The board reads your folder before it reads your project.

Almost always, in some form. Any project that collects information from or about people — surveys, interviews, chart reviews, staff observations — goes to the IRB for a determination, and a quality-improvement project still needs the board to agree that it is QI rather than research. Assume your project goes through the IRB step; Herzing's current IRB handbook or portal states exactly how your program files it.

What changes between projects is the path, not whether the board reads the folder: not human-subjects research, exempt, expedited or full board. The category claim is the seventh pocket above, and the design decides it, not the deadline.

The folder. Completeness is checked before quality: a coordinator or reviewer confirms that every required document is present, current and version-matched before anyone reads the design. An incomplete folder spends its first full pass learning one fact — that it was incomplete — and only a second pass reads the project.

That is why the seven pockets are laid out in the order a reviewer opens them, and why the folder pass asks whether a document is in the folder today, not planned for the weekend.

No. Recruitment, consent and data collection for the project begin only after the IRB's written determination or approval is in hand, and that includes projects expected to be called QI or exempt, because the board makes that call, not the project. Data gathered before the determination generally cannot be used and can put the whole file at risk.

Preparation that does not touch participants or their data can and should happen before filing: drafting the instruments, requesting the site permission letter, completing CITI training for everyone named.

The human-subjects research course that matches the work — Social-Behavioral-Educational for surveys, interviews and most practice-change projects, Biomedical where the design is clinical — current at filing, for every person named on the application. Herzing's current IRB handbook or portal names the exact course and any added modules; read that list before you register, and put the completion certificates themselves in the folder.

The two ways this pocket returns a folder are a lapsed certificate and the wrong modules. Both are found in the first minutes of a pass.

Because someone outside your project has to write it. The letter has to sit on the site's own letterhead, be signed by a person actually authorised to grant access, and name the data or activities it permits, and that person keeps their own calendar. Request it before you polish anything else in the folder.

For an MSN or DNP practicum project, the practicum site's letter is the one that stalls folders. We draft it for the signatory's hand, naming exactly what the project touches, so it comes back signed without questions. Pocket three shows the three things that make it real.

Three depths of reading, set by the risk and design of the project. Exempt covers minimal-risk work in defined categories such as anonymous surveys or review of existing de-identified records; expedited covers minimal-risk work outside those categories, read by one or a few reviewers; full-board review is for greater-than-minimal-risk or vulnerable-population work, read by the convened board. The board assigns the path from the folder — the application can propose one, never choose it.

Nothing about the path changes what the folder must contain. The categories come from the federal Common Rule; Herzing's current IRB handbook or portal states how its board applies them. The FAQ page reads each path on its own.

The consent form, with its recruitment materials close behind. Three readings catch it: the version in the folder is not the one the application cites, a required element is missing, or the language is pitched above the people signing. Version-match it, check every element, and write it at the signer's reading level rather than the filer's.

Pocket two shows the version stack and the element list. Recruitment materials ride the same three readings, matched to the same version.

The board sends written findings — the documents or answers it needs changed — and the file waits for your response; nothing is approved until the revised folder is read again. The response that works is a point-by-point reply in the board's own vocabulary, each revised document re-filed version-matched, and nothing changed that was not asked about.

A return for an incomplete folder and a return with questions about the design are different events, and the second is the one where the project actually got read. In Full Handover we answer every reply until approval; the FAQ page has the full reading of returns, revisions and amendments.

No — the project, the data and the findings are yours throughout; we handle the IRB process around them, end to end. Pricing is quoted in writing after the free application review, as one of three fixed-fee packages: Determination & Plan, The Complete Folder, and Full Handover, the premium, which takes the whole process off your desk — every pocket, the submission and every reply to the board until approval.

No hourly billing, and no figure published here, because the quote is written for your folder, not a menu. The three packages are above; the pricing page has the quote process in full.