Nsf pre proposal
Writing a strong nsf on may 3, 2016 by 2013, nsf deb has used a two-step merit review system–a 5 page pre-proposal, followed by a 15 page full proposal–to inform the process of awarding grants. Over the course of that service i have made some observations and formed some opinions as to what makes for a successful pre-proposal. I then step back with some conclusions about why some pre-proposals are invited for a 15-page full proposal, and others aren’t. To paraphrase anne elk these impressions that i have, that is to say, which are mine, are f ‘s recent post included a graph that summarized success rates versus average scores for both pre-proposals and full proposals. The x-axis shows the average score of the reviews (n=3 for pre-proposals, n>3 for full proposals), where a reviewer score of poor=1, fair=2, good=3, very good=4, and excellent=5 (more on that scoring system below). One clear lesson is that the key challenge for pre-proposals is to achieve an average score of ca. That is, scores dominated by vg’s and e’ see how, let’s first examine how the proposals are g selected for a pre-proposal the beginning of the year nsf emails a bunch of folks asking if they would be available to serve on a pre-proposal panel, noting that at this point they are just establishing a pool of potential panelists. Note also that the following january you will receive an irs w9 for this stipend, which means it’s miscellaneous income, which means that if you are reasonably prudent, after paying some of this stipend back to uncle sam as income tax, you will about break even financially when serving on an nsf fying the pre-proposals you would like to thereafter you are emailed a list of ca. You are asked to speedily 1) identify any conflict of interests that weren’t already apparent from your working address; and, 2) assign each pre-proposal into one of three categories: effectively “1.
This process is a little mind-bending, and takes about and hour and a ation: the title of your pre-proposal is important. Some practical advice (which also applies to manuscripts): craft 5 titles for your pre-proposal and market test them–in your lab or among your colleagues–to find which one sparks the most interest. If you are like me, you will be surprised as to how often the consensus is not your ing the one month before your panel meets, you are sent a list of 20 or so pre-proposals to review. They consist of a summary page, a personnel page, and a 4-page project instructs reviewers to consider the following criteria sequentially when judging the quality of a pre-proposal. The scores and their official nsf meaning:Excellent–outstanding proposal in all respects; deserves highest priority for good–high quality proposal in nearly all respects; should be supported if at all — a quality proposal, worthy of — proposal lacking in one or more critical aspects; key issues need to be — proposal has serious challenge for reviewers, all members of the panel that meets in arlington, are assigned to each pre-proposal. 20 proposals; on about a third of those, you are expected to lead the discussion and write up the final panel summary. Luckily (or unluckily, as the case may be) you can always dip into spring break to finish your reviewing a panelist, you know that at least one program officer will read you review, as will the two panelists who are also assigned that pre-proposal. The chief task of a pre-proposal review is to detail the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed work so as to improve subsequent efforts by the pi, whether they involve an invited full proposal or to emphasize, you as a pi will be lucky to have one person from your specialty among the three scientists tasked with reviewing your proposal. I will return to this later, but suffice to say that the first task of a pi is to craft pre-proposal’s entry point into the problem.
If you have some chops as a teacher, this will serve you well in writing a project summary of your pre-proposal is key. By its conclusion, the reviewer, with a folder full of pre-proposals still to review, will already be taking notes and beginning the intellectual process of figuring out what score to assign. Again, the reviewer is reading this in one sitting, and, unlike a 15-page full proposal, can comfortably keep the whole thing in her head. As panelists, our primary job is to write constructive reviews that will help anybody who submitted a proposal to get a sense of the strengths, weaknesses, and how to improve their three panelists assigned each proposal, have already uploaded their reviews to fastlane. One panelist, the “scribe”, typically gathers the other two outside the conference room to discuss their scores and decide on a ranking of “do not invite” or “invite” for full proposal. They can go on for half an hour if there is strong disagreement or if everybody liked the proposal. In the former case, the trio needs to come to a decision by talking it out (in all but handful of proposals, the three reach a consensus). In the latter case, all three are interested in seeing the proposal succeed and spend that extra time making as strong a case as possible for presentation to the full at the table, the program officers hold court, bringing up proposal after proposal for discussion (after first temporarily exiling panelists with conflicts of interests). For each proposal, the scribe presents a short summary of the group’s conclusions, with interested parties around the table listening in.
