New guidelines for VICTR biostat support application (effective September, 2017)

• VICTR will no longer offer any $2000 vouchers. All biostatistics vouchers will be for 'up to $5000'. This is sufficient to cover up to about 90 hours of collaboration, depending on the level of expertise required.
• To be eligible to apply for a biostatistics voucher, the PI must present at a biostatistics clinic and receive written approval from an authorized biostatistician. Clinic biostatisticians and VICTR Biostatistics Faculty are authorized to estimate the effort required to meet the PIs needs. The estimate of effort must be no more than 90 hours for the voucher to be approved.
• All PIs should consider presenting at a biostatistics clinic as early in the process as possible. Not only does this provide feedback on the experimental design and analysis plan before the project has matured beyond the stage when it can be refined, but it can help to ensure the biostatistical collaboration can be accomplished without exceeding the voucher framework.
• A voucher is usually sufficient to support one straightforward project. Investigators attempting to combine multiple projects, undertake complex projects, or to prepare multiple manuscripts are likely to exceed a voucher-supported collaboration. A biostatistics clinic can help a PI to get feedback on how to keep a project straightforward.
• Please note that all biostatistics vouchers will undergo scientific review (expedited) by a VICTR scientific reviewer as well as biostatistical reviewer.
• Only one voucher will be awarded per PI per year, and a single project can only get support once.
• Once a voucher has been awarded, the assigned VICTR biostatistician will document applied effort on StarBRITE as it accrues.
• If the amount of time spent on a collaboration exceeds 80 hours, the investigator's academic unit head will be asked to provide a letter of support confirming funding is available should the time requirement exceed 90 hours. If additional funding is not secured, the remaining effort will be applied towards documenting the analysis to date, and preparing the datasets, analysis code and any reports for hand off to the investigator.