Proposal Development and Review Exercise Proposal Guidelines This document includes guidelines for the proposal development and review exercise to be conducted during the Summer Institute 2000. All participants must develop a proposal in groups of 3-5. TOPIC: The topic of the proposal must be related to some aspect of land cover/land use change, and must include an interdisciplinary perspective of the problem. DEADLINE: The Program Officers (Drs. Binford and Wood) must receive all proposals (paper and electronic submissions) by Tuesday, August 1, 2000 at noon (12:00 AM). There will be NO exceptions to this deadline. An electronic version of each proposal (in Word format on a PC or Mac disk) should accompany the printed version. PROPOSAL LENGTH: The maximum length of the proposal must be five single-sided pages. The minimum width of all margins must be 0.75 inches. Single-spaced text is acceptable and the minimum font size is 10 points. The 5-page limit includes only project narrative (i.e., project description and justification). The limit does not include figures and tables, references, budget and budget justification pages, or investigators' biographical information. CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION: The proposals will be evaluated according to the following criteria (refer to Dr. Paul Filmer's lecture notes on evaluation of research proposals): 1. Research performance competence a . Technical soundness of proposal b. Adequacy of institutional resources 2. Intrinsic merit of the proposed research a. Likelihood that the research will lead to new discoveries or advances. b. Impact on progress in the field. 3. Utility of the proposed research (Likelihood that the proposed research will contribute to the achievement of goals extrinsic to a specific research field). 4. Effect of proposed research on physical and human infrastructure (potential of the proposed project to better understanding or improvement of the quality, distribution, or effectiveness of science base). For any questions on these criteria, please contact the Program Officers. BUDGET GUIDELINES: The budget for a given proposal cannot exceed 150,000 US dollars for the entire duration of the project. Maximum project duration is three years, although shorter programs are acceptable if the scientific goals can be achieved. The main objective of including a budget in the proposal is for participants to go through the process of ensuring that resources requested are commensurate with the work proposed, and that every proposed task is supported in the budget. One problem of this exercise is that research personnel costs may vary widely across institutions or countries. To avoid these differences (and just for the sake of this exercise), all budgets should use the guidelines listed below. All figures represent annual salaries at 100% dedication. No other personnel costs (e.g., fringe benefits) can be included for this exercise. Personnel annual salaries: Senior researcher: 50,000 US dollars. Junior researcher: 38,000 US dollars Post-doctoral researcher: 27,000 US dollars Research assistant/technician: 25,000 US dollars Graduate assistant: 15,000 US dollars Secretarial support: 19,000 US dollars Travel costs must be realistic and explained in the budget justification. Allowable per diem for field work will be 100 dollars. The cost of requested equipment (e.g., computers and instruments) or data purchases (e.g., satellite imagery) can be based on current US prices (i.e., excluding custom taxes or duties). No institutional overhead can be included in the budgets (that is, only so-called direct costs must be included).