The goal is to constructively identify the strengths and the weaknesses of the proposal, highlighting the consensus points of the three reviewers, as well as any new insights that arose as a result of panel deliberations. By the time the scribe “formally submits” the panel summary to fastlane, it has seen at least four it is up to the program officers who use the reviews, panel summary, their notes, the history of the proposal, and other criteria (hello, first time investigators! The panel, whose work is now done, doesn’t see this ation: one of the strengths of nsf’s approach is that everybody who formats their proposal correctly and submits it on time earns the time and efforts of the panel. However, one consequence is that, while the panel may end up classifying 25% of the pre-proposals as “invite”, many, many of those in the “do not invite” category sample the “p, pf, f, fg, g” end of the gradient (see the debrief post above). But although only 1 in 4 or so pre-proposals may advance to “invite”, at least another 1 in 4 were not that competitive in the first pre-proposals make the ’s review the criteria set out by nsf for evaluating pre-proposals:A. This is as close to a transformational proposal as i’ve good (uncommon): solid all around, or an excellent for which b and c need (common): nothing really wrong with it but suffers in comparison with those receiving an e or vg. Often a weak a and b, or a great a or (uncommon): a and/or b missing, or a or b present but c is an absolute (rare): aggressively bad: a and b probability of an “invite” is proportional is, a strong a and b followed by a competent c, d and e are the ingredients of successful pre-proposal. Interest–the three panelists assigned your proposal will include, if you are lucky, one person who would be giving a talk in the same oral presentation as you at an international meeting. Is a difficult section to write well, and one of the main reasons why we still have 15-page full proposals.
Luckily, the pre-proposal needs just a good first draft of the proposed work, leaving out details of experimental design, time lines, sample sizes, power analyses, etc. A common problem in grant proposals also clouds many materials and methods sections–details of the work are laid out but without reference to how they answer components of the question and the hypotheses to be tested. Few closing m officers are your m officers are like statistics experts–they’d much rather talk to you as you craft your pre-proposal than help you perform the post-mortem. It is especially germane for senior colleagues in your department who are on the record that “they don’t want pre-proposals to penalize junior colleagues” and are looking for some tangible way to ’s what we do. A week before the nsf deadline, we assemble a list of department colleagues that are submitting a pre-proposal. The bargain is that anyone agreeing to review 2-3 proposals–one read-through, about an hour each–gets 2-3 other sets of eyes on their proposal in exchange . For, in the end, what makes a quality proposal, like the apocryphal elephant, must to some extent be in the eye of the reviewers trying to understand a very broader impact indeed. Friday links: confessions of “wasteful” scientists, virus trading cards, and more | dynamic ck: spring 2016: deb preliminary proposal results – ck: ask us anything: what are the most common mistakes in grant proposals? Of diversity and arency and colleague letter: implementation of "no-deadline," full-proposal submission process for most programs in the directorate for biological directorate for biological sciences (bio) is notifying members of the research communities of important changes to the core program solicitations as noted below, effective in calendar year order to promote interdisciplinary research that crosses biological scales and traverses current divisional boundaries, bio will implement a "no-deadline," full-proposal mechanism for receiving and reviewing proposals submitted to core programs in the division of environmental biology (deb), the division of integrative organismal systems (ios), the division of molecular and cellular biosciences (mcb), and to the programs in the research resources cluster of the division of biological infrastructure (dbi).
