NSF Lifts Proposal Cap for BIO

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has rescinded its decision to limit researchers to only one proposal submission per year to NSF’s Biological Sciences Directorate’s (BIO) three core programs as a principal investigator (PI) or co-PI. In October 2017, BIO had announced a no-deadline system for proposal submissions with the goal to reduce the number of rejected proposals that were later resubmitted without major changes and to encourage collaborations between scientists. The policy of limiting the number of proposals that a PI or Co-PI could submit to a given division annually was implemented in August 2018 with the objective of “ensuring that BIO’s merit review process would not be overwhelmed with the move to no deadlines.” Under the policy, researchers were restricted to submitting only one proposal each to the three core programs, namely the Divisions of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, Integrative Organismal Systems, and Environmental Biology, and two proposals to Division of Biological Infrastructure. In addition, researchers could submit one proposal to the Rules of Life track each year. The biological research community was critical of the policy and expressed concerns that the limits would hamper collaboration and discourage early-career scientists. On November 15, Dr. Joanne Tornow, Acting Assistant Director of BIO issued a statement announcing that BIO will reverse the policy because of concerns expressed by the community. &...
Source: Public Policy Reports - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: news