Categories

Five projects (up to 10 Lakhs per project)

Note:

• The project shall be of at least two years duration.
• The research should pertain to issues relevant to India. In such proposals, funding for multicentric studies shall be given priority.
• Funding shall be provided for consumables as well as for manpower.
• A principal investigator/mentor/guide may have a maximum of two ongoing projects at the same time.
• In a single funding cycle, only one project can be funded for a single principal investigator/ single mentor/guide

The number of actual research grants and quantum available would be advised by the secretary of the IRA to the committee. The funding shall be evaluated in the following three cycles:

January to April

• Proposal received by 15th March shall be considered
• Proposals shall be reviewed and a decision communicated to the applicant by 30th April.

May to August

• Proposal received by 15th July shall be considered
• Proposals shall be reviewed and a decision communicated to the applicant by 31st August.

September to December

• Proposal received by 15th November shall be considered
• Proposals shall be reviewed and a decision communicated to the applicant by 31st December.

• Research proposals shall be submitted in the prescribed format (vide infra) in PDF format by the principal investigator/mentor/guide (who should be an IRA member) via the member’s login area on the IRA portal.
• The format for the research proposal has been adapted from the format for submission of research proposals to the Indian Council of Medical Research.
• A call for proposals shall be sent out every January, May and September 1st week by the IRA via email to all members and through the IRA newsletter.
• Proposals that are not in the required format shall be rejected without assigning any reason.
• The principal investigator (or guide, in case of student projects) should submit a mandatory declaration (please see below) that the project is not under consideration for funding by any other agency currently. The applications should be forwarded by the head of the department of the applicant in the prescribed format. The grantees should credit IRA for the funding in any publication, submit an abstract related to the project to IRACON, as well as keep in consideration the Indian Journal of Rheumatology for the full manuscript.

• Proposals shall be evaluated by the research grants committee. If the chair of the committee deems it so, then an external review might be sought for any particular proposal.
• As the submission is allowed around the year, appraisal of these would also take place around the year as they come so as to not overburden the committee.

Appraisal Process

1. Screening criterion: Is the proposal ethical from the viewpoint of human/ animal research (as applicable)? Note: Studies that fail to meet this criterion shall be automatically rejected.
2. Proposals shall be scored between 1 to 10 in each of the following domains. Each of these five points are scored between 10 (excellent) and 0 (poor). In addition, descriptive comments are provided by the reviewers.

*.Background adequately justified?

* Aims and objectives clearly defined? There should not be more than three primary objectives and not more than five secondary objectives for a particular study.

* Does the research work have the potential to eventually (need not directly) translate into clinical care?

* Does the research work have novelty?  Research work simply replicating something done elsewhere (even if it has not been done in India; exception: epidemiological studies) shall score low on this point.

* Overall impression of the proposal.

3. The chair of the Research Grants Committee shall review the comments received and make a final decision based on several additional factors such as overall scope and relevance to the IRA and taking also into account reviewers’ comments and scoring.
4. The decision of the Research Grants Committee would be final and binding.

• 70% of the grant amount would be released upfront on the submission of a letter of ethics committee clearance.
• The second instalment of 20% shall be provided upon receiving a suitable progress report (which can be anytime after six months of receiving the funding and latest by one year)
• The final instalment of 10% shall be released after the said work has been published in a peer-reviewed journal that is indexed either in Scopus, Medline, Pubmed Central or Web of Science. If the said journal is not indexed on one of these databases, then this final instalment shall not be provided.

Note:

• It is desirable that a study funded by the IRA is submitted to its official organ, the Indian Journal of Rheumatology.
• It is mandatory that abstracts of IRA-funded research should be submitted to the IRA’s annual conference.
• It is mandatory that IRA should be formally acknowledged for the funding provided in any publications.
• Before recommending a proposal for funding, the committee would ascertain from the investigator that the approval of the project (title should be identical) by their relevant research ethics committee has been obtained.