Submitted by Clifford Rossiter / SUNY Potsdam on Mon, 04/18/2011 - 15:16
Forums
Research

Dear Fellow Vipers,

 

I am writing to inquire whether anyone out there is willing to develop a community of "grant reviewers". Most of the faculty involved in this community are from predominantly undergraduate institutions. For many of us, we are the inorganic chemists in our community and finding people to critically critique our work is difficult. Is anyone interested in participating?

 

Sincerely,

 

Clifford Rossiter 

Tags
NSF
NIH Grants
Sibrina Collins / College of Arts and Sciences at Lawrence Technological University

I would be interested in this.

Sibrina Collins

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 21:43 Permalink
Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College

This was one of the original goals of the site, to have a place where similarly-minded and similarly-isolated inorganic chemists could have a network of contacts for peer review, pre-peer review, etc.  One of our long term projects was to create clickable map of the US (and world) that showed inorganic chemists by location, or lists that gave inorganic chemists by subdiscipline or research area.  Hopefully one day we will get our next big infusion of money from the NSF or another funding agency and we can begin "phase II."

Adam

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 00:24 Permalink
Chip Nataro / Lafayette College
Big money, big money, no whammies! Sounds like a great idea to me.
Tue, 04/19/2011 - 10:33 Permalink
Kurt Birdwhistell / Loyola University New Orleans
Yes, I would be willing to participate!
Tue, 04/19/2011 - 12:59 Permalink
Clifford Rossiter / SUNY Potsdam

Adam,

Is it possible to have a scaled down version of "Phase II"? While the content section has great resources for teaching, many positions require three facets for tenure and promotion (a.k.a teaching, research and service). The first facet is quite well served utilizing this model. The second aspect, research, is one that I feel many predominately undergraduate institutions are promoting, (either independent research or in the classroom) as a relatively unfunded mandate. As such, obtaining external grants has become significantly more important for tenure and promotion decisions.

A content section for grant review broken down by subdiscipline (a.k.a. bioinorganic, materials, catalyst, energy, photochemistry, organometallic, nano, physical, synthesis, computational, etc.) would be useful. Individuals could then post expertise and contact information if they desire to. Could this easily be implemented?

 If anyone has other suggestions, please feel free to elaborate.

 

Sincerely,

 

Cliff 

Thu, 04/21/2011 - 10:45 Permalink
Adam Johnson / Harvey Mudd College
I think this thread is a great start to make an inroads towards research and help with getting funding.  I'll make sure to bring up your point at our next meeting, however.  There may be a lower-bar way to get what you are thinking about.  For the time being, send happy thoughts towards DC as we should be hearing about our NSF proposal soon.
Thu, 04/21/2011 - 20:52 Permalink
Joanne Stewart / Hope College

This idea has the potential to become our first example of a community-generated feature on VIPEr (something we've been looking to do!). Cliff posted some great suggestions. Oh dear VIPEr users: What would you find useful? 

Speaking of low bar, for now it might be easiest to just post a plea to a VIPEr forum if you're looking for someone to bounce ideas off of, or looking for someone to give you feedback on something you've written. (Just-in Time reviewing?) I fear that any sort of database we create will become outdated before it even gets used.

 

Tue, 04/26/2011 - 13:03 Permalink
Clifford Rossiter / SUNY Potsdam

Dear Fellow Vipers,

We currently have four main forums to post threads on: Opportunities, Research, Teaching, and Faculty Only. Would it be possible to post an additional forum for grant review which is only open to faculty. We could then post our own threads under the main heading offering to review each other's grants. Just a thought.

 

Sincerely,

 

Cliff 

Tue, 05/17/2011 - 17:12 Permalink
Joanne Stewart / Hope College

This (Sibrina's link, above) is consistent with the large amount of research on unconscious bias.

Here's an interesting summary of some of the literature. The summary is focused more on hiring issues, and it has more info on gender bias than other types of bias: http://equity.missouri.edu/recruitment-hiring/bias.php.

We have so much work to do.

Mon, 08/22/2011 - 07:24 Permalink
Sibrina Collins / College of Arts and Sciences at Lawrence Technological University

Hi Joanne,

Thanks for sharing this link too.

Sibrina

Mon, 08/22/2011 - 15:20 Permalink
Lee Park / Williams College
I'd be happy to be involved in something like this and think it's a great idea.  Even in cases where we're not entirely able to comment on the science in a particular proposal, there are sometimes (even often) more general components of a proposal that can have a big impact (for positive or negative) on potential reviewers.  It's so easy to get lost in the details of a proposal when you're writing one that you miss some of the bigger picture ideas you need to communicate (I've certainly made that mistake myself!)  So much better to work some of those things out here rather than having them raised in the panel discussion at NSF/NIH!
Mon, 08/22/2011 - 21:30 Permalink
Sibrina Collins / College of Arts and Sciences at Lawrence Technological University

Lee,

What is really neat about your commentary is that you are really emphasizing the importance of effective mentoring.

Sibrina 

Mon, 08/22/2011 - 22:06 Permalink
Sibrina Collins / College of Arts and Sciences at Lawrence Technological University

Perhaps, we should consider providing feedback on manuscripts as well.  Scott provided me with good comments on a draft I am getting ready to submit for publication.

Sibrina

Wed, 05/15/2013 - 13:42 Permalink
Kyle Grice / DePaul University

I would be very interested to be involved in in a pre-review process, on both sides of the coin, and for both grants and papers. That's one thing I am definitely going to miss about being a graduate student/postdoc: helping read over other students paper drafts and similar documents. I don't know why, but i enjoy it.

Cheers,

-Kyle

Thu, 05/16/2013 - 21:25 Permalink
Sibrina Collins / College of Arts and Sciences at Lawrence Technological University

Kyle, I will certainly send my next draft to you!

SNC

Fri, 05/17/2013 - 19:29 Permalink