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Assay and Acquisition of Radiopure Materials

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==== What is the effect of reduced funding for individual research grants (relative to the overall funding profile)?==== Specific Data

  • What do we expect to happen if the current trend continues unchecked?
  • Does it represent healthy competition and improve proposal quality?
  • Does it unfairly target younger researchers?
  • Does it reduce the number of scientists in the field?
  • Does it favor large projects over small projects? Is that good or bad?

Solution 1: one proposal per year per PI

  • Is it good for the science? Specific data
    • Reduce the diversity of ideas? Stifle risky, but imaginative proposals?
      • How many proposals are same PI
      • Rate of success of new PI
      • Do new PIs come up thru the ranks? How many proposals was a PI on as a senior researcher in the past.
      • Size of collaborations, relative number of small vs large collaborations
      • How do we track “new ideas” ?
  • Would it improve success rates?
    • funding requested per proposal, $$ requested for successful vs unsuccessful
    • number of times proposed before success. (and no success attempts)
    • demographics on success vs unsuccessful
  • Would it reduce reviewer load?
    • number of proposals per group, per PI, per faculty vs research vs lab
  • Would it create more PIs (proposals) from otherwise collaborating senior researchers?
  • Does it make it even more difficult to decide between a few very excellent must-fund proposals?

Solution 2: RFPs every other year

  • Is it good for the science?
    • Does it create funding gaps for tenure-seeking researchers and thus unfairly target a demographic we want to encourage?
    • Does it create uneven funding levels, loss of resources, lack of continuity in the off years?
  • Would it improve success rates?
    • Or create a multitude of poor proposals in the “on” year
  • Would the funding requested per proposal go up?
  • Would it reduce reviewer load?
    • Or create many more proposals in the “on” year?

Data we need

  • 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
aaac/questions.1410466527.txt.gz · Last modified: 2014/09/11 15:15 by prisca

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