Tool Kit: Grant Proposal Review Process - National Science Foundation
The description below is quoted directly from the FY 2003 Report on the NSF Merit Review Process, pages 10 - 11. It is offered as an example of how large federal agencies may review grant proposals.
"NSF's FY 2003 GRPA performance goal was, for at least 70 percent of proposals, to inform applicants whether their proposals have ben declined or recommended for funding within six months of receipt. . . .In FY 2003, 77 percent of all proposals were processed within six months. . .The success of this goal is particularly significant because there was a 14 percent increase in the number of proposals submitted in FY 2003. This is the second year that NSF has achieved this goal since its establishment in FY 1999.
3. THE PROPOSAL REVIEW PROCESS
The NSF proposal process starts with electronic receipt of the proposal, which is then forwarded electronically to the appropriate NSF program for review. All proposals are carefully reviewed by a scientist, engineer, or educator serving as an NSF program officers, and usually by three or more experts from outside NSF in the particular fields represented in the proposal. Care is exercised to assure that the external reviewers have no conflicts of interest. . . .
Review Processes Used at NSF
The extensive use of knowledgeable experts from outside the Foundation is key to NSF's proposal review system. Expert judgments of which proposals best address the NSB-established merit review criteria inform NSF staff and influence finding recommendations. NSF programs obtain external peer review by three principal methods: (1) "mail-only," (2) "panel-only," and (3) "mail-plus-panel" review. In addition, site visits by NSF staff and external peers are often used to review proposals for facilities and centers. NSF program officers are given discretion in the specific use of review methods, subject to higher-level review.
In the "mail-only" review method, reviewers are sent proposals and asked to submit written comments to NSF through FastLane, NSF's Web-based system for electronic proposal submission and review. These mail reviews are then used by the NSF program officer to support a recommendation for award or decline.
"Panel-only" review refers to the process of soliciting reviews only from those who meet in a panel review setting to discuss their reviews and provide advice directly to the program officer. Most programs that use this process provide proposals to panelists and receive their reviews before the panel meeting.
Many proposals submitted to NSF are reviewed using some combination of these two processes ("mail-plus-panel" review). Those programs that employ the mail-plus-panel review process have developed several different configurations, such as:
A reviewer is asked to submit a written mail review and also serve as a a panelist; and
A reviewer is asked to participate only as a panelist, with responsibility only for reviewing and discussing mail reviews written by others and providing verbal and/or written advice to the program officer.
. . .Since 1995 the percentage of NSF proposals reviewed by panel-only has increased from 39 to 53 percent of all proposals. During the same period, there has been a steady decline in the use of mail-only review from 28 to 11 percent. The use of mail-plus-panel review increased from 28 to 32 percent.
There are a number of reasons for the trend toward panel review. For example, the panel review process permits proposals to be discussed and compared to one another. For this reason, panel review is the norm in evaluating proposals in response to program solicitations and announcements with proposal submission deadlines. The panel review process also has advantages in the evaluation of multidisciplinary proposals, because, unlike mail-only review, viewpoints representing several disciplines can be openly discussed and integrated. In a similar fashion, the panel review discussion facilitates evaluation of both merit review criteria. Finally, the panel review process usually requires fewer individual reviewers per proposal than the mail-only process. For example, a panel of 25 reviewers could possibly review 200 proposals, while it may require several hundred requests for mail reviewers to review the same proposals. Also, using panels in the review process tends to reduce proposal processing time (time-to-decision), compared to mail-only reviews. For example, in FY 2003, 81 percent of all proposals reviewed by panel-only were processed within six months, compared to 74 percent for mail-plus-panel and 65 percent for mail-only."