The CLARA Portal Facilitator (yes, that’s a real person; that position used to be known as the CLARA gatekeeper) no longer routinely performs in-depth content reviews of new submissions before sending them on to the IRB for review. However, that level of prereview is still available at no charge to research teams who request it, thanks to the Translational Research Institute’s content review service.
A new question has been added to the CLARA New Submission form’s Basic Details section, allowing you to request this service. See the illustration below.
If you are working on an investigator-initiated study, or are a PI new to research or new to UAMS, we strongly encourage you to take advantage of this free service. Having a new study looked over before it gets to the IRB will often get it approved faster than bypassing this step would. Protocols that reach the IRB in an unreviewable state will be referred back to both the PI and the TRI for reworking anyway, so it may be beneficial to have the project reviewed before it gets to the IRB in the first place.