Accepting proposals at any time, investigators will have greater opportunities to prepare their proposals, build strong collaborations, and think more creatively, thereby resulting in more complex, interdisciplinary projects that have the potential to dramatically advance biological science. We anticipate that the elimination of deadlines will reduce the burden on institutions and the community by expanding the submission period over the course of the year, in contrast to the previous fixed yearly these changes to take effect, the core programs in deb and ios are discontinuing use of the preliminary proposal mechanism in 2018. There will be no call for preliminary proposals in january will be made, with fy 2018 funds, for full proposals that were invited for submission based on the review of preliminary proposals submitted in january, 2017 to deb (solicitations nsf 17-512 and nsf 17-513) and to ios (nsf 17-508). Fy 2018 funds will also be used to make awards for full proposals submitted to mcb for the november 20, 2017 deadline (nsf 17-589) and to dbi for the august 14, 2017, september 8, 2017, and december 8, 2017 deadlines (nsf 15-577, nsf 15-582, and nsf 16-506 respectively). All four divisions will release new solicitations to replace these in the middle of calendar year 2018, inviting proposals to be funded with fy 2019 funds. Of diversity and arency and ntly asked questions: deb/ios preliminary proposal and proposal document has been archived and replaced by nsf categories of proposals in deb/ios require preliminary proposals? I submit a preliminary proposal to nsf for a project that was submitted to or is under review at another agency? Does the project description of the preliminary proposal differ from that of a full proposal? Research idea falls between deb/ios areas and some other programs within the nsf that do not have preliminary proposals.
I request that my proposal be co-reviewed between deb/ios and another program in bio or nsf in general? I am not invited to submit a full proposal, may i resubmit the preliminary proposal? A full proposal is invited but not funded, do i have to start over with a preliminary proposal? Am planning to resubmit a proposal in 2012 that was ranked outstanding/superior (high/medium) in 2011 under the old system. Current award is scheduled to expire between april and december 2012 and because of the switch to preliminary proposals in january 2012, i will have a gap in funding even if my preliminary proposal is invited as a full proposal and selected for funding. Was invited to submit a full proposal, but did not do so in this cycle. Criteria will be used to make a decision to invite or not invite a full proposal following the preliminary proposal stage? Proposals submitted to deb or ios in response to the core program solicitations: that is, all regular research proposals previously submitted through the grant proposal guide (gpg), cluster program descriptions, or through the research at undergraduate institutions (rui) and long term research and environmental biology (ltreb) solicitations to any of the core clusters in deb or ios, must pass the preliminary proposal stage. The only exceptions to the preliminary proposal requirement are ltreb renewal funding request is a competitive renewal application for a previously nsf-funded research project.
Except for ltreb renewals, all proposals to deb/ios are treated as new proposals, including projects based on findings resulting from previous nsf i submit a preliminary proposal to nsf for a project that was submitted to or is under review at another agency? Of the primary reasons for this new solicitation is to reduce the tremendous investment of time and energy by the pi community in developing full proposals, which presently have a low success rate. The success rate for preliminary proposals therefore is likely to be quite low; however, the success rate for invited full proposals will probably be in the range of 25%-35%. Please review the relevant solicitation carefully for specific all programs in deb/ios require preliminary proposals? Of the core programs that previously received unsolicited proposals now require preliminary proposals (including responses to "dear colleague" letters). Preliminary proposals are not required for other solicitations, such as, but not limited to plant genome research program, ecology of infectious disease, coupled natural-human systems, assembling the tree of does the project description of the preliminary proposal differ from that of a full proposal? Preliminary proposal project description must include a one-page list of all expected participants (pi, co-pi, collaborators [including leads for sub-awards], other senior personnel). The page limit for the narrative part of the project description is four pages, compared to 15 for a full proposal. Obviously, the level of detail that would be provided in a full proposal cannot be included in this page limit.
