Dual Anonymous Review

Starting from Cycle 17, the Phase-1 proposal review will be done in a dual-anonymous fashion. Dual-anonymous peer review (DAPR) means that not only will the proposers not know who their reviewers are, but the reviewers will not know who the proposers are, at least not until after they have evaluated the scientific merit of the proposal. This implementation of DAPR will be based on that employed by STScI in the evaluation of Hubble Space Telescope observing proposals in recent cycles, in that the names of team members will ultimately be revealed to the peer review panel after all of the proposals have been reviewed for scientific merit. At that time the peer reviewers will have the opportunity to comment on the qualifications and capabilities of the team. The selection official will take into consideration the assessment of the team's qualifications when making the selection.

The primary motivation for reviewing proposals in a dual-anonymous fashion is to minimize unconscious bias in the review process. PIs should consult the Guidelines for Anonymous Proposals document in the "Other Documents" section of the Swift solicitation on NSPIRES for instructions on writing proposals appropriate for a dual-anonymous reviews. In particular:

• Proposals should eliminate language that identifies the proposers or institution, as discussed in the Guidelines for Anonymous Proposals.

• PIs are required to upload a one-page "Team Expertise" PDF through ARK as a separate upload when submitting the science justification. This document will be distributed to the review panel after all proposals have been reviewed and rated, only for programs which are in the selectable range. This is to allow the reviewers to assess the team capabilities required to execute a given proposed science investigation. If there are clear, compelling deficiencies in the expertise required to see through the goals of the proposal, the panel may decide to flag the submission accordingly, and provide a detailed justification in its comments to NASA. This review may not be used to flag "up" proposals for having strong team qualifications, nor may it be used to re-evaluate or upgrade proposals.

• Proposals that do not follow these dual-anonymous guidelines may be returned without review.

The scientific justification can be generated using the software of the PI's choice, as long as it is converted to PDF format before submission. However, the font size and margins should meet the proposal style format requirement described in the ROSES Summary of Solicitation. Specifically, the text body font size should be no smaller than 15 characters per inch. Figure captions and references may be smaller but must be legible. A 12 point font size is recommended, margins should be at least 1 inch on US letter size paper. Proposals must not contain hyperlinks to additional material other than references to public information that do not identify the PI, Co-Is or their institutions.