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David Inouye
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:46:47 -0500
Reply-To: BIO-DEB-PIS <[email protected]>
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From: The NSF Division of Environmental Biology <[email protected]>
Subject: DEB Communications and Program Information Update
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Dear DEB Community of Scientists:
In 2011 the Division of Environmental Biology
(DEB) made significant changes to the core
program review process for the 2012 funding
year. These changes (including the new
pre-proposal requirement, a switch to an annual
deadline, and a cap on the number of proposals
PIs can submit per cycle) were made to protect
the integrity of our merit review system, which
was increasingly compromised by steep increases
in proposal pressure, diminished participation
of the community in the proposal review system,
and flat budgets. Sinking success rates and the
constant churn of excellent proposals were
symptoms of a complex, system-wide problem that
hit early career investigators particularly hard.
We've since received considerable feedback from
the community on those changes -- including
discussions with program officers and panel
members at NSF, discussions with many of you at
professional meetings, and via letters, phone
calls and emails to various members of DEB and/or the BIO directorate.
At NSF, we've collected multiple forms of data
on these changes during the past year, including
formal surveys distributed to all DEB core
program panelists and statistics on invitation
rates and funding rates across various
groups.The purpose of this email is to: A)
provide you with information on the results of
our first complete cycle of the new system in
DEB; B) provide you with summarized information
on community feedback so far; and C) inform you
of what the next steps will be for the DEB community.
A) Division-wide Data
Preproposal Panels Spring 2012:
Preliminary Proposals
submitted: 1624 across 4 clusters
Panel recommendation for invitation: 395
Preliminary proposals invited: 3801
Overall Invitation rate: 23.4%
1invited proposals included some that panels did
not recommend, in order to balance our invitation portfolios
Groups of concern:
Early Career Investigators
Preliminary proposals submitted: 401
Preliminary proposals invited: 82
Invitation
rate: 20.4 %
Primarily Undergraduate Institutions
Preliminary proposals submitted: 287
Preliminary proposals invited: 47
Invitation
rate: 16.4%
Full Proposal Panels Fall 2012:
Full Proposals submitted: 380
Panel Recommended for Funding2: 259
Panel Recommendation Rate2: 68%
Anticipated Overall Funding Rate3: 22%
2across three categories, High Priority, Medium
Priority, and Low Priority for Funding
3 based on our currently available budgets,
which are 80% of 2012 budgets. Proposals funded
from Fall 2012 panels include Full Proposals
that followed from Preliminary Proposals, CAREER
proposals, OPUS proposals, RCN proposals, and
proposals co-reviewed with other programs.
Groups of Concern:
Early Career Investigators
Full Proposals Submitted: 82
Recommended for funding: 29
Success Rate: 35%
Statistics for Early Career Investigators over past 5 years:
Fiscal Year
Success Rate
# proposals
% total submissions
This table didn't format correctly in the
forwarded message. You should be able to see it
at the list archive
<http://listserv.nsf.gov/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=BIO-DEB-PIS>
(which doesn't seem to be available this afternoon).
Primarily Undergraduate Institutions
Full Proposals submitted: 47
Recommended for funding: 18
Success Rate: 38.3%
Statistics for PUIs Over the past 5 years:
Fiscal Year
Success Rate
# proposals
% total submissions
This table didn't format correctly in the
forwarded message. You should be able to see it
at the list archive <http://listserv.nsf.gov/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=BIO-DEB-PIS>
B) Community Feedback:
Having completed one cycle, a few common themes
have emerged from community feedback received
thus far. The following qualitative conclusions
come from panelist surveys. DEB will be
disseminating more comprehensive, quantitative
results of these surveys in early 2013.
General Feedback on the New System:
· Feedback both in favor of and against the new review system.
· Support, although not uniform, from
early career PIs helps them rrespond to
administrative pressures re: grant-writing and better manage their time.
· Mixed feedback for PI cap/limit; in
panelist surveys, the majority was in favor.
· Suggestions for skipping pre-proposal
stage for highly ranked but unfunded full proposals.
· Concerns regarding change to annual
cycle and/or timing of deadlines.
Feedback on Pre-Proposal Review:
· Broad support for the use of a
shortened pre-proposal format (four pages âadequateâ).
· PIs need better guidance on structure and content of pre-proposals.
· Reviewers need better guidance on
review criteria unique to pre-proposals.
· Concerns about adequacy of panel review only
Feedback on Full Proposal Review:
· Less time wasted by reviewers and PIs on non-competitive proposals.
· More external reviews received
allowed better evaluation of full proposals at panel.
Input from individuals via letters and telephone
calls has been mixed on each of the points above.
C) Next Steps
It is our responsibility to communicate with our
community more effectively, to explain the
drivers and constraints that DEB was responding
to with the new system, to correct
misconceptions, and to listen to community
concerns and ideas for the future. As such, we
are planning a number of ways to continue to
share information and solicit your opinions over the next few months.
First, we wish to hear from as much of the DEB
community as possible, so that we have a
thorough view of common themes that emerge
across all sectors of DEB science. To that end:
· We will continue to seek input from panelists at each panel.
· A quantitative survey addressing
satisfaction and concerns will be distributed to
the DEB PI community in early 2013.
· We will schedule a number of virtual "town halls.â
· We have received approval from NSF
leadership to pilot a DEB blog, on which we can
quickly share information and relevant data on
the new review process, and provide a venue for
public feedback and cross-community interactions.
· We will hold sessions at major professional meetings.
· As always, we welcome any other forms
of input, ranging from emails to phone calls to
letters, and we are open to any additional ideas
you have about how we could engage the community in a meaningful dialogue.
Second, we will be writing and disseminating
in early 2013 ââ a more substantive analysis
and quantitative evaluation of the first cycle
of the new system. Our sense (from some
published articles, letters, and emails) is that
significant gaps in understanding remain about
why changes were implemented at NSF, and what
the various consequences of these changes might
be. This analysis will provide a more
comprehensive discussion on these topics, as
well as deeper analyses of the potential effects
on PIs and on DEB science in general.
Time is of the essence in terms of receiving
community feedback and making any changes to the
new system. We will need to begin revisions to
the new solicitation for the 2014 cycle
beginning in June 2013. This is because NSF
requires new solicitations to be published at
least 90 days before deadlines, because it takes
several weeks for solicitations to be approved
at all levels within NSF, and because any
changes considered must be discussed within DEB
and with the Biological Sciences Directorate.
We welcome your feedback and input. Please be on
the lookout for further announcements concerning
upcoming opportunities to join the
discussion. As always, individual Program
Officer contact information can be found
<http://www.nsf.gov/staff/staff_list.jsp?org=DEB&from_org=DEB>on
the DEB website and general inquiries may be
sent to <mailto:[email protected]>[email protected].
Sincerely,
The Division of Environmental Biology
N.B.- This message was sent via a Listserv that
cannot receive replies. Please use the contact
information above to communicate directly with DEB.
