PhD Proposal Review
Each PhD student in the FMHS is required to present their PhD research proposal / protocol to a review panel, and afterwards, to make all the changes required by the panel in order to finalise the proposal for compulsory submission to an SU Research Ethics Committee.
Preparing for the Review
The student refers to the FMHS Doctoral Proposal Writing Guide and works closely with the supervisor/s to complete a well-supported and polished research protocol, ideally within five to six months;
Consult the Biostatistics Unit / Animal Research Facility, if relevant;
When ready for review, main internal supervisor completes their sections of the Review Checklist; and attaches CVs of the student and any proposed external supervisors and/or review panel members, together with any pre-existing ethics approval/s;
Divisional head to approve the panel and draft Review Checklist before review date is set and review chair distributes documents to the approved panel with 2 weeks' notice.
Proposal Review Document Stack
Review Panel
After the Review
Each review panel should have the following members:
Review chair, who distributes the set of documents to all panel members by two weeks prior to the review and finally completes the Review Checklist (after the review).
CPR representative, who monitors the procedure - allocated by the Tygerberg Doctoral Office ([email protected]);
REC representative, who scrutinises the full proposal and completes the relevant section of the Review Checklist before the review - any member of most suitable REC may be approached; HREC members may be approached from this list - shortly to be allocated by the HREC chairs;
One or more domain expert, who each complete the reviewer form.
(In the case of a review for the purpose of Conversion, one of the domain experts must be external to SU.)
After successful completion of the review, the main, internal supervisor emails the following five PDF-format documents to the Tygerberg Doctoral Office ([email protected]) in a single email, copying the candidate:
- Supervisor confirmation that all review requirements were met, listing the changes
- Fully completed and signed Review Checklist
- All reviewer comments with an indication of how each was addressed
- Final, edited proposal for ethics submission, with review changes highlighted (and not in track changes)
- Turnitin report on the final proposal (similarity score of no more than 15%)
A review confirmation letter will then be issued to the student to facilitate an ethics application.