[SPA] SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER, Volume XXIV, Issue 19

[Newsletter Editor]

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION
SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER
Volume XXIV, Issue 19
Apr.1,2017

Editor: Peter Chi
Co-Editor: Guan Le
Distribution Support: Sharon Uy, Marjorie Sowmendran, Todd King, Kevin Addison
E-mail: editor at igpp.ucla.edu

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Table of Contents

1. New Procedures for Obtaining NSF Grants

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New Procedures for Obtaining NSF Grants

From: C. LaRuse (claruse at igpp.ucla.edu)

While having the same policies and procedures year in and year out may be comfortable for proposers because they can remember them, it is not necessarily to everyone’s advantage to do so. This year, NSF will be changing these procedures to both modernize them as well as to stretch its ever diminishing allocations further. First, no proposal deadlines will be published. Real deadlines will still exist based on the arrival of funds at NSF and then availability of staff for disbursement, but we have found that publishing deadlines creates greater proposal pressure than allowing scientists to figure out when they have the time to write a proposal. Furthermore, it is time to capitalize on our investment of public engagement and education over the past years by now crowdsourcing our scientific research. In the first year of this program, NSF will match every dollar raised by crowdsourcing. In year two, that will be halved, and in year three halved again. Further, relief will be possible for proposers who have been burdened in the past by NSF’s fixation on avoiding conflict of interest. With NSF’s increasingly small participation in funding the science community, it will no longer make proposers list all their co-authors since graduation. Finally, NSF is further assisting proposers by selling a proposal app that gives formatting instructions, lists the latest rules on submission, and lists websites that may accept proposals. We note also that certain funding opportunities will be open only to those with special ‘powers.’ The app tells you how those powers may be purchased or won in battle.


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