Review Process and scoring for NSF grant

Factual Questions
1

I’m familiar with NIH review criteria and NIH scoring (Impact scores, innovation, significance, etc).

I’m also familiar with NSF review criteria (intellectual merit, and broader impacts)

But I’m not familiar with how NSF proposals are actually scored.

How do they currently score NSF grants? 1-9 with 1 being the best?
do they score the intellectual merit and broader impacts separately? Are there a list of specific things they look at and score?

I’m specifically looking as SBIR grants, but general knowledge would be useful

2

I’m also most familiar with NIH, but NSF gives a very good breakdown of the review process here:

http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/

As far as the details, its much more subjective than NIH (speaking as an occasional reviewer here). The proposals are not numerically scored, but rather “Outstanding, Excellent, Fair, Poor” etc… The Program Officer takes all the information, adds in a touch (or more than a touch) of their own biases, and picks which proposals are funded.

An NSF PO has a lot more clout than their equivalent at NIH.

3

Thanks for the response. I’ve previously looked over the document you linked, but it was unclear to me how reviewers actually rank proposals and determine which ones are better than others.
Are the terms you use (outstanding, excellent, etc.) themselves standardized catagories, or do the reviewers just discuss them broadly without trying to rank them objectively and leave it to the Program Manager to decide ultimately which ones get funded?

4

I’ve only ever been a mail reviewer so have never physically sat on an NSF panel (I’ve done many NIH panels). IIRC, the terms “Outstanding” etc… are standardized categories - that’s how I was supposed to rate each proposal. As far as I understand, the PO has broad discretion to recommend what is funded, and does not have to go by the review panel opinions AT ALL.

So be nice to the PO!