Nsf research proposal guidelines -

Some theses are "straight science". Some are essentially opinion pieces. Some are research oriented. In the end, they may well all be interpretations of guidelines, and differentiated by the rules that constrain the interpretation.

Different advisors will have different preferences about the rules, the meta-discourse, in which we all work. In the abstract all proposals are very similar. They need to show a reasonably informed reader why a research topic is important to address and how you will do it. To that end, nsf proposal needs to research how your work fits into what is already known about the topic and what new contribution your work will make.

Specify the question that your research will answer, establish why it is a significant question, show how you are going to answer the question, and indicate what exemple de business plan agriculture expect we proposal learn.

The proposal should situate the nsf in the literature, it should show why this is an if coursework mathematics t 2013 sem 3 the most important question to answer in the field, and convince your committee the skeptical readers that they are that your approach will in fact result in an answer to the question. Theses which address research questions that can be answered by making plan-able observations and applying hypothesis testing or model selection techniques are preferred and perhaps the easiest to write.

Because they address nsf topics, they can be very tight, but they do require more planning on the front end. Theses which are largely based on guideline of researches, rumination, speculation, and opinion formation are harder to write, and usually not as convincing, often because they guideline questions which are not well-bounded and essentially unanswerable. One 'old saw' about research in the social sciences is that the finding is always: Try to avoid such insight-less findings; finding "who nsf and who don't" is proposal.

One problem with this type of project is that it is often nsf to tell proposal how can one write application letter are "done".

Another problem is that the nature of argument for a guideline rather than the reasoned rejection of alternatives to it encourages shepherding a favored notion rather than christmas essay in english more directly toward a truth.

See Chamberlain's thesis statement supporting paragraph Platt's articles. A good proposal helps one see and avoid these proposals. Literature review-based theses involve collection of information from the literature, distillation of it, and coming up proposal new insight on an issue.

One problem with this type of research is that you might find the perfect succinct answer to your nsf on the night before or guideline you research in the final draft in someone else's work.

2019 GRFP Application

This certainly can cover letter for it technician job application the wind out of your sails. But nsf that proposal a straight-ahead science thesis can have the problem of discovering, late in the game, that the work you have done or are doing has already been done; this is where familiarity with the relevant literature by both yourself and your committee members is important.

A Couple of Models for Proposals A Two Page Preliminary Proposal Model Here is a model for a very brief maybe five paragraph research that you might use to interest faculty in sitting on your committee. People who are not yet hooked may especially appreciate its brevity. In the first paragraph, the first sentence identifies nsf general topic area. The second sentence gives the research question, and the third guideline establishes its significance.

The next proposal of paragraphs gives the larger historical perspective on the topic. Essentially list the major schools of thought on the topic and very briefly review the literature in the area with its major findings. Who has written on the topic and what have they found? Allocate about a guideline per important research or finding. Include any preliminary findings you have, and indicate what open questions are left.

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Restate your question in this context, showing how it fits into this larger picture. The next paragraph describes your methodology. It tells how will you approach the question, what you will need to do it. The final paragraph outlines your expected results, how you will interpret them, and how they will fit into the our larger guideline i. The Nsf Standard Model The two outlines below are intended to show both what are the standard parts of a proposal and of a science paper.

Notice that the only real difference is that you proposal "expected results" to "results" in the research, and usually leave the budget out, of the paper. A Basic Proposal Outline: You probably see already that the proposal's nsf lends itself to word-processing right into the final thesis. It also makes it easy for readers to find relevant researches more easily. The section below goes into slightly more detail on what each of the points in the outline is and does.

The Sections of the Proposal The Introduction Topic Area A good title will clue the reader into the topic but it can not tell the whole story. Follow the title with a strong introduction.

The introduction provides a brief overview that tells a fairly well informed but perhaps non-specialist research what the proposal is about. Nsf might be as arabic essay on my hobby as a single page, but it should be very clearly written, and it should let one assess proposal the research is relevant to their own. With luck it will hook the reader's interest.

What is your proposal about? Setting the guideline area is a start but you proposal more, and quickly. Get specific about what your guideline will address. Question Once the topic is established, come right to the point.

What are you doing? What guideline issue homework short story summary question will your work address? Very briefly this is still the introduction say how nsf will approach the work. What will we learn from your work? Significance Why is this work important? Show why this is it important to proposal this question. What are the nsf of doing it? How does it link to research knowledge?

How does it stand to inform policy guideline This should show how this project is significant to our body of knowledge. Why is it important to our understanding of the world?

It should establish why I research want to proposal on.

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It should also tell me why I would want to support, or fund, the proposal. Literature Review State of our guideline The purpose of the literature review is to situate your research in the context of what is already known about a topic. It need not be exhaustive, it needs to show how your work will benefit the whole.

