)Guidelines for Scientific Evaluation of STSI. About STS Program1. ICMR-Short Term Studentship (STS) is a popular scheme for MBBS/BDS students initiated in the year 1979. The aim of this program is to encourage students to undertake two months research project during the summer vacations in their own medical college. STS proposals are received in January every year and selected students after the review of proposals, complete their research and submit Report latest by October. Once Report is evaluated and approved, a stipend of Rs 20,000/- along with a certificate is awarded by ICMR.2. The students can choose any topic of their choice related to bio-medical research and work under the Guide from their medical college. The ICMR does not provide any additional funds for research and the Guide/Department/Institute/Medical/Dental College is expected to provide all facilities for proposed research.3. The proposals received from students are on varying topics. It is possible that the topic of research may not exactly match with the subject qualifications/expertise of the reviewers/scientists directly however, they are requested to kindly focus on research aspects and research methodology and complete the review. It may be noted that these subjects mostly pertain to undergraduate levels.4. More than 4000 proposals are received at ICMR every year. Each proposal has an approximate word limit of about 1500 words (approx 3-4 pages). The students may also submit study questionnaires and case record forms (if any) as separate files for review. The ONLINE Program is environment friendly and has been designed to minimize paperwork saving approx. 30 trees/year.5. Each application is evaluated by three reviewers: two scientific reviewers and one administrative reviewer. Administrative review is done at ICMR Hqrs. and this includes review of the ethical clearance letter, eligibility of student, guide, department and college, informed consent forms etc. The scientific reviewers need not look at these administrative aspects.6. There is a provision to declare “Conflicts of Interests” if any, in regard to evaluation of STS proposals.7. The scientific review must be completed within 10-15 days so that results may be announced by end of March, 2018. About 1000 best proposals will be selected as per merit and results will be posted on ICMR website.8. Students were asked to submit proposal in the following format:Title (up to 25 words);Introduction (300 words);Objectives (100 words);Methodology (800 words);Implications (100 words);References (300words)However, the given word limit is flexible and provided as a guidance for students.29. Students were asked to anonymize their proposal and the name of student/guide and contact details should not be available in the Report.10. Detailed general information about the STS program is also available on ICMR website (www.icmr.nic.in). In case of any queries please send an email to: [email protected]. ONLINE Review process of STS Proposals1. The URL web link for evaluation is: http://14.139.60.56:83/rev_login.aspx. This web page can be accessed from any location with internet access.2. Kindly click on the above link or type the URL to open the login page to the “STS Online Proposal Review System” and follow the steps as given below.3. Login with the username and password (sent by email) in the space provided to access your given STS account main page.4. Each Institute is being sent “login name and password” details of all accounts which may be assigned to different scientists/reviewers.5. Please open “Proposal review page” to find reference numbers of Proposals.6. Kindly click on the link of the research proposal to review it. Some students may have additionally submitted case record forms or study questionnaire and the same may be taken into consideration.7. You are requested to evaluate each proposal and give your scores (criteria for scoring given below) and submit as per guidelines.8. It is requested that this may be completed at the earliest or within10-15 days.III. Scoring STS applications1. The reviewer may assign up to a maximum of 100 marks to each application:A. Introduction/Background- 15 marksB. Objectives - 20 marksC. Methodology- 30 marksD. Implications - 15 marksE. New idea for research- 10 marksF. References- 10 marks2. As a scientific reviewer marks may be assigned for each section separately and entered in the online web page link. Any specific comments for the student may also be provided in the space provided. Comments can be addressed to the student as may be communicated as such of required. Final total of marks will be done at ICMR.A. Introduction (15 marks)-Should include the rationale/justification, need for doing the study, its relevance, information supported with references (Word Limit 300).B. Objectives (20 marks)-Should be well defined, specific and achievable in a short time of 2 months (Word Limit 100).C. Methodology (30 marks)-Please review study design, sample size calculation,3methodology to collect data, lab/ field/clinical methods, plan of analysis. If case-study forms, questionnaire, or other study tools have been submitted that may also be reviewed. The proposed study may be prospective or retrospective. The reviewer should also assess the feasibility of doing the study (Word Limit 800).D. Implications (15 marks)- Please review the student’s perspective given in the proposal to assess the overall implications in terms of benefit to the student in skill enhancement and in terms of its scientific merit (Word Limit 100).E. New idea for research (10 marks) - Please assess if the research is on a new topic/ idea and not is/are research of existing textbook knowledge. Research on well-established facts should not be encouraged unless there is some relevant study questions/hypothesis.F. References (10 marks)-Please see if latest relevant literature has been reviewed and quoted in the text and full references as per any standard format and provided.3. You also have an option to assign Negative Scores (from 1- 10 out of 100) if you would like to for any of the following reasons :A. Proposal has been copy pasted/ plagiarizedB. Identifying information revealed (Name/contact information of Guide/Student should not be given, and only name of medical college can be there)C. Work already completed/proposal prepared in past tense.D. Research is not feasible (in a timeframe of 2 months/in medical college setting/ unlikely to be carried out by a UG/planned jointly with other students)E. Unethical Study/work planF. Any other reason, please specify.Thank you for being a Scientific Reviewer for ICMR-STS-2019 program.***********************************

