NSF moving project reporting to Research.gov on 3/18/13

The National Science Foundation is implementing a new reporting structure, the Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR), which was created in the hopes of streamlining and standardizing forms and reporting formats for federal awards - expect to see the RPPR being used by other federal sponsors as well.

To switch over to this format, NSF is moving their reporting to Research.gov on March 18th. In order to facilitate this move they request that as of February 1, PIs stop submitting new project reports through Fastlane. By March 15, PIs will be redirected from Fastlane's project reporting to Research.gov.

For more information: Dear Colleague Letter - Implementing All Project Reporting in Research.gov

NSF announces new Merit Review criteria

Based on a review of their processes by the National Science Board, the NSF will be adopting revised Merit Review criteria for all proposals submitted on or after January 14, 2013. The full review procedure is here; a Powerpoint-style overview can be found here.

A reason to become an NSF reviewer!

Washington, DC-based Sunlight Foundation used open data on the National Science Foundation to find a "clear correlation between the universities with the most employees serving on the NSF advisory committees and the universities that receive the most federal money." They caution that this is merely correlative data, and they don't know that it's causative, but "even when controlling for other factors, we find that for each additional employee a university has serving on an NSF advisory committee that university can expect to see an additional $125,000 to $138,000 in NSF funding."

Seems like more than a coincidence?

You can read the whole article on their blog.

New Financial Conflict of Interest Policy

Effective August 24th, 2012, the Public Health Service (which funds a number of Fordham faculty members) has adopted a new financial conflict of interest in research policy. As required, Fordham has created its own policy based on the federal regulations and posted it on the OSP website. Please review the policy and direct any questions to Kris Wolff, Manager of OSP at x4086. Thank you!

NIH gets $100mil raise for 2013

While not a lot of money, it's better than nothing - yesterday a Senate panel voted to increase the NIH's 2013 budget by $100,000,000 as part of a broader spending bill. More information is here at the Science Insider.

Petition: to require free access to taxpayer-funded research articles

We the People on Whitehouse.gov currently has almost 9,000 signatures for a petition to "require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research". Apparently people don't want to pay to read about research projects funded by their own money! Makes some sense, but may be a bit too simplistic. If you'd like to read the full text and decide whether to sign the petition, click here.

Grad students petition Congress for more research $

Yesterday, MIT students presented Congress with a petition asking for more "indispensable investments in science and engineering research". The petition currently has more than 10,300 signatures; you can add yours here.

More information about the petition, and the Stand with Science project: