The Biostatistics Core’s method of prioritization aligns with our mission, our funding sources, and current staffing levels. As a resource to the entire Health Sciences Campus, each biostatistician supports multiple active projects and departments at a time. Our biostatisticians request sufficient lead time commensurate with a project’s complexity to meet externally driven deadlines. We are unable to accommodate last-minute requests in order to continue to provide thorough and high-quality services, and for fairness to all investigators.
The Biostatistics Core meets with research leadership weekly to review new projects. Projects are assigned to statisticians who prioritize the queue under the supervision of the Biostatistics Core Director and CRO Medical Director. The queue is evaluated and prioritized according to the following criteria:
- Immediate attention
- Study design for grant applications
- Projects that provide biostatistician salary support
- Co-author response to peer review
- High priority
- Department funded prospective clinical research
- SSOM STAR projects
- Moderate priority
- Other funded research
- When resources allow
- Retrospective research
- Unfunded projects
Timeline Expectations:
- To secure the support of a biostatistician for a grant application, a request to the CRO should be made 45 days prior to submission to the Office of Research Services (ORS).
- A results report will be provided 4-8 weeks following the initial study consultation and provision of a final analytic dataset. This timeline accounts for the biostatistician’s queue and allows for data cleaning, modeling, and reporting. *Subsequent data modifications or analysis requests outside the scope of the original statistical analysis plan may delay the receipt of results reports or otherwise cause project re-prioritization.
- The biostatistician should be notified immediately after the corresponding author receives a request to revise and resubmit when a biostatistician’s response to peer review is necessary. Additional analyses require significant time/effort and may necessitate a request for extension if the statistician is not notified promptly.
- In times of high volume, and so that all collaborators have access to biostatistics resources, investigators requesting support for multiple studies may be asked to prioritize among active projects.