FASEB Notes Insufficient Comment Period for NSF Request for Information

Tuesday, October 1, 2024
During its December 2022 meeting, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) National Science Board (NSB) established a commission to re-examine the agency’s current Merit Review policy, associated criteria, and process. The last review occurred in 2011, and the current criteria have been in effect since 1997.  

In August 2024 – nearly 20 months after it was established – the Commission issued a 30-day Request for Information seeking input to obtain perspectives from constituent communities that will be used to inform and refine the Commission’s recommendations and suggestions for potential revisions to the NSF Merit Review criteria, policy, and processes. 

While FASEB is actively engaged in discussions pertaining to ensuring fair and equitable assessment of grant proposals, with recent comments helping to inform the National Institutes of Health’s simplified review framework set to go into effect in January 2025, FASEB’s response to the NSB RFI emphasized the brevity of the comment period as being insufficient, particularly given that this was the first such engagement on NSF Merit Review in over a decade.