EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Solans M, Adam P, Pons JMV. Assessment process of the research projects submitted to the 2010 call for topics of la Fundació La Marató de TV3. Acquired spinal cord and brain injuries; 2011.
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Since 2001, the Catalan Agency for Health Information, Assessment and Quality (CAHIAQ, formerly CAHTA) has managed the process of evaluation of the research projects submitted to calls for research of La Marató de TV3 Foundation. Besides guaranteeing and facilitating the assessment of the projects, the CAHIAQ's aim is to make sure that this assessment process is sufficiently rigorous in its methodological assessment, and flexible in its application, and transparent and open to professionals and the population, to endorse the quality of the results.
This assessment process has gone through a series of planned stages to determine the scientific quality of the projects which overall presented the greatest methodological rigour and were also relevant and applicable in their context. In this edition on acquired spinal and brain injuries, 104 projects were submitted. On the basis of these specific call requirements, 4 projects were excluded. Therefore, 100 aprojects were accepted and reviewed, which by area of research and according to the classification of the actual investigators, are distributed into 40 basic research projects, 35 clinical research and 4 epidemiological research, the rest (21 projects) are combinations of these research areas. Furthermore, 68 are individual projects and 38 are submitted as coordinated ones.
A total of 111 international reviewers evaluated the projects by means of a structured questionnaire in two stages. First, the anonymized project was assessed and second, the research team and finally each project had to be classified as recommended for funding, recommended with reservations, questionable or not recommended. Each project was assigned to two reviewers according to the characteristics of research and expertise of the reviewer. The reviewers acted independently. A group of 7 reviewers was part of the ad-hoc committee that carried out the last phase of the evaluation process.
The result of the evaluation indicates that, on the basis of methodological quality and relevance, of the 100 projects accepted and reviewed, 42 were likely on funding (20 projects assessed directly as recommended for funding and 22 projects that were considered priority, according to well-defined criteria). This selection was the basis examined by an ad-hoc committee which identified 25 priorized projects tributary of funding. Their distribution by area of research is 13 basic research projects, 8 clinical research projects, 4 epidemiological research, and 21 combination of the different areas. Fourteen of the projects are individual and 11, coordinated. The total percentage invested by these projects is mainly dedicated to the development and the evaluation of treatment, as well as the etiology. The priority projects are likely to have an impact in advancing knowledge and secondly, a health ans social impact followed by a capacity building impact.
The members of the evaluation committee of the process of assessment were positive. They also suggested a number of potential improvements in the process, based on previous experiences in European or North-American evaluation programme committees.