Peer review involves subjecting the author's scholarly work and research to the scrutiny of other experts in the same field to check its validity and evaluate its suitability for publication. ... A peer review helps the publisher decide whether a work should be accepted.How the peer review process worksWhen a scholarly work is submitted to a scientific journal, it first undergoes a preliminary check known as a desk review. The editor decides if the manuscript should be sent for peer review or be immediately rejected. The next step is to select experts from the same field who are qualified and able to review the work impartially. Ideally the work is evaluated by multiple experts.The primary goals of a peer review are to determine whether a scholarly work falls within the journal's scope, to check whether the research topic has been clearly formulated, and to decide if a suitable approach has been taken to address the scientific issues involved. The reviewer also examines the methodology to determine whether the author's results can be reproduced, and he or she assesses the novelty and originality of the research findings. If a work involves patients or animals, then the peer review will also cover ethical aspects. Finally, the reviewer will also rate the 'readability' of the work, assessing how logically the argument has been constructed and whether the conclusions are well-founded. In addition, the author of the work will generally receive useful advice on how to improve their work.Peer reviewers normally provide their assessment in the form of a questionnaire which they return to the editor. This forms the basis for deciding whether the work should be accepted, considered acceptable with revisions, or rejected. Submissions with serious failings will be rejected, though they can be re-submitted once they have been thoroughly revised.If a work is rejected, this does not necessarily mean it is of poor quality. A paper may also be rejected because it doesn't fall within the journal's area of specialisation or because it doesn't meet the high standards of novelty and originality required by the journal in question. Some prestigious journals reject over 90 percent of papers submitted to them, while the rejection rate across all scientific journals is somewhere in the region of 50 percent. Another reason a paper may be rejected is that the reviewers do not agree that the approach taken by the author is innovative. There are also some journals which take a more relaxed stance in regard to originality and focus more on the extent to which the author has followed correct scientific procedures. It is therefore common for authors to submit their paper to a different journal after receiving a rejection.Reviewers are generally not paid for their time since peer review is simply considered to be part of the self-regulatory nature of the world of science and research. Some publishers 'reward' their reviewers by granting them free access to their archives for limited periods of time.Different types of peer reviewThe term peer review actually encompasses a number of different approaches, the most common of which are the following:single-blind peer review: the name of the reviewer is hidden from the author;double-blind peer review: both the reviewer and the author remain anonymous to each other.There are also considerable differences in the level of detail with which papers are evaluated. For example, some journals make additional use of anti-plagiarism software, organise separate reviews of the author's methods and statistics, or examine the submitted illustrations to detect whether they have been manipulated. There is also an increasing number of journals which focus on scientific software or research datasets, and the peer review process has been adapted to fit these contexts, too.Peer review is also used by conference organisers to select which contributions to include in their programme. And funding bodies even use peer review methods to assess the eligibility of research proposals for funding.Criticisms of peer reviewAll the methods mentioned above have their advantages and disadvantages. For example, critics of the double-blind method argue that reviewers can guess who the authors are by looking at the references they cite. They suggest that this could undermine their neutral stance. The evaluation of an academic paper is also affected by the reviewer's scientific beliefs and by the care and effort they choose to invest in the process.Peer review has recently come in for major criticism following cases where reviewers failed to spot serious errors in the author's methodology. The reasons for 'failures' in the peer review process include peer reviewers' heavy workloads as more papers are published and poor selection of reviewers by editorial boards.Another objection that is frequently raised is that peer review is not transparent enough, not just because the reviews are inevitably subjective (especially if reviewers are unable to separate themselves adequately from their particular schools of thought), but also because reviewers may not appreciate the value of a new idea or may withhold – or simply not be asked to provide – relevant information on conflicts of interest.Another key criticism of peer review is that the process may stretch over a long period of time, generally weeks or months, but occasionally even years.Some people also suspect that journals which claim to have implemented peer review actually carry out very superficial assessments, or none at all.It is generally accepted that peer review cannot completely eliminate cases of fraud and the publication of low-quality papers. Nevertheless, peer review continues to be favoured despite all the criticism because it has ultimately proved its worth and shown that in most cases it can help improve the quality of publications – especially if authors are able to view the report and work through the comments. In the end, of course, responsibility lies with the authors who are required to demonstrate rigour, probity and scientific reproducibility as part of the scientific process. The peer review concept is also constantly being adapted to counter criticism such as the points mentioned above.Alternatives to the standard peer review processThis criticism has led to the discussion of new alternatives such as open peer review, a concept which includes crowd sourced peer review. In this case articles are published either immediately or after perfunctory preliminary checks and the actual assessment and evaluation process is left to the scientific community. Although this offers key benefits such as opening up a broader discussion and considerably speeding up the process of publishing comments and assessments, there are also some significant challenges involved in this approach. The main problem is finding a sufficient number of experts who are capable of offering a professional assessment. It can also be difficult to know how to best organise the platforms used for this purpose to ensure they are manageable and searchable. The current assumption is that open peer review can only work as a supplement to the existing peer review process rather than replacing it altogether. Open peer review also has a number of different variants. Issues that have prompted particular discussion include doubts about the extent to which people should be able to make reviews and comments anonymously, since there is obviously a risk that the process could be muddied by personal feelings and rivalries between individual scientists.

In your first year as a doctoral student, it’s good to think of yourself as a “learner” rather than a researcher or even a doctoral student. Your purpose in the first two years is really to understand the fundamentals of research, gathering literature, searching for facts, organizing and performing studies, and writing. It’s the writing part that will be some of the most difficult work you will do because it is nothing like writing either fiction or business communication.Also, in your first two years, you’re not really ready to define your research. This is a good time to gather a widely-diverse set of literature about your general topic, but at the end of your second year, you will be ready to assess the knowledge base and form a theory.Also during this time, the classes will include some study in your own area of expertise (such as organization theory, education, nursing, and even law/ethics. It’s important to understand the core of your study before you launch into writing your dissertation proposal - which many colleges hold off until your third year, when you can launch a search for your academic advisor.