How does the review process itself impact number of proposals and reviewer load?

• Segregation into frontiers
  • A. Disadvantages cross-cutting proposals, especially CF vs neutrinos, and

maybe detector R&D. Synergies across frontiers hard to point out.

• B. Difficult to disentangle big grants with multiple players
• C. Has multiplied number of reviews done each year and multiplied number

of reviewers needed.

• D. need more guidance on the big grants – logical divisions and some sort of summary that details overlap - Perhaps they need a template.

• Review effect of topical divisions in other agencies – is there an optimal size?
• New concentration on PIs, each one is ranked.
• Page limit is 9 per PI (this is good! Used to be unlimited! What is it elsewhere? )
• Notice many proposals from same person
  • Across agencies – can these be sorted into appropriate agency ahead of time?
  • Different topics to same reviewers – makes the reviewers have to choose.
• Broad discussions among reviewers is good. Tends to encourage young researchers, some budgetary info gleaned from reviewers (but final word is DOE), COI not applied strictly – very good since reviewers tend to be fair and as long as they are upfront with affiliations, others can take their recommendations with a grain of salt.
• Can you find enough reviewers? Balanced set? Is it getting harder to find reviewers?

• Cosmic: 28 proposals out of 130 across all HEP. (21% of the 6 frontiers are to CF)

(umbrella proposals separated out into subcategories here). We could use this to normalize HEP data or we could request this data broken down for only CF and include all three years.

• The number of reviewers in HEP (Cosmic): 127 (27 CF) reviewers, 571 (120 CF) reviewers: 4.6 reviews per proposal.

CF: Success rate for renewal (new) was 100% (36%) All HEP: the rates are 85% (24%) for 2014 and 78% (34%) for 2013 New proposals are not doing as well as renewals. Practice? Or Real?

In general, CF is attracting more new proposals as people switch between frontiers. Anecdotally Energy ⇒ Cosmic. Can we get numbers for this? Do the number of proposals go down in one frontier when the other ones go up? Budget info is lacking. High success rate is due to lower funding than requested. What is the percent reduction in funding across labs, univ, and new vs old ? Jr Faculty in CF: only 1 funded for 9 reviewed. These are all NEW (Is this the DE vs Astro dilemma?) At 1% this is much lower than HEP average of Jr faculty: 90% (48%) Research Scientists: are complicated by fractions on many different proposals. For CF: 78% (by task?) and no new ones. Early Career. 2-step procedure: written review (specialized??) down-selects first, then to review panel for only top third. How is this working? All frontiers in same panel. Lab/Univ by same panel. Comment on how this works. 5% success rate – encouraged to also apply to comp. review (but that is BEFORE career – confusing) Higher funding level for labs, roughly same number L vs U. Generally even across frontiers (except theory is almost x2, mostly U) Early Career used to be a gateway to becoming a PI on a grant. However, this must not be the case now that it is a 5% success rate. How has this impacted young researchers? How can we find data to understand this? The Career review is AFTER the comparative review

1. makes it difficult to judge a comparative review without knowing outcome. 	2. Doubles the number of proposals – they are encouraged to do both.
3. If Career came first, then if it didn’t get funded, the PI could submit 		    		to comparative review .