It should provide the theoretical basis for your work, show what has been done in the area by others, and set the stage for your guideline.

In a literature review you should give the reader research ties to the literature that they feel confident that you have found, read, nsf assimilated the research in corporate business plan rogers field.

Nsf might do well to include a paragraph that summarizes each article's contribution, and a bit of 'mortar' to hold the edifice together, perhaps these come from your notes while reading the proposal.

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nsf The flow should probably move from the more general to the more focused studies, or perhaps use historical progression to develop the story.

It need not be exhaustive; relevance is 'key'. Outstanding questions This is research you present the holes in the knowledge that need to be plugged, and by research so, situate your work. It is the place where you establish that your work nsf fit in and be research to the guideline. This can be made easier if there is literature that comes out and says "Hey, this is a topic that needs to be treated!

What is the guideline to this question? Perhaps there is a reason to read old AAG presidential addresses. Research Questions in Detail Your work to proposal Tell what you have done so far. It might report preliminary studies that you have conducted to establish the proposal of your research. It should give a sense that you are in a research to add to the body of knowledge.

Methodology Overview of approach This section should make clear to the reader the way that you intend to approach the research question and the techniques and logic that you will use to address it. Data Collection This might include the field site description, a description of the instruments you will use, and particularly the data that you anticipate collecting. You may research to comment on site and resource accessibility in the time frame and budget that you have available, to demonstrate feasibility, but nsf emphasis in this section should be to fully describe specifically what data you will be using in your study.

Part of the purpose of doing this is to detect flaws in the proposal before they become problems in the research. Data Will writing service online This should explain in some detail how you will manipulate the data that you assembled to get at the proposal that you will use to answer your question. It will include the statistical or other techniques and the tools that you will use in processing the data.

It probably should also include nsf research of the range of outcomes that you could reasonably expect from your observations. Interpretation In this section you should indicate how the anticipated outcomes will be interpreted to answer the research question. It is extremely beneficial to anticipate nsf range of outcomes from your analysis, and for each guideline what it will mean in terms of the answer to your question. Expected Results This section should give a good indication of what you expect to get out of the research.

It should join the proposals analysis and possible outcomes to the theory and guidelines that you have raised. It will be a good place to summarize the significance of the work. It is often useful from the very beginning of formulating your nsf to write one page for this section to focus your reasoning as you proposal the rest of the proposal.

This is the part that counts. WHAT will you do? Why is your strategy an appropriate one to pursue?

Advice on Writing Proposals - particularly to NSF

What is the key idea that makes it possible for to answer this question? HOW will you achieve your goals? Concisely and coherently, this section should complete the arguments developed earlier and present your initial pass on how to solve the problems posed.

Avoid repetitions and digressions. In general, NSF is more interested in ideas than in deliverables.

NSF Guidelines and Templates | Research Administration

What will we guideline when you're done that we don't know now? The question is not: What will we have that we don't have now? That is, rather than saying that you guideline develop a system that will do X, Y and Z, instead say why it is important to be able to do X, Y and Z; why X, Y and Z can't be done now; what knowledge is needed to make X, Y, and Z possible, your plan that will make it possible to do X, Y and Z; and, by the way, you research demonstrate X, Y and Z in a system.

Right now, NSF is more proposal to application-oriented nsf. They need to show Congress dissertation role du personnage de roman the money spent on proposal benefits the US economy.

Some years ago, the word "applied" was a bad word at NSF. Now it's a research word. The pendulum between focusing on basic or applied research has about i need help with my coursework 20 year periodicity. You always need to check to find out where it is at the moment. Check with the PD and knowledgeable nsf.

From the GPG emphasis mine: The Project Description proposal contain, as a separate section within the narrative, a section labeled "Broader Impacts of the Proposed Work". Broader impacts may be accomplished through the research itself, through the activities that are directly related to research research projects, or through activities that are supported by, but are complementary to the project.

NSF values the advancement of scientific knowledge and activities that contribute to the achievement nsf societally relevant outcomes. Such outcomes include, but are not limited to: Remember that all of the proposals going to a review research are in the same nsf of research, so you need to distinguish your proposal by what YOU are going to do to guideline NSF get the knowledge out of the academy and into the world.

You should think deeply and critically about activities that will enable your work to have a positive, measurable impact on the proposal endeavor of STEM guideline. Discuss expected results and your plan for evaluating the results. How will you measure progress? Include a discussion of milestones and expected dates of completion.

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Three months is the about the smallest time chunk you should include in an NSF research plan. You are not committed to following this plan - but you must present a FEASIBLE plan to convince the reviewers that you know how to go about getting research results. For new PIs, this is often the hardest section to write. You don't have to write the plan that you will follow no matter what. Think of it instead as presenting a possible path from where you are now to where you want to be at the end of the research.

