Submissions increase as end of year approaches
Towards the end of the year, it is typical the the volume of submissions increase and start filling meetings to capacity ahead of the agenda closure date. In previous years, additional meetings were pre-organised to compensate for this, however were rarely run as while capacity was reached at regularly scheduled meetings, there was limited overspill. Because of this, in addition with member capacity limitations, the Secretariat have decided to not schedule any additional meetings this year on top of those already determined in the schedule.
We have always and will continue to advise researchers who are wanting to have their application reviewed before the end of the year to submit theirs as soon as possible, and if there is a particular meeting date you are after, to request that Committee specifically. We will advertise via the Updates page when a meeting is already full ahead of the agenda closing for your own information if it occurs.
The Secretariat can also be contacted directly via email to request to know how full a meeting currently is.
At the time of this update publication, the first meeting of November is already one-third filled 2 weeks ahead of the agenda closing.
Those who do not make it to the agenda they submitted in time for due to capacity being reached will be advised via a message in Ethics RM, and will have the review clock start on that day regardless as per the Standard Operating Procedures.