The EHE Office of Research provides a variety of mechanisms to provide feedback during the proposal development process. If you are interesting in taking advantage of one of these review mechanisms, please contact Kim Lightle (614.688.3485) to talk about the process and schedule a review.
Pink Team Review
The pink team review occurs at least three months before the proposal is due. The pink team review will include a person from the EHE Office of Research, a methodologist, and one additional researcher. The review team will have time to review the solicitation and the outline and then meet with the proposer (and their team) to talk about what is being proposed. The purpose of this review is make sure that what is proposed is significant, innovative and impactful and well-aligned with the call.
Expectations for proposer:
- An outline of the proposal based on the required sections of the RFP and is complete.
- There is content in each section of the outline even if it is in bulleted form.
- Some graphics have been added to the outline.
- Emphasis is on content, not on form, style, or grammatical perfection.
Questions for reviewers:
- Is the story compelling? Do clear themes emerge?
- Does it speaks to the RFP requirements and underlying mission of the sponsor?
- Is the information and data current and relevant?
- Are there any red flags that signal a major problem in the proposal that could, if not properly addressed, result in the proposal being non-compliant or just not competitive?
Red Team Review
The red team review happens no later than one month before the submission date. Conversation about getting ready for the red team review need to happen no later than six weeks before the submission deadline. The EHE Office of Research will recruit at least three reviewers (with input from the proposer), with the understanding that reviewers will have at least a week to read and provide feedback and that during this time the proposer is not making any changes to the narrative or research plan. The reviewers can be from the EHE, from other departments/colleges from OSU, or from outside the university (they can Skype into the face-to-face meeting). The review should have the same magnitude as formal panel reviews. The proposer will know who the reviewers are and the reviews will be shared with the proposer during a face-to-face meeting.
Expectations for proposer:
- The narrative should be nearly complete (95%).
- The document should have final or near final graphics and tables.
- All sections should have complete narratives and the documents should be formatted the same as it will be submitted. In regard to this last point, depending on the review process, the document may or may not retain the full RFP references but should retain RFP paragraph references after the heading titles.
Questions for reviewers: The questions that guide the review will be derived from the RFP and sent to reviewers in template form. The following questions provide a broad base of questions that could be chosen to guide the review:
- Does the proposal articulate a plan of work that describes research and development strategies appropriate for attaining its goals consistent with the type of study proposed?
- Does the proposal address how the major design iterations and resulting evidence will be developed to support or question key assumptions underlying the research and development plan?
- Does the proposal identify all measures to be developed or employed in generating evidence of the project’s success and provide evidence of or plans to establish the technical quality (e.g., validity and reliability) of each measure?
- Does the proposal include detailed descriptions of the study goals, design and implementation processes, data collection and quality, and analysis and methods for producing findings?
- Does the proposal describe appropriate mechanisms to assess success through project-specific external review and feedback processes?
- Does the proposal describe the expertise of the external reviewer(s) and explain how that expertise relates to the goals and objectives of the proposal?
- Does the proposal specify how the PI will report and use results of the project’s external, critical review process?
- Does the proposal include a creative communication strategy for reaching a broad audience for the findings of the project, including, where appropriate, scholars, practitioners, policymakers and public audiences?
- Does the proposal identify the key elements of a communication plan, e.g., target audiences and identification of the channels / media / technologies appropriate for reaching specific audiences?
- Does the proposal demonstrate the expertise of an interdisciplinary team?
- Does the proposal include a brief narrative describing the expertise of personnel and their contributions to the proposed work, including those responsible for the external review?
- Does the proposal include a section that discusses the broader impacts of the proposed activities?
