SRC Information
The work of the Scientific Review Committee is crucial both to the safety of the young people as they conduct their research and to the credibility of their research when they go on to present it.
The TRSEF can review your SRC paperwork before you actually start the registration process. Submit completed forms to your school’s Scientific Review Committee (SRC), the sponsoring company’s or college’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), or the Ying TRSEF SRC/IRB. Scan your completed paperwork (high resolution, please) and email the files to the Ying TRSEF.
SRC paperwork is required only for all Senior Level Research students who will present their experimental results as science fair participants. Junior Level Research students provide modified safety-related paperwork. Poster presenters do not need SRC paperwork.
All students who have conducted experiments must submit the following forms from ISEF:
- Registration Form
- Form 1: Checklist for Adult Sponsor/Safety Assessment Form
- Form 1A: Student Checklist/Research Plan
- Form 1B: Approval Form
Projects Requiring Advance Approval
If your project involves any of the following, additional ISEF forms are required. Use the rules wizard to make that determination.
- Human subjects.
- Non-human vertebrate animals.
- Pathogens, controlled substances, recombinant DNA.
- Human and/or animal tissue.
- Hazardous substances.
- Work in an industrial or institutional setting.
- Continuing project.
Each participating high school is asked to establish its own Scientific Review Committee (SRC). The school SRC must include a science teacher; a school administrator; and one more member who could be a physician, registered nurse, psychologist, or psychiatrist. In the case of human behavioral research, the body must become an Institutional Review Board; the third member must be a psychologist or psychiatrist.
Submit completed forms to your school’s Scientific Review Committee (SRC), the sponsoring company’s or college’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), or the Ying TRSEF SRC/IRB. (Mail paperwork to the Ying TRSEF.)
After a project has received SRC or IRB approval, the student must submit any changes to the research plan for approval as well. This must be done immediately.
Remember, if your project is not reviewed by an SRC or IRB at your school or sponsoring institution, no experimentation can begin until the Ying TRSEF notifies the student of project approval. Contact the Ying TRSEF immediately concerning already completed projects.
Feel free to email our SRC Chair if you have questions concerning this process.
