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FAPs

What are facility access panels (FAPs)?

FAPs are groups of external reviewers responsible for evaluating research proposals. These panels consist of experts who assess the feasibility, significance, and resource requirements of the proposals. Each FAP typically includes a chair, reviewer and secretary to oversee the review process and ensure thorough and unbiased evaluations.

FAPs play a crucial role in maintaining the integrity and quality of the proposal review process by providing independent and specialised assessments

User Officers can manage the FAPs assigned to proposals and provide general information such as labeling FAPs with a code, a description, and specifying the required number of proposal ratings. FAPs can be automatically assigned to all proposals within a call, helping streamline the organisation and operation of the review process. This ensures that proposals are evaluated efficiently and according to standardized criteria such as the grade guide.

How do I edit FAPs?

  • In the main menu, head to the FAPs page.

  • Find the FAP you wish to edit and click on EDIT

  • You can update changes to the General tab with the UPDATE FAP button. Changes made within other tabs such as editing the FAP members will be updated automatically.

How do I create FAPs?

  • In the main menu, head to the FAPs page.

  • Click on CREATE

  • The Create new FAP pop-up will appear.

    • Code: The FAP code; i.e., the name of the FAP

    • Description: A description of the FAP. E.g, areas of expertise, purpose, the years of evaluation, etc.

    • Number of ratings required:

    • Active: Checking this box will set the FAP as active. This means that it can be assigned to calls and proposals.

  • This will open the FAP page in which settings can be changed.

The FAP page will open where you may edit the following information:

General

The code, description, number of ratings required and active checkbox can be changed.

  • Custom grade guide: Checking this box allows for a custom grade guide to be defined with a message.

To save changes to the general section you must use the UPDATE FAP button.

Members

The FAP members can be configured.

  • FAP Chairs can be added with the ADD CHAIR button
  • FAP Secretaries can be added with the ADD SECRETARY button.
  • Reviewers can be added with the ADD REVIEWERS button.

How are FAPs with multiple instruments configured?

Proposals with multiple instruments have a different distribution of time allocation.

To generate a cutoff, we need the amount of instrument time available per instrument and the amount of time recommended per instrument.

In the simplest case all the proposals for an instrument are reviewed in the same panel cutoff = total instrument time available

In the next case the proposals for an instrument are reviewed in two panels. Each panel needs a cutoff for that instrument

cutoff = (total instrument time available / total instrument time recommended in both panels) x instrument time recommended in this panel

Therefore in the case where instrument 1 has 10 days available to be shared in FAP 1 and FAP 2, where FAP 1 has a total of 15 days recommended by the instrument scientist and FAP 2 has a total of 10 days recommended by the instrument scientist.

  • FAP 1 has a cutoff at (10/25)*15 or 6 days.
  • FAP 2 has a cutoff at (10/25)*10 or 4 days.