Archived 2017 FAQ
This was the FAQ for ROSES-2017. For the current FAQs on the current ROSES see http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/faqs/
What's new in ROSES-2017? How does it differ from prior ROSES?
These are the changes compared to last year:
In Appendix A three new programs have been added: FIREChem (A.23 an airborne campaign biomass burning and air quality field study to be conducted in the continental U.S. from late June to mid-September 2018), Supporting UN sustainable development Goals 14 and 15 in the context of climate variability and change (A.8), and a science team for the EVI-2 ISS Instrument ECOSTRESS (A.9). Also, this year Land Cover/Land Use Change (A.2) is focused on multi-source land imaging and not using two-step process.
Appendix C has added the Rosetta Data Analysis program (C.20) and an OSIRIS-REx Participating Scientist opportunity in program (C.22), and ROSES may solicit Instruments for Gondola for High-Altitude Planetary Science, which was released as draft text last year (C.24). Moreover, Planetary Science is has split its Early Career Fellowship Program into two ROSES program elements: applications to be named an Early Career Fellow will be made via program element C.23, and applications for start-up funds for those already named fellows are to be submitted in response to program element C.16.
There have been three major changes in Appendix D: A new guest investigator program for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission has been added in program element D.11, Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship (RTF) program in Astrophysics (D.9) has been revamped, and the Theoretical and Computational Astrophysics Networks (TCAN) has returned after many years in program element D.12. Other changes will occur throughout the year announced by Amendments, corrections, and clarifications. Subscribe to the NSPIRES mailing lists and the ROSES-2017 RSS feed for updates.
Awards deriving from ROSES-2017 will include terms and conditions requiring that as accepted manuscript versions of peer-reviewed publications (hereinafter "manuscripts") that result from ROSES awards must be uploaded into NASA’s part of the PubMed Central (PMC) repository called NASA PubSpace. It is my understanding that NASA Civil Servant authors and papers authored by contractors at NASA centers will use their normal DAA (1676) approval process and their manuscripts will be automatically uploaded for them.
The ROSES summary of solicitation has been clarified and updated in a number of small ways including Section I(d) of the ROSES summary of solicitation on how to apply for high-end computing (HEC) time. Requests for HEC resources are submitted via the eBooks system at https://hec.reisys.com/hec/computing/index.do. The HEC eBooks system will send you PDF of your computing request which you will upload as an "Appendix" along with your proposal. NSPIRES will also prompt you for your HEC Request Number (specified in the email and on the PDF itself).
For a list of all of the sections of the ROSES summary of solicitation that have been updated please see Section I(c) of the ROSES summary of solicitation.
The 2017 version of the NASA Guidebook for Proposers, which should be posted soon, has been reorganized since last year.
As a reminder to those who did not propose last year, these are significant changes made in recent years:
Proposers to ROSES-17 need to omit salaries, fringe, overhead and total cost from the main proposal PDF, but include them in the NSPIRES cover page budget and the separately uploaded Total Budget PDF, see FAQ8 below for details..
First, the NSPIRES cover pages. All costs, including salaries and overhead of NASA civil servants, must now be included in the web cover page budget. This is different because, in recent years, NASA civil servant costs were not included on the cover pages. If your institution is not a NASA center, this means your NASA Co-Investigators must provide you with their full and total costs so that they may be included in your budget. (The funds to NASA centers will still be sent directly from NASA, and not sent as a subaward). Note that reviewers will not be able to see the salary and overhead numbers that you enter in the NSPIRES cover pages, but program officers will. You will too if you look at the proposal after submission. Don’t freak out, you are not seeing the redacted version for the reviewers, you are seeing the program officer’s version.
Second, The budget section of the main proposal document. This section is the detailed budget and its justification that you prepare for reviewers. The change in 2016 was that no salaries or benefits for any participant or overhead for any organization should be listed or mentioned in the budget section, or for that matter, anywhere else in the main body of the proposal. You should only tabulate the direct costs of your proposal, excluding salary and benefits. Budgets for all subawards or NASA centers presented in the main proposal document should be treated the same way as the budget for your own institution, i.e., do not list or mention salary, benefits, or overhead. The budget justification in the proposal should document and rationalize all costs other than salary/benefits and overhead costs. All proposals must include the Summary of Work effort (outside of the budget, see Table 1 of the ROSES summary of solicitation) which, along with any rationale of the time provided in the budget justification, will allow peer reviewers to evaluate whether the level of effort is appropriate. See Section IV(b)iii of the ROSES summary of solicitation and the Planetary Division templates for examples of these tables. The proposed time of the participants, not the costs of the time, will be seen by peer reviewers. Peer reviewers will still see and evaluate the costs of things other than time and overhead.
Third, you will upload a separately version of the budget as the "Total Budget" PDF with a full budget consistent with the numbers you entered in the NSPIRES cover pages and, if needed, providing greater detail. This "Total Budget" includes everything, salary, fringe, benefits for all participants and overhead from all types of organizations, including NASA civil servants. It should contain any needed justification for the salary and overhead and overhead rates. This "Total Budget" PDF document will not be shown to reviewers.
See http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/how-to-guide/nspires-CSlabor/ for more information including screen captures and details on how to handle sub awards and Co-Is at government labs.
In addition, a number of other changes have been made including:
Data Management Plans (DMPs) are still required for most proposals and in most cases the DMP will be collected in a plain text box on the NSPIRES cover page. For those proposing to Astrophysics, Earth Science and Heliophysics (Appendices A, B & D of ROSES) see http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/faqs/dmp-faq-roses/.
Proposers to Planetary Science (all of Appendix C and E.4) must provide data management plan as part of the proposal PDF, see Section 3.5.1.of C.1 and this pagewith some instructions and a Planetary Division template for DMPs. PDART (program element C.7) evaluates DMPs as part of merit and has special requirements.
The restrictions involving China persist in FY2017, please see http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/faqs/prc-faq-roses/
If you are looking for the FAQ from last year you may view the archived 2016 FAQ at http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/faqs/archived-2016-faq/