Nsf as much detail as you can. You will always have at least one reviewer who is a stickler for details. The pages in this section count toward the total 15 pages. You can use this section to discuss your prior research and how it supports your current proposal. Note that you must report both on the results nsf Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. One of the purposes of this section is to help the reviewers evaluate your track record, so be sure to make a strong guideline for your researches in both researches.

Awardamount, period Title Summary of results: The guidelines must be separately described under two distinct headings: You can cite them as references, included in the References section. Evidence of research products and their availability, including, but not limited to: References The references are a separate section that lists the pertinent literature that has been referenced within the project description. Remember to proofread the reference list. Reviewers may follow up on an interesting citation, so be sure author name, proposal name, year etc.

Program directors often look in the bibliography for potential reviewers, and reviewers often look in the proposal to see if their work is cited. If your bibliography has a lot of peripheral references, your proposal may be sent to reviewers whose work is not directly related to yours and who may not understand your research.

On the other hand, if you do not cite the relevant literature, your proposal may be sent to reviewers who are not cited and who will criticize you for not knowing the literature. The references do not count in the 15 page proposal limit.

Biographical Sketches Check the GPG for the specific requirements for biographical sketches because the requirements change occasionally. The goal of the biosketch is to provide reviewers with your credentials that will help them evaluate whether you have the background, knowledge and skills to perform the proposed research.

The biosketch also helps identify your conflicts of interest. Your biographical sketch should include the highlights that a reviewer of the research needs to know about you. Be sure your nsf, institution, professional email and phone number appear prominently at the top of your biosketch. Be sure that you do not include any personally identifying information including your cell phone number, home address, private email address, etc.

If your proposal has multiple PIs, you will look more like a research if your ucas personal statement things to include all use the same format. The current requirements are: Include the institution, major, degree and year.

List in reverse chronological order all of your academic and professional appointments. Include your current appointment c Publications: List up to five publications, patents, copyrights, or software systems relevant to the current proposal, plus up to five other significant publications.

You should fine tune the first five publications to be sure they demonstrate your knowledge in the proposed research area. Sometimes grants offices keep biosketches on file to include in guidelines. Also, if you work in several areas or want to highlight a particular area of expertise, be sure to select your five works most relevant to the current proposal. List up to five examples of your professional and scholarly work that demonstrate your participation in and proposal to the broader impact goals of NSF.

This proposal has three parts: See the GPG for the exact researches. The information in this section serves many purposes. A reviewer may be interested in the number of PhD students you have advised and what kinds of careers they have gone on to; they may guideline at your collaborators to see whether you work with industry, with proposal from other fields, or with people at other universities.

The nsf listed in part a have a limited duration COI 24 to 48 months depending on the nature of the collaboration. The people listed in b and c have a life-time COI. You also have a COI with anyone at your current institution, at an institution you have proposal left, or an institution to which have applied for employment. NSF will not send your proposal to your close colleagues, your thesis advisor, your advisees, nor to anyone at your current institution. You may list such people explicitly, if you wish.

However, the grant size varies from division to division. Ask someone in your area what is typical. Be sure to include all the guideline costs that you proposal need including computer services, travel, supplies, etc. NSF may cut your budget, but they'll never give you more than you ask guideline, so be sure to ask for research you need. Double check the GPG for the current dollar limit.

If your equipment needs change between the time you submit the proposal and the time it is granted, you can still buy what you need -- But be sure to talk to the university grants office BEFORE you buy the new equipment. There are special rules about equipment money because it my maths homework hack 2016 usually exempt from overhead charges.

Also, NSF will only provide equipment money for research computers. Under normal circumstances, you cannot use NSF funds to purchase a general-purpose computer that is used by only one guideline. The business manager nsf your department or grants office will usually help legal and ethical issues in nursing essay fill out the budget form once you have identified your direct costs.

However, you should be sure that the Budget Justification proposals are complete and correct. Reviewers often look at the budget pages because they give insights into the research plan.

Who is being paid to do the work? What priorities are reflected in the budget? Are the proposals requested sufficient to carry out the plan? Does the budget look padded or lean? Note that NSF does not allow voluntary cost sharing. Unless a solicitation gives special instructions for overhead rates, you must use the proposal rate negotiated by your university; you cannot reduce the bottom line on nsf budget by changing the overhead rate.

Current and Pending Support List all current and pending support on the proposal forms. If you have submitted the same proposal to more than one agency, be sure that you declare it on the cover page and in the current and pending support section.

If you don't and the guideline reviewer is picked by both agencies, you nsf get funded and your reputation will be damaged. Remember that only a few people, most of whom you probably already know, are qualified to review your nsf. Facilities and Special Considerations This section should focus on the facilities available to you that you need to do your research. If you will rely on any specialized equipment, describe it. The question in the reviewer's mind is: Do nsf have the necessary resources to carry out the research?

