Completing an Online Critique

IMPORTANT: This topic is for Online Critiques only, which is a pilot of new functionality available to a limited subset of reviewers at this time.

Access an online critique from the List of Applications or List of My Assigned Applications screen. If the application is using online critiques instead of traditional downloadable Microsoft Word templates, then the Download Zip of All Critiques link is absent, and the View Template or Critique Templates links do not appear on the Meeting Materials or List of Applications screens.

The submit link appears in the Action column of the List of Applications screen, which leads to the Online Critique screen where you can enter your feedback on the application. This topic guides you through the workflow of completing a critique from start to finish.

Opening and Completing the Critique

Follow these steps to complete the online critique:

Go to the List of Applications or List of My Assigned Applications screen in Internet Assisted Review.
In the Action column for the application you are critiquing, click the submit link.

The

Online Critique screen opens.

Optionally, review the Important Reminders heading by clicking on the heading text Important Reminders in the blue bar. This might contain instructions, set by the SRO, that are relevant for the current meeting.
Click the blue or green headers in whatever order suits you and begin filling out the critique. Use the tab key to jump from field to field.

For each review criteria, read all guidance at the top of the editing area by clicking the read more link, which shows all available guidance for the criteria item.
Select a radio button from each radio button group.
Enter your comments in text fields. See Editing in a Critique Text Field. As a best practice, to ensure you don't forget a field unintentionally, enter N/A in the field if you have no comments for the field. This will also reduce warnings about empty fields when you submit the critique.
If applicable, select scores from the Score dropdown menu. See the next section for details.

After you have completed the critique, you are ready to submit the critique; see Submitting an Online Critique below.

If you don't want to submit at this time, see Saving the Critique to Finish Later.

About Scores

NIH and the majority of Operating Divisions (OpDivs) followed the Enhancing Peer Review initiative, characterized by the existence of scored review criteria and a score scale of 1–9. The scored categories differ depending on the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) and activity code of the applications. Reviewers provide separate scores for each category on a scale of 1 to 9, where 1 is exceptional and 9 is poor.

Also see:

Editing in a Critique Text Field

When you click in a field, a toolbar appears with formatting tools:

Editing Tools Icons

The first six of these are familiar to most users, and are bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, subscript, and superscript. You can hover your cursor over any editing tool to see its name and its keyboard shortcut keys if available.

The less familiar icons are explained below.

Formatting Button	Action
	Removes all formatting from selected text.
	Copy Formatting tool. This works like Microsoft Word's Format Painter tool, transferring formatting from one section of text to another section of text. Select the text with the format you want, then click the Copy Formatting tool, then select the text to which you want to apply formatting.
	Numbered List/Bulleted List tools. Bullet or number the selected text.
	Special character tool. Opens a Select Special Character window, from which you can choose special characters. While you can copy and paste from other applications to the Online Critique screen, special characters might not be rendered correctly in the final critique if you do so. It is recommended that you use the special character editing tool for inserting special characters to ensure correct rendering of special characters.
	Undo and redo tools.