Important Update
On April 14, the NIH sent Harvard University a Stop Work Order of the SMART IRB federal funding contract.
From the beginning, SMART IRB has been a collaborative, grassroots effort: SMART IRB was built by and for the community. It is not owned by Harvard, NIH, HHS, or any other entity.  At this time, Harvard is supporting the core team to maintain the Agreement and assist Participating Institutions to the best of our abilities. It is our intention to continue to provide this vital support to advance collaborative research. Please contact us for assistance.
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User Guides

Signing Up

Sign Up/ Register

Users with an active account in the former SMART IRB Joinder or Online Reliance System should follow the Log In instructions.
Users who did not have an account in the previous SMART IRB systems should follow the Sign Up (or Register) instructions.

1. Navigate to the Reliance System.

2. Click on the “Register” button on the screen.

3. Select Institution from results.  

4. Users may create an account in the Reliance System using one of three methods:

  •  Research Organization
            This option may only be utilized if a user’s institution is a member of the Incommon federation network. To check if your institution is listed, please following the following link and search for the institution in the top box.
    • Login.gov
            This option should be used if Research Organization and NIH are not available options. Please create an account to use for logging into the system.
    • NIH
            This option can be used by NIH staff members with NIH log in credentials.

5. Enter your user registration details. 

6. Select create account. 

7. Confirmation email will be sent to let you know that you have successfully registered and you are redirected back to the Reliance System home page. 

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