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Its been 4 years since NSF DEB began to require pre-proposals. and, 2) assign each pre-proposal into one of three categories: effectively “1.
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The outliers in and are due to the one-time budgetary increase from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ARRA stimulus in and the new solicitation's replacement of the second proposal deadline with the full proposal invitation only; the latter essentially halved the expected core program submissions for The NSF manages the balance of effort and reward through responses that constitute internal process changes to reduce the writing and review burden e. The goals were to alleviate some of the preparation and review burden associated with the majority of unfunded proposals with a preliminary proposal stage and, secondarily, to prevent uncontrolled increases in the submission volume in reaction to the lowered cost of entry of the preliminary proposal.

The overall composition of the respondents from the DEB and IOS scientific communities was strikingly similar in terms of employment, academic rank, and prior panel service. All clusters within each division were well represented, and the survey responses were similar across the two divisions. The respondents were least satisfied with the change to a single annual deadline figures 2 and 3. First, the timing of a particular deadline may conflict with more immediate personal and professional responsibilities e. This would mean that the applicant might have to wait another year to submit those ideas to DEB or IOS; this could be one factor behind the perception figure 4 that the new system will slow the pace of science.

Details in the written comments identified the holiday season and closures of university offices as a major concern for January and the timing of field seasons as the main concern for August. In light of this information, DEB opted to move the January deadline to later in the month for the preliminary proposal deadline.

Dissatisfaction with the single annual deadline may be due to a perception of lost opportunities. Some comments from the respondents reflected the mistaken assumption that reducing biannual to annual submission dates would result in fewer awards and would reduce a PI's likelihood of funding success. Because funding decisions are made with an annual budget, whether there are one or two deadlines per year makes no difference in the number of awards that are funded. Other comments reflected a concern that the single deadline reduces the opportunities for iterative improvement of a proposal, which was seen as a hindrance to the development of early-career scientists.

Regardless, it is unclear how the new preliminary proposal requirement may affect the opportunity for iterative improvements of successive proposals.


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It may be that the significantly shorter number of pages means less detail on particular aspects such as design and methodological components. This would result in reviewers focusing more time on the main question and less on the mechanics of the project, although in that case, PIs may get less feedback on the experimental details. The respondents were generally more positive about the preliminary proposal requirement and submission limit. The sampling method and sample sizes limit the potential for a quantitative assessment of differences in community measures between the divisions and among clusters within a division in the satisfaction levels with those two changes.

We anticipated that the ecosystem science cluster would be different from the others in DEB, because the NSF received considerable early feedback from PIs noting the two-proposal submission limit as a major concern for the ecosystems community.

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Although the respondents who identified with the ecosystem science cluster were consistent with other groups in the overall ranking of the three changes, this group was the only one in which the respondents who chose least satisfied for the two-proposal submission item slightly outnumbered those who chose most satisfied with that specific change. For the other three clusters, roughly twice as many were most satisfied as least satisfied with the two-proposal submission limit.

Although we cannot claim this result as representative of a significant difference between the ecosystems science and other DEB communities, we consider it consistent with previously voiced concerns. This is likely due to that community's history of somewhat larger collaborative groups than other DEB clusters table 2.

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However, in examining the number of highly rated collaborative proposals in all DEB clusters following the first year of the new system, no cluster saw a marked decrease in the average collaborative group size. The average number of principal or co-principal investigators per award as a function of Division of Environmental Biology cluster from to There were also some universal concerns voiced by the respondents and by panelists and others who provided early feedback to DEB. For example, many of the respondents expressed concern that new investigators and untenured faculty would be worse off with the new system.

Other concerns named single-investigator projects, collaborative projects, EPSCoR state institutions, and women as groups with the potential for negative impacts from the new system.

Writing an effective NSF pre-proposal

It is unclear whether PIs view this as a direct result of the new system or simply a consequence of the limited amount of funds available, which, except for the one-time infusion of economic stimulus funds in , has remained virtually flat since the early s figure 5. The new system could produce a bias against funding for these groups of concern if there were a deficit of PIs and institutions representing those aforementioned groups able to submit competitive proposals at the single deadline or if the two-stage review system introduced one or more new biases that worked against the success of a particular submitter group or proposal type.

It is too early to give a definitive answer, but at the time of writing, none of the observed changes was of a magnitude or direction at odds with year-to-year variation in funding results seen prior to the implementation of the new process figure 6.

However, the NSF will continue to examine these patterns through time to ensure that funds are allocated fairly in support of the best science. Multi-institutional collaborative proposals were counted once. In summary, we recognize that today's funding climate for science is poor; the federal research and development budget in was 6. The general decline in proposal funding rates began in the early s, and the NSF charged the IPAMM working group in to analyze the trends, impacts, and causal factors of those declines.

Their conclusions were discussed in detail in the final report IPAMM , but, in brief, there was no evidence that early-career investigators or underrepresented categories e. However, because there is no single best way to deal with the complex factors that drive decreased funding rates and increased submission rates, the specific changes were left up to the divisions. In fact, the approaches used by the NSF to manage proposal load and funding rates vary widely across divisions and directorates, and DEB and IOS chose among these approaches. The community appears most satisfied with the preliminary proposal requirement; this allows all submissions to be reviewed with less effort per proposal and reserves greater PI and reviewer focus for only those proposals that are most likely to be funded.

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The PIs were least satisfied with the switch to a single annual deadline, although it is unclear from our survey whether this is because of the perception that, with more submissions, the odds of funding improve or that a single submission deadline can be easily missed for a variety of reasons , which would cause a lag of an entire year before a proposal could be resubmitted.

It is important that PIs recognize that regardless of the collective effort put into proposals, the number of deadlines or the number of individual submissions, without a significantly increased budget or a significantly smaller cumulative request for funds , there is little likelihood that any change to the system would improve the overall success rates.

The NSF is the primary source of federal support for many in US university research, and it is the only federal agency dedicated to the support of basic research and education in all fields of science and engineering. The agency is also reliant on the scientific community to contribute in significant ways serving as, e. Therefore, the relationship between the NSF and the scientific community is a mutualistic one, and it requires effective communication.


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The changes that have been enacted originally came about through an NSF-community-wide effort to ensure quality merit review in this era of ever-increasing competition for limited funds. The project summary is a one page document that consists of separate overview, intellectual merits, and broader impacts sections. Each of these three sections is required to be present and must be clearly defined. All NSF proposals must have project summaries. The project summary is one of the most important parts of the proposal. It is likely the first thing a reviewer will read, and is your best chance to grab their interest, and convince them of the importance, and quality, of your research before they even read the proposal.

Though it is the first proposal element in order, many applicants prefer to write the project summary last, after writing the project description. While excellence in both research and education is expected, activity of an intensity that would lead to an unreasonable workload is not. In other words, make sure that what you propose to do is reasonable given your time and resources, and make sure that the proposal convinces the reviewers of this.

Suggested Project Description Outline. Writing the Project Summary and Project Description Project Summary The project summary is a one page document that consists of separate overview, intellectual merits, and broader impacts sections. Project Descriptions must include: A description of the proposed research project, including preliminary supporting data where appropriate, specific objectives, methods, and procedures to be used, and expected significance of the results A description of the proposed educational activities, including plans to evaluate their impact on students and other participants A description of how the research and education activities are integrated with one another results of prior NSF support if applicable Successful applicants will propose creative, effective, integrated research and education plans, and indicate how they will assess these components.

Resources: Suggested Project Description Outline.