Other : CIHR-IMHA Inclusive Research Excellence Prizes

CIHR’s 2021-2031 Strategic Plan Priority A, Strategy 1 is to champion a more inclusive concept of research excellence including developing and promoting a renewed concept of research excellence that values equity, diversity, and inclusion. This notion of excellence recognizes fundamental knowledge creation, knowledge mobilization, multiple ways of knowing, non-traditional research methods and outputs. It includes the active collaboration of patient partners (also known as “people with lived experience”), the public, health care providers, decision-makers, and other users of research outputs throughout the research process.

As CIHR embarks on this commitment to champion a new concept of research excellence and develop a guiding framework, CIHR-IMHA will contribute by awarding Inclusive Research Excellence prizes that will solicit examples of research excellence from the IMHA community which will be used as one input to guide this important work. Note that there may be elements within this funding opportunity that do not align with CIHR’s developing concept of inclusive research excellence. CIHR is committed to integrating new evidence and data to guide and iteratively improve its programs, policies and practices.

The Five Research Domains

This funding opportunity seeks to reward research excellence achieved in the broad IMHA mandate areas by awarding prizes in the form of a supplemental grant to support further research.

Specifically, prizes will be given to investigators (individual or individuals) who have completed projects or programs of research in any of the 5 following domains:

1. Research Impact Prizes: Research impact was the focus of a 2009, expert panel convened by the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS) to discuss the “best way” and “best metrics” to measure research impact. The group made five recommendations including that: Canada should immediately initiate a national collaborative effort to measure the impacts of Canadian health research. Prizes in this category will be awarded for research impacts achieved in one or more of the three following CAHS framework impact categories (see pages 18-20):
   • Informing Decision-Making – with indicators, including but not limited to, representing pathways from research to its outcomes in health, wealth and well-being;
   • Health Impact – with indicators including, but not limited to, those on health status, determinants of health and health system changes (including quality of life);
   • Broad Economic and Social Impacts with indicators including, but not limited to, economic activity, commercialization and health benefits.

    

   As a signatory of the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), CIHR strongly encourages applicants to this pool to demonstrate their research impact without relying on journal-based metrics such as the Journal Impact Factor.

1. Team Science Prizes: Much has been written about team science for health research—why and how to do it. In 2017, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS) expert panel provided recommendations related to “Academic Recognition of Team Science [ PDF (681 KB) - external link ]”. Among the calls to action was the need for funding agencies to reward team science. Specifically, the authors called for a multifaceted commitment to experimenting with promising practices is needed at the level of organizations, review committees, and applications for funding.

1. Open Science Prizes: The 2021 UNESCO Recommendations on Open Science report defined Open Science as an “inclusive construct that combines various movements and practices aiming to make multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone to increase scientific collaborations and sharing of information for the benefits of science and society, and to open the processes of scientific knowledge creation, evaluation and communication to societal actors beyond the traditional scientific community”. Recommendation #1 of the Chief Science Officer’s Roadmap for Open Science (2020) is that Canada should “adopt an Open Science approach to federally funded scientific and research outputs.” (See Additional Information for more information on open science)

1. Patient Engagement Prizes: Prizes in this category will be given to exemplary research co-created with a patient partner or patient partners. Patient engagement in research involves meaningful and active collaboration in governance, priority setting, conducting research and knowledge translation. Depending on the context, patient engagement may also engage people who bring the collective voice of specific, affected communities.

1. Indigenous Health Research Prizes: Indigenous methodologies and ways of knowing have been integral to excellent and impactful research by and with Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit, Métis and/or Urban Indigenous) Peoples and communities. Prizes in this category will be given to researchers who exemplify Indigenous health research. Specifically, this prize category will reward research that is Indigenous focused, inclusive of or grounded in Indigenous knowledges and/or engages Indigenous community members, including Elders or Knowledge Keepers and people with living experience, as leaders/decision-makers/partners in the research.