Prior to completing the Project Details and Forms & Documents tabs, Project Members should ensure all sites involved with the project are displaying in the Sites tab. The Sites screen will display any sites that have either been added initially through the Create Project form, or subsequently added or activated/deactivated by the CPI, CPI Delegate, PI, or PI Delegate.
The CPI, CPI Delegate, PI, PI Delegate can add a project site throughout the project's life. When a site is added to a project after ethics approval has occurred, the CPI, CPI Delegate, PI, or PI Delegate will be prompted to submit an Amendment to the HREC.
1. Click on the Sites tab and the screen will launch. Ensure the nominated 'Jurisdiction where the project will be conducted within Australia' is still valid. The list of available sites you can add to the project will be determined by this selection.
OR
2. If you change the 'Jurisdiction where the project will be conducted within Australia' you will receive a warning to remove or deactivate the sites that are no longer relevant before you can change this field. Click 'OK'.
3. Click 'Add Project Site(s)'. The Select Sites Select screen will launch. Only add sites that are covered by Lead or Additional (Specialist) HREC's ethical review. Based on your answer to 'Jurisdiction where the project will be conducted within Australia' you will be asked to select jurisdiction, organisation type and/or region. The organisation types are:
- Public – select the Region and then the site(s)
- Private - select the site(s)
- Research Institutes / Universities – select the site(s).
4. Select a site by clicking on the site to transfer it from 'Available Sites' to 'Selected Sites', and vice versa. You have the ability to add or remove all sites within a Region. To do this either click 'Add all sites' or click 'Remove all sites'. When all the sites have been selected click 'Add Project Site(s)' to save any changes made, or 'Cancel' to discard them
5. After adding sites, the sites will be displayed in the Sites tab with the status of 'Not Saved'; at this time any site added in error (that has not been saved) can be removed. Select the site and click 'Remove'.
6. Click 'Save' to save the site(s). The selected site's status will show as 'Active' on the sites screen. Once saved, a site can only be removed from a project by deactivating it. WA sites will default to the top of the screen. Click on the column headers to sort the table by columns.
User tip: After adding and saving a site, it can only be removed from the project by deactivating it.
Request creation of site, division, department
1. If you cannot find a site in the drop-down menu, you may request a new site to be added. Click on 'RGS Support' and provide the details of the site, division or department.
Sites/Organisations are currently only created if they are a WA Health site or where a WA Health HREC is providing approval for a research project. With the signing of the National Mutual Acceptance public health site for participating states have been added, these are ACT, NSW, QLD, SA and VIC. The only other organisations that are created is where a WA Health HREC has agreed to conduct the review for that organisation some of these are Lion's Eye and Telethon Kids Institute.
If the site is to be named in the ethics application as a site where the research is being conducted this is done on the Project Details tab under '2. Ethics Information'. Section 2 has a field 'Other site names' which is a free text field where these sites can be added.
Activate/Deactivate a project site
The CPI, CPI Delegate, PI, PI Delegate can activate/deactivate a project site throughout the project's life. Once a site is added to a project it can only be removed by deactivating it.
If a site is deactivated prior to a submission to a RG Office the forms and documents associated with the site and all the information for the site will be LOST.
If a site is deactivated following a submission to a RG Office the forms and documents will be kept. If a site has received site authorisation it should be closed rather than deactivated.
When a site is deactivated, Project Members for the site remain as members of the project but are no longer linked to the inactive site for that project. If the site is the only site associated to the Project Member, the
Project Member will also become 'Inactive' in the Members tab.
1. To deactivate a site, select a site's name found in the 'Selected Sites' grid in the Sites tab, and click 'Deactivate'.
An automated message will appear, if any project members are still associated with the site it will inform you of this. To prevent the project member becoming inactive click ‘Cancel’ and then go to the Members tab and edit the project member to remove them from the site and add them to another.
If there are no project members associated with the site, the automated message will inform you of this. Click ‘Ok’ to save your changes, or ‘Cancel’ to discard them. The sites status will now be inactive.
2. To re-activate a site, select a site's name found in the 'Selected Sites' grid in the Sites tab, and click 'Activate'. The sites status will now be active.
3. Remember to nominate at least one active site, if not you will get a warning.
Other references
Researchers User Guide (Part A)
Researchers User Guide (Part B)