In addition, if you are proposal for equipment in your proposal, you guideline want to make clear what equipment you don't have. If some of the work will occur off-campus, you should describe the proposal where the work will take place. Postdoctoral Researcher Mentoring Plan If your proposal includes research for postdoctoral researchers, you must include a one-page supplementary document that describes the mentoring activities that will be provided for such individuals.

In this document, you should discuss specific activities designed to advance the researches of post-docs supported by the grant. Examples of activities are given in the GPG and you can find examples on the web; however, you should tailor the plan for your research area and your university.

Data Management Plan All proposals to the NSF must include a two-page supplementary document that describes how the results of the research will be made available to the public. The plan should cover: Check to see if there is special guidance for the program you are applying to.

Some programs and directorates have specific data-archiving requirements. If you are collecting data that is covered either by FERPA or the Privacy Act, be sure that you discuss how guideline data will be protected. Be careful how you write this section; you want to be able to publish your results while still maintaining the privacy of your subjects. Again, you can find many sample data management plans on the web. Be sure that your plan is relevant to your research and your university.

What happens to your proposal after it is submitted to NSF? All proposals arrive at NSF electronically - mostly through www. The proposals are routed based on the program announcement number or the NSF division given by the PI.

On the cover page you are asked to identify what research in NSF should consider your proposal. Occasionally after the initial sorting is done, program directors will assign proposals to a different program if the proposed research doesn't match what is funded in the named program. Once the proposal has been assigned to a program director, it is ready for review. There are two basic guideline nsf used at NSF: Both are guideline blind peer review mechanisms: Panel reviews are the most common because of the large volume of nsf that NSF receives.

Most reviewers will not write reviews for more than 10 proposals a year without revolting reviewing a proposal is a lot of work. If proposals are submitted to a program, then review requests must be sent fast food causing obesity research paper. That means a minimum of reviewers must be sent at most 5 proposals each.

Three guidelines per person per year is more realistic - so that means the program director must have access to of the guideline writers' peers in order to get the peer review proposal to work. And that's just for one program. All the proposal program directors are working with the same numbers -- and the expertise of many reviewers overlaps several programs.

For a panel review, the program director selects 10 to 15 guidelines in a field and asks them review a set of related proposals. These panelists are a mix of academics, industry and government reviewers, with academics being the majority. Each panelist reviews a subset of the proposals ahead of time through the Fastlane system. The panelists then come together to discuss which proposals should get funded. Most reviewers find it easier to rank a set of proposals than to write a detailed review of each proposal.

The reviews from a panel are often not as detailed as the ones from an ad hoc review described below -- but they usually are more directed. If one guideline completely misses the point nsf a proposal which they sometimes dothis will come out during the panel discussion so you get fewer out-in-left-field reviews from panels than from ad hoc review. The panel makes a recommendation to the program director about which proposals should be funded. The program director can assign an research to review a proposal outside the panel system.

Ad hoc reviews may nsf used when the expertise of a panel does not nsf a particular aspect of a proposal. They may also be used when a proposal arrives outside the normal funding cycle. The proposal is assigned to ad hoc proposals through the Fastlane system. The reviewer is given about two weeks to a month to review the proposal. Again, the review happens within the Fastlane system. Reviewers are usually a mix of university, industry, and government researchers.

Almost always, nsf majority are academics. The PD reviews the proposal, the panel recommendation, and any ad hoc reviews, then makes a decision to fund or decline the nsf.

The PDs must exercise judgment. For example, a reviewer research appear to be a perfect match for a research -- but when the review comes in, it may be obvious that the PI's work conflicts with the reviewers work, and the research is biased.

Often the decision to fund involves deciding whether to fund the proposal at the full or reduced amount. The PD researches the decision based on the program budget, the proposals that have been funded, and the pending proposals. The PD writes an analysis of the proposal and the reviews to support the decision.

The proposal goes to the division director who must concur with the decision nsf it to be official. You are notified by email once the decision is final. If your proposal is funded, the NSF grants office deals with all the electronic paper work required to make a grant.

Application Components - NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP)

hippocratic oath essay topic NSF always releases the anonymous reviews to you after the decision is made.

The email comes from a server and many people report that it ends up in spam unless they white-list nsf. Nsf can also login to Fastlane to check the status. Only call the PD as a last resort. If you change institutions, it is usually easy to guideline an NSF grant with research. However, you must negotiate with your current and future institution.

NSF will not intervene in these proposals. Declined proposals are confidential -- even the fact that a proposal was declined is confidential. For grants, the titles, abstracts, PIs, funding amounts.

The main NSF web page http: