How to Submit a Research Proposal to NHRC Through IRERP

Eligibility

• Nepali researchers or institutions conducting health research in Nepal
• Students whose thesis or dissertation involves human participants, biological samples or identifiable health data
• Foreign or collaborating researchers proposing health research in Nepal
• Institutions submitting on behalf of a research team
• Researchers whose ERB login no longer accepts a new submission
• Anyone deciding whether their study needs NHRC review or their institution's registered IRC

Required documents checklist

• □ Full research proposal or protocol
• □ Data collection tools, including questionnaires, interview guides and case record forms
• □ Participant information sheet
• □ Informed consent form, in Nepali and English where participants require it
• □ Investigator credentials and CVs
• □ Institutional approval or IRC decision, where applicable
• □ Institutional support or affiliation letter
• □ Budget details, since fee assessment can depend on study budget
• □ Ethical approval from a collaborating country's body, for international studies
• □ The exact document set shown inside IRERP for your submission type, which is the authoritative list

Step-by-step process

1. Determine your review route first. Confirm whether the study goes to NHRC's Ethical Review Board or to your institution's registered Institutional Review Committee. NHRC publishes separate IRC guidelines that set the boundary, and submitting to the wrong body costs weeks.
2. Open irerp.nhrc.gov.np and register a new account. Do this even if you already hold ERB credentials, because NHRC states that accounts do not carry over.
3. Do not try to repair an ERB login instead. If ERB will not accept your submission, the account is not broken; new submissions simply no longer go through it.
4. Log in and open a new submission using the Submit New Proposal control, reported to sit at the bottom-left of the IRERP dashboard.
5. Work through the platform fields and upload the document set IRERP specifies for your proposal type, rather than the set you used for a previous submission.
6. Confirm the current review fee and payment route inside IRERP or directly with NHRC before transferring anything, because the amount can depend on researcher category and study budget.
7. Track the proposal in IRERP after submission. Reviewer queries and revisions for IRERP submissions stay in IRERP.
8. Keep pre-migration proposals in ERB. Anything submitted before the migration, including one under review or in revision, continues to be processed at erb.nhrc.gov.np.
9. Respond to reviewer comments promptly, since most delay after submission comes from revision turnaround, which is within your control.

Fees and timelines

• NHRC charges a fee for ethical review. Published fee structures distinguish between researcher categories and can scale with study budget, so no single figure applies to every applicant.
• This guide deliberately does not state a fee amount, because NHRC has not published one that applies universally and an outdated figure is worse than none. Confirm the amount and payment channel inside IRERP or with NHRC before paying.
• NHRC does not publish a guaranteed turnaround for ethical review.
• Review duration depends on proposal type, completeness of the submission, whether the study is expedited or requires full board review, and how quickly you return revisions.
• The platform migration is itself worth factoring in, because a new system means new accounts and new workflows for reviewers as well as applicants.
• Do not book fieldwork, staff or participant recruitment against an assumed approval date. Build genuine slack into the study timeline instead.

Common mistakes

• Trying to log into ERB and concluding the account was deleted. This is the defining mistake of the current moment. The ERB account still exists and still works for its remaining purpose; it just does not accept new proposals.
• Submitting a legacy proposal's revision into IRERP. The split runs the other way. Pre-migration proposals continue in ERB, including revisions, and opening a duplicate in IRERP creates two records of one study.
• Skipping the IRC question. Researchers frequently submit to NHRC when their institution's registered IRC is the correct first step, or the reverse. Read NHRC's IRC guidelines before choosing.
• Submitting an incomplete document set to start the clock. Incomplete submissions do not start a clock; they generate a query and restart your turnaround.
• Assuming a foreign ethical approval substitutes for NHRC approval. For research conducted in Nepal, approval from a collaborating institution abroad does not replace NHRC review.
• Budgeting without the review fee. Because the fee can scale with study budget, it is a line item to establish early rather than at submission.
• Planning fieldwork against an assumed approval date when no guaranteed timeline is published.
• Relying on a fee figure quoted by a third-party website rather than confirming with NHRC.

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