• Demographics Committee member: James Lowenthal
• Contacts:

Summary of other NSF division policies from Jim Ulvestad:

1. From Physics Division, Program Solicitation 14-576: Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or Co-PI: None. However, the Physics Division strongly encourages single proposal submission for possible co-review rather than multiple submissions of proposals with slight differences to several.
2. From Division of Materials Research, top level web page: DMR discourages the submission across DMR's program of more than one proposal from the same Principal Investigator during the DMR Annual proposal-submission window each fall.
3. From Division of Chemistry, top level web page: CHE discourages the submission of more than one proposal from the same Principal Investigator during the proposal-submission window. Note that proposals that are a duplicate of, or substantially similar to, a proposal already under consideration by NSF from the same submitter are subject to return without review. This also applies to proposals that were previously reviewed and declined and have not been substantially revised as well as to duplicates of other proposals that were already awarded.
4. Math also claims to discourage multiple proposals.

• Who is writing the proposals?
  • PI position: e.g. postdoc, assist. Prof, assoc. Prof, tenured faculty, research faculty, Gender, race/ethnicity, geographical location, size of institution
• How many proposals submitted by same PI - broken down by PI category
• Number of senior researchers on proposal
  • per year, per category of PI, per funding requested
• Compare success rates of different sorts of proposals
  • per PI category, per number of senior researchers, per number of proposals submitted in the last 5 years, per funding requested
• Years between proposals
  • cross correlate to success rate, PI category, # of senior researcher
• Do younger researchers rise through the ranks (are researcher on proposal and then become PI later)?
  • Number of years between first appearance as senior researcher on a proposal to PI
  • What number or fraction of the community is supported by soft money?

Nature of community support questions

• What number or fraction of the community is supported by research projects/missions?
• What number or fraction of the community is support by institutions?
• What number or fraction of the community can or does serve as PI?
• What number or fraction of the community is part of a smaller groups (1-3) vs larger groups?

• Are there other sources of scientific support for the community?
• How much of the science support for the community comes through missions or other stable sources relative to competed 3-year proposals?
• What fraction of the money for competed research is distributed to various types of institution (labs, universities, centers, industry)?

Individual support questions

• How many grants of typical size are required to support an individual investigator?
• How many sources of support does the typical investigator (PI, CoI, student) rely upon?
• How many investigators/students participate in the average proposal?

Career questions

• How many awards have gone to first-time PIs?
• How much of the typical award supports the PI? CoIs? Students?
• What is the age (in career) distribution of PIs? Proposers?
• What is the age (in career) distribution of the relevant community?

Competition Questions

• What is the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable success rates?
• What factors determine what the acceptable boundary is? (program staff, reviewers, community, fairness, etc.)
• Does the success rate/number of proposals make any difference in program allocations by agencies?

Question for Program Managers

• How many proposals have been reviewed annually for the last 10 years?
• How many proposals have been selected annually for the last 10 year?
• How much money has been awarded annually in the last 10 years for competed research grants?
• What fraction of the total program budget each year has gone to support competed grants?

Questions about Impact on People

• What anecdotal evidence do we have about the impact of funding rates?
• What quantitative information can we find about people entering or leaving the field?
• What are the off-ramps (retirement, leaving the field, working part time, etc.) for each discipline and how many are using them?
• What are the on-ramps (students, from other fields, shifting research focus, etc.) for each discipline and how many are using them?

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