Transparency and Accountability in NSF Research Awards

Over the last several years, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been taking a number of steps to make its processes and the science it funds more transparent and accountable. As part of this effort, an increased emphasis is being placed on the public accessibility of award titles and abstracts.The embedded links provide a description of the overall NSF Transparency and Accountability efforts and specific information regarding the clarity of NSF award titles and abstracts. Specifically, it is intended that the first paragraph of an award abstract be understandable to members of the public, with succeeding paragraphs providing additional specialist-oriented information.

The NSF Division of Astronomical Sciences has been working to respond to the new emphasis by gearing new award abstracts and titles more toward the public, reducing technical jargon, and indicating the broader importance of the research. For some awards made in Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, we have changed the titles of projects from those submitted in the original proposals, replacing or defining specialist acronyms and terminology. As we move to the FY 2017 proposal season, we ask the cooperation of the proposer community in using proposal titles that are understandable by non-astronomers, and request that successful proposers be prepared to work with program officers to create publicly accessible award abstracts.