§ 700.21 - How are applications for grants and cooperative agreements evaluated?

(a) Each peer reviewer must be given a number of applications to evaluate.

(b) Each peer reviewer shall—

(1) Independently evaluate each application;

(2) Evaluate and rate each application based on the reviewer's assessment of the quality of the application according to the evaluation criteria and the weights assigned to those criteria; and

(3) Support the rating for each application with concise written comments based on the reviewer's analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the application with respect to each of the applicable evaluation criteria.

(c)(1) Except as provided in paragraph (c)(2) of this section, after each peer reviewer has evaluated and rated each application independently, those reviewers who evaluated a common set of applications are convened to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of those applications. Each reviewer may then independently reevaluate and re-rate an application with appropriate changes made to the written comments.

(2) Reviewers are not convened to discuss an unsolicited application unless the Secretary determines that discussion of the application's strengths and weaknesses is necessary.

(d) Following discussion and any reevaluation and re-rating, reviewers shall independently place each application in one of three categories, either “highly recommended for funding,” “recommended for funding” or “not recommended for funding.”

(e) After the peer reviewers have evaluated, rated, and made funding recommendations regarding the applications, the Secretary prepares a rank order of the applications based solely on the peer reviewers’ ratings.