Operating Policy: Statistical support is available to all SOM investigators. A high priority is given to peer-reviewed funded research project and the preparation of grant applications. Support for other projects will be provided as time permits.

Fees: Typically, the Biostatistician serves as statistical Co-Investigator on a grant with proper level of salary support requested. Other funding mechanisms include annual service contract and a fee-for-service hourly chargeback. The chargeback is used for example for industry-sponsored studies and for small projects where the biostatistics support is below a meaningful percentage effort.

Project Timelines and Deadlines

• The BQRC director and/or its staff member should be informed in advance of any deadlines for abstracts, grant applications, or DSMB reports or meetings.
• Please contact the BQRC at least 5-6 weeks prior to the submission deadline of an RO1-type grant, and perhaps longer if the study design has yet to be fully developed.
• Last-minute requests are challenging for everyone and cannot always be accommodated due to limited resources and time constraints of other projects.

Co-Authorship

Qualifying for an authorship or not is independent of the mechanism used to provide support for statisticians’ time. If the BQRC statistician contributes intellectually to a publication, he or she is entitled to be a co-author (if his or her material is being used), and in that case the statistician also has a responsibility for the publication as a whole as outlined in the JAMA criteria.

Acknowledgement

Unless analyses were performed by the BQRC statistician and were used in the publication, advice provided during one or two meetings may not be adequate to justify authorship. In this case, acknowledgement in the manuscript is sufficient.

If you have any other questions, please email us at sholt@som.umaryland.edu or call 410-706-8505.