New RPG Critique Template
August 6, 2010
The Center for Scientific Review has just released a new critique template for Research Project Grant reviews (i.e., R01s, R03s, and R21s), and it has an interesting change. While the subsections for the five review criteria (Significance, Innovation, Approach, Investigator, and Environment) still incorporate the bulleted list Strenghs and Weaknesses format, the Overall Impact section now has eliminated the bulleted list and requires a paragraph:
Write a paragraph summarizing the factors that informed your Overall Impact score.
I wonder if this was in response to applicant complaints that the bulleted Overall Impact section was too cryptic and uninformative?
DrugMonkey 
August 6, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Right. So when do they respond to the applicant complaints that the whole component scores thing is too confusing and do away with those?
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August 6, 2010 at 2:01 pm
It’s fucken stupid to even listen to applicant “complaints”. Because they all boil down to “waaaah. my grant didn’t get funded, and it’s gotta be somebody’s FAULT.”
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August 6, 2010 at 2:06 pm
CPP is right, winners don’t bitch about cryptic paragraphs, they just take the cheese and run with it.
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August 6, 2010 at 2:20 pm
CPP – not exactly. Some of the bulleted items on the reviews contradict each other (same statements used for strengths and weaknesses by the same reviewer). This is just one example. How is anyone supposed to respond to that in a revised application?
I wish there was a mechanism for reviewing reviewers. Some reviews are constructive and very helpful; others are dismissive, useless, and of course they suck.
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