Step 2: Review of your application
Contribute to the ever-growing knowledge on healthy aging!
After you have submitted your application in step 1, Lifelines will review your application and provide you with our review comments within three weeks. On this page, you can read more about the review process.
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Less than 5% of the applications get rejected
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More than 80% of applications reviewed within 3 weeks
Process
Review by Lifelines
As soon as the Research Office has received your application, we will send you a formal confirmation. Your application will be reviewed by at least two persons from the Lifelines Research Office.
In our review, we will evaluate whether your proposed research team is adequate, whether your research purpose is attainable and compatible with the aims of Lifelines, and whether your research methods and requested data and/or (the volume of) biosamples are feasible, necessary, and adequate. Please note that Lifelines encourages data minimalization to protect our participants, and to protect our researchers from the overwhelming amount of data that is available.
Of note, almost all submitted applications are approved in the end.
Review by others
Some Lifelines data may be placed under temporary embargo in agreement with a collaborating party. Embargoed data can be requested, but the collaborating party must give permission along with Lifelines.
In the following cases, we will send your application to the collaborating party for co-review:
- Genetic data: co-reviewed by the UGLI steering committee
- DAG3 microbiome data: co-reviewed by DAG3 steering committee
In other cases (most often: recently collected add-on data or recently generated secondary data), we ask you to obtain permission from the collaborating party yourself and indicate this approval in the application form.
Review conclusion
Within three weeks you will receive an email with a reaction from the Lifelines Research Office. This will include our review conclusion, the review conclusion of possible co-reviewers, and our comments and questions. If the review takes us longer than three weeks, we will notify you. The following conclusions are possible:
- Approved
- Approved, but we do have some comments, questions or recommendations
- Revision of application needed
- Revision of data selection needed
- Rejected
Please note that it might take a while to reach a fully approved application. This especially applies to requests for customized projects such as additional studies, requests for biosamples, and linkage projects.
