Preparing a Proposal: What You Should Know The goal of this document is to provide you information about the NSF submission process and advice to help prepare a competitive proposal. Most important is to allow sufficient time to think through the proposal and complete all the steps needed to submit it. Usually that takes at least three months. The Submission Process Look over the SDEST Program Announcement. Check links to active program awards to see what kinds of research or educational projects are underway. See the section of this document below headed "The Development Process." Go on line to check or get a copy of the Grant Proposal Guide, which has the NSF official submission instructions: http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?gpg. Contact one of the program directors with any questions about the submission process, your project idea, or proposal content. Ask whether your project might be suitable for consideration in any other programs or NSF initiatives or new priority areas; many can be found at http://www.nsf.gov/home/crssprgm. Check in with your campus office of sponsored programs, or research support, or whatever it is called, to start the process of submission to NSF through the electronic process called FastLane. We advise preparing proposal text in a word processing program and pasting it into FastLane, so as not to chance losing the text. Your research office must issue you a password to start and can help in preparing the .PDF files you need. You can access FastLane and the help desk, to review the procedures, at http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov. Independent scholars should contact the program officer well before the target date and before submitting, in order to discuss submission procedures. To route your proposal correctly, you should put the SDEST Announcement number (NSF 01-152) on the cover sheet and select either EVS (Ethics and Values Studies) or RST (Research on Knowledge, Science, and Technology) on the program drop-down menu. If you are uncertain which program component your proposal belongs in, select the one you believe is more suitable. You must follow the rules described in the GPG and the SDEST Announcement for submissions. For example, the project description must not exceed 15 pages, except for the reasons given in the Announcement, which allow an additional 5 pages for protocols and dissemination plans. Materials such as letters supporting dissertation plans or documenting access to research sites should be scanned and copied into the "Supplementary Documentation" section. Most importantly, be sure that you follow NSF guidance on margin dimensions and font sizes so that reviewers and panelists can read the proposal without difficulty. Proposals may be returned without consideration if these standards are not followed. Review your proposal after it is in FastLane to be sure conversion has not altered its length or created legibility problems. Secure and submit all supporting materials, including letters from data sources, cooperating or subcontracting institutions, dissertation advisers, etc., with your proposal. These generally go in the "Supplementary Documentation" section. It is not possible to incorporate these after submission, and reviewers may fault a proposal for not containing them. If your research involves Human Subjects, you must follow Federal regulations and your institution’s review procedures. Be sure to submit the appropriate certification form. You can scan it into that section or, if the certification is pending, you can indicate that on the proposal cover page and follow up by sending the form directly to the program when it is available. Revised proposals should address concerns of prior reviewers, as some may be asked to review the revision. Budgets should be reasonable but complete. You can exceed SDEST budgetary guidelines, but provide a justification when you do so. Budgets are often negotiated before awards are made. The Development Process Write, and rewrite, and rewrite. Allow time for your drafts to be reviewed by colleagues and then revised. Seek clarity of thought and expression. Check and have colleagues check for omissions, unstated or questionable assumptions, difficult theoretical explications, fashionable but confusing jargon, and confusing order of exposition. Make sure your one-page summary is compelling and describes the main project idea and its importance, how your research plan will provide findings that address that idea, and how you will disseminate results to important audiences. In your project description, lay out your main ideas and objectives and stick to them. Try moving the final paragraph of an early draft to the first paragraph of a subsequent draft. This can improve coherence, and also provide a check to be sure that reviewers don’t need to plow through numerous pages to get to the point. The heart of a good proposal is a strong statement about the intellectual tradition(s) and approach(es) from which the work grows, a solid description of the research questions and why they are important, and a clear presentation of how the project work will be done. Whatever methods are used, explain how the project meets the relevant standards for evidence and interpretation on which you draw. Specify the sources (theories, data, documents, texts, experiments, etc.) on which you draw. Explain how your methods will support your hypotheses or interpretations. Provide an analysis plan, if needed. While an appropriate literature review is important, give priority to developing your ideas and the work you plan to undertake. The review process for SDEST involves individual specialist reviews as well as panel review. Panelists will review a project’s merit in comparison with all of the others, so it is especially important to address how your proposal contributes to understanding an important problem for ethics and science and engineering, or for social choices about knowledge production and innovation, in a way that is persuasive to non-specialists. The two main NSF review criteria are intellectual merit and broader impact. Broader impact can include how the project will satisfy educational objectives, broaden participation of underrepresented groups in the field, or expand the infrastructural base for your scholarly community or institution. Will society in general derive benefits from your efforts? You should address both the criteria in your proposal. NSF encourages you to suggest outside reviewers. Remember that reviewers will be asked to address the merit of your submission according to the two criteria. They cannot have a conflict of interest (i.e., be a colleague who has collaborated with you recently or served as your thesis advisor, be at your institution, etc.). You may also indicate persons whom you do not wish to review the proposal, without explanation.