Jeffrey Mervis on NSB’s decision and report on NSF’s merit review criteria.
Still digesting the report, which is quite substantial. But it looks as if NSB and the Task Force on Merit Review did a bang-up job.
Highlights include:
- Retaining freedom for researchers to posit their own broader impacts, rather than relying on a predetermined list of “National Needs.”
- Treating broader impacts more like intellectual merit.
- A call for development of better metrics for broader impacts activities.
- Noting that broader impacts may be better measured at levels beyond the individual project — at the institutional level, for instance.
More than a few of these recommendations have a familiar ring.