NSF Standard Research Grant

Review Criteria: Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts

Every standard NSF proposal is evaluated against NSF's two core review criteria. Reviewers apply both criteria across the Project Summary and Project Description, so the proposal narrative needs to speak to each explicitly rather than treating them as an afterthought.

• Intellectual Merit — the potential of the proposed activity to advance knowledge within its own field or across fields
• Broader Impacts — the potential of the proposed activity to benefit society and contribute to specific, desired societal outcomes
• Project Summary structure — must be entered directly in Research.gov and contain distinct Overview, Intellectual Merit, and Broader Impacts sections; omitting any of the three triggers return without review
• Project Description — must explicitly address Broader Impacts, and must also address Results from Prior NSF Support when the PI or co-PI has received NSF funding in the past five years

Required Sections

A standard NSF proposal is built from the same core section list regardless of directorate, submitted as a package through Research.gov.

• Cover Sheet — system-generated in Research.gov
• Project Summary — Overview, Intellectual Merit, and Broader Impacts
• Project Description — the main narrative, 15 pages
• References Cited
• Biographical Sketch(es) — SciENcv format, 3 pages per senior person
• Budget & Budget Justification — Budget Justification capped at 5 pages
• Facilities, Equipment & Other Resources
• Current & Pending Support — also SciENcv format
• Data Management & Sharing Plan — 2 pages, prepared using the Research.gov DMSP tool

Page Limits and Formatting

PAPPG page limits are firm and enforced at submission; exceeding them is one of the most common reasons a proposal is returned without review.

• Project Description — 15 pages, the longest of any NSF proposal type
• Budget Justification — 5 pages
• Data Management & Sharing Plan (DMSP) — 2 pages
• Biographical Sketch — 3 pages per person, generated through SciENcv; other formats are not accepted
• Current & Pending Support — also generated through SciENcv

Conditional Requirements

Depending on the specifics of the project, additional documents may be required alongside the core section list.

• Mentoring Plan — required in Supplementary Documents whenever the budget requests support for postdoctoral scholars or graduate students
• Safe and Inclusive Working Environments (SIWE) plan — required for off-campus or off-site research, describing field safety protocols and incident reporting
• Budget categories — must follow NSF's standard categories: senior personnel, other personnel, equipment, travel, participant support, and other direct/indirect costs

Standard vs. the Special NSF Mechanisms

The defining feature of a standard proposal is what it does not have: no shortened Project Description, no internal-only review, and no requirement to secure Program Officer concurrence before submitting. RAPID (5-page Project Description, up to $300,000, internal review) and EAGER (8-page Project Description, up to $400,000, internal review) exist specifically to bypass the standard process for time-sensitive or high-risk work that would not survive external peer review. If a project doesn't meet the specific urgency or high-risk criteria those mechanisms require, it should go through the standard process described here -- full 15-page Project Description, full external merit review, no advance PO concurrence required.