UF IRB Best Practices: Documents and Changes
The UF Institutional Review Board (IRB) receives approximately 3,000 new submissions and 5,000 revisions annually. The UF IRB staff and reviewers work hard to make sure that each submission is carefully and efficiently evaluated, but there are things you can do to help.
- Be sure documents are in Word (.doc or .docx) format.
- Use Track Changes when making updates to documents.
- Be sure documents are in Word (.doc or .docx) format.
Using Word as your standard document format for submissions ensures that staff and Reviewers can open files for review no matter what kind of device is being used. Word documents are also perfect for version control and managing updates.
- Use Track Changes when making updates to documents.
Because the IRB team sees so many submissions in a given week, it can be challenging to figure out what is different when researchers update materials without using track changes.
Track Changes helps staff and reviewers easily see the new or modified content, speeding up the review process.
(Please remember, though, to accept prior rounds of changes before making additional updates. This way, the only updates that are visible in the revised submission are the most recent ones.)
Getting into the habit of using Word and tracking changes can go a long way towards a smooth review of your submission.