However, the preliminary proposal must include a specific enough overview of the approach to answering the scientific question or testing the proposed hypotheses to allow panelists to evaluate the likely success of the research. The preliminary proposal narrative should be prepared carefully with the general descriptions of the relevant deb/ios program in results from prior support have to be included in a preliminary proposal? From previous support may be included in the preliminary proposal at the discretion of the pi. Although not required, in some cases, building upon prior support may make the preliminary proposal more many preliminary proposals may i submit? A given year, an individual may participate as a pi, co-pi, or lead senior investigator of a subaward on no more than two preliminary proposals submitted per division solicitation (deb or ios). Preliminary proposals in excess of the limit for any person may be returned without review in the reverse order received. Pi, co-pi, or lead senior investigator of a subaward" refer to the role an individual would play in a full proposal (e. There is no limit to the number of preliminary proposals on which an individual may be listed as "other senior personnel. Data management plan is required for preliminary proposals, though one is required for full a post-doctoral mentoring plan required for preliminary proposals?
Post-doctoral mentoring plan is required for preliminary proposals, though one is required for full proposals if a post-doctoral scholar is included in the the preliminary proposal have to have a detailed budget? Proposals should not include a detailed budget or budget justification; a value of $2 should be entered to allow fastlane submission. However, institutional approvals are required for full proposals, as specified in the nsf proposal & award policies and procedures supplementary documents are allowed for the preliminary proposal? Preliminary proposals and full proposals that are not compliant with the solicitation and the nsf grant proposal guide may be returned without research idea falls between two programs within deb and/or ios. Co-review will not occur at the preliminary proposal stage but might at the full proposal stage, just as in the past. Full consideration will be given, though, to preliminary proposals that bridge among programs and research idea falls between deb/ios areas and some other programs within the nsf that do not have preliminary proposals. Review will not occur at the preliminary proposal stage but might at the full proposal stage, just as in the past. Full consideration will be given, though, to preliminary proposals that bridge among programs and i request that my proposal be co-reviewed between deb/ios and another program in bio or nsf in general? May alert the program directors to other programs that might be relevant to your proposal.
However, this does not guarantee co-review will soon will i learn whether a full proposal is invited? To submit full proposals will be issued by may each i am not invited to submit a full proposal, may i resubmit the preliminary proposal? Proposal deadlines are in january of each year, and there is no limit on the number of times you may resubmit a preliminary proposal. However, you are strongly advised to take comments from panel summaries into account when feedback will i receive on my preliminary proposal? Proposals will be reviewed by an expert panel and you will receive a summary of their discussion, as well as individual reviews from three panelists. If you are invited to submit a full proposal, you will have this feedback to help you in preparing the full proposal. We strongly advise that you take this summary into account, both in full proposal preparation and in any resubmission of the preliminary a full proposal is invited but not funded, do i have to start over with a preliminary proposal? It is strongly advised to take comments from both preliminary and full proposal review panel summaries into account when re-submitting. Am planning to resubmit a proposal in 2012 that was ranked outstanding/superior (high/medium) in 2011 under the old system.
Under the new review system, all proposals need to go through the preliminary proposal stage at least current award is scheduled to expire between april and december 2012 and because of the switch to preliminary proposals in january 2012, i will have a gap in funding even if my preliminary proposal is invited as a full proposal and selected for contact the program director managing your award for guidance on how to proceed. Was invited to submit a full proposal, but did not do so in this cycle. But you must contact your program officer for submission criteria will panelists use to evaluate preliminary proposals? With all nsf proposals, panelists will be instructed to evaluate the intellectual merit and broader impacts of the proposed project. For preliminary proposals it is likely that relatively more attention will be given to the general question being addressed in the proposal and the approach to be employed, than the finer technical aspects of the experimental design. In this context, priorities will be given to innovative or potentially transformative ideas, the logic of the experimental approach, the qualifications of the pis to conduct the research, and criteria will be used to make a decision to invite or not invite a full proposal following the preliminary proposal stage? Directors will use criteria to formulate invite/not invite decisions that are similar to those used currently to make funding decisions on full proposals.
