SECTION 14.74. Confidentiality

(a) Any information either submitted by investigators or their institutions to the Coordinating Board or kept by the Coordinating Board related to the evaluation and selection of research projects to be funded by any of the research funding programs under this chapter shall be confidential unless released by the Coordinating Board pursuant to the following subsections of this section.

(b) The contents of pre-proposals and proposals submitted under the research funding programs shall be confidential. Reviewers shall be required to sign a confidentiality agreement prior to reviewing pre-proposals and proposals. No information shall be released to the general public on the content of unfunded proposals. Information released on funded proposals shall be limited to an overall statement of work approved by the affected institutions.

(c) Pre-proposals and proposals submitted by investigators or their institutions shall not be available to persons or entities other than the submitting investigators or their institutions at any time, except that the copies of the project summaries of awarded research projects may be made available in a manner specified by the Coordinating Board.

(d) Reviews shall not be disclosed to persons or entities outside the Coordinating Board at any time, except that each individual investigator shall receive a copy of the reviews of his or her proposal with the names, affiliations, and any other identifying characteristics of the reviewers redacted.

(e) Only after the grant awards are complete, the names and affiliations of reviewers shall be released as a group without an identifying link to any grant application.

Source Note: The provisions of this §14.74 adopted to be effective March 2, 2003, 28 TexReg 1859; amended to be effective August 11, 2004, 29 TexReg 7673