Certifying Conflicts of Interest
The electronic Conflict of Interest (eCOI) forms are certified via IAR from the List of Meetings screen for the particular meeting. There is a pre-meeting eCOI certification as well as a post-meeting eCOI certification (to be certified after the meeting has ended).
Pre-and-post-meeting conflict of interest (COI) certification by reviewers is performed in the Internet Assisted Review (IAR) module. Paper certifications are no longer supported.
Certifying both the pre-meeting COI certification and the post-meeting COI certifications is essential to ensuring that the NIH peer review process is fair, impartial and conducted with integrity. The certifications must be completed electronically whether or not there is a conflict.
If an attempt is made to submit critiques, criterion scores, and preliminary overall impact score before the pre-meeting COI certification, the reviewer will see an alert on the Submit Critiques and Preliminary Scorescreen. Similar alerts will be seen on the List of All Applications screen and the Final Score Sheet screens. The reviewer should click the ‘click here’ link in the alert pop-up to access the pre-meeting COI certification.
The alert will also be displayed if a re-certification is needed in these scenarios:
- If an additional conflict is discovered before the meeting
- If the meeting date changes and previous certifications reflect the prior meeting date
- If the scientific review officer (SRO) changes the designation of the reviewer from federal to non-federal or vice versa
- If the meeting agenda has changed from grants to contracts or vice versa
NOTE: Non-NIH reviews might use a different COI certification. Reviewers should contact the SRO* of the meeting if the electronic COI link is not available in IAR.
TIP: *Other Transaction Authority (OTA) - Some screens and terminology may be different in order to accommodate review of OTA, a type of award that is neither a grant nor a contract but a different way of funding that is used across NIH. These changes will typically not be visible to NIH or agency reviewers.
