During Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) announced a year-round (no-deadline) proposal submission process for most programs. The change applied to solicitations for investigator-initiated research projects NSF 17-589 and NSF 18-585 in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB), along with solicitations in other BIO Divisions.

Comparing proposal data* from FY 2018 to FY 2019, BIO has found that there was an increase in funding rates for all Divisions within BIO. For MCB, the rate increased from 16.7% to 27.4% (see graph below). There was also a decrease in the number of proposals submitted across the Directorate, from 3,226 in FY 2018 to 1,965 in FY 2019.

This change has been met with positive response from the research community and reviewers. MCB received many positive comments from panelists. For example, one wrote,

As a PI I strongly support the no deadline, no limit submission policy. I appreciate the flexibility to propose projects when they are ready, rather than at an arbitrary time of year. My sense as a panelist is that the quality of submitted proposals was better too. I had far fewer non-competitive proposals in my stack.

The BIO directorate will continue to monitor these metrics and others to measure the impact of the no-deadline policy over time; more details on the impact of the change in submission deadlines are available on the BIO Buzz blog.

*Data includes externally reviewed proposals in core and special programs across all BIO Divisions. It does not include internally reviewed proposals such as RAPIDs, EAGERs, RAISEs, supplements, or conferences, nor does it include human resource proposals such as Fellowships. The unit measured is proposals, which counts single and collaborative proposals as individual units.