Before Labor Day this year, a message popped up on my mobile phone, and an email from the Foundation Committee came into my mailbox.
The subject of the email is very direct, and the words "2022 XX and XX Engineering Discipline Review Work Letter" came into view. After seeing it, I felt a little happy in my heart. It feels pretty good to be needed by the Foundation Committee.
The main content of the email is the following three sentences:
The XX and XX engineering disciplines of the Engineering and Materials Science Department of the National Natural Science Foundation of China invite you to review a total of 13 projects of various types;
In the review work in 2022, please carefully read the following review points, strictly abide by the review discipline, eliminate all kinds of external interference, carry out the peer review work fairly, and return the review comments on time;
According to the schedule of the review work, please complete the review work of this category of projects before May 10, 2022.
After these three sentences, there are requirements for review, precautions for review, management methods and links of various projects, and at the end of the email are 17 attachments in PDF format.
Fund initial evaluation: 53.8% of comprehensive evaluations above B
After receiving the review email from the National Science Foundation, I kept thinking in my heart, how to make a quick and good review? Because, from the attitude of the National Fund Committee this year, it can be seen that this matter is more serious than before, and there is also RCC supervision and incentives for review experts, which did not exist before.
I have been thinking about this review for several days. Coincidentally, the school has no holidays for the May Day holiday, and works according to normal working hours. So, on May 3, I logged into the National Natural Science Foundation of China website and downloaded the 13 projects to be reviewed one by one.
After opening it, I found that these 13 projects are the third type of scientific problem attributes: demand traction, breaking through bottlenecks.
After that, take a screenshot of the items in the communication review opinion form submitted online for review and save it. It is convenient to fill in the comprehensive evaluation, funding level and review comments in the follow-up.
In order to facilitate the summary and filling in of review opinions, I created a new EXCEL form, listing name, age, title, unit, project title, project summary, comprehensive evaluation, funding level, reason for judging demand, scientific value, innovation and feasibility, and others and other items.
Then, I filled in the above summary table with the relevant information of each project, and put the same or similar research projects in the upper and lower adjacent rows for comparison and evaluation.
Finally, the results of the preliminary evaluation of the 13 projects are: the comprehensive evaluation level is 7B5C1D, and the comprehensive evaluation above B accounts for 53.8%; the funding level is 2A5B6C, and the proportion of funding above B is also 53.8%.
The reason why there is no A in the comprehensive evaluation level, but there are 2 A in the funding level is that the summary cannot fully evaluate the quality of the project.
Later, during the re-evaluation of fund projects, it was found that some project abstracts were well written, but the fund booklet was very bad ; some project abstracts were not well written, but the fund booklet was just the opposite.
This is the result of the initial evaluation of the fund project. After the statistics are completed, I am surprised by this result. Because, the data of 985 colleges and universities and 211 colleges and universities are all ahead of general undergraduate colleges and universities, and the funding rate exceeds 66%.
It has to be said that the teachers of 985/211 colleges and universities do pay more attention to the declaration of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, which also leads to the basic condition for the evaluation of titles above the deputy high school in 985/211 colleges and universities is the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Looking at the distribution of professional titles, only one of the 13 fund applicants is an associate professor, and the others are lecturers, assistant researchers and other intermediate titles. Taking a closer look, this associate professor is still an associate professor at a 211 university, and the evaluation result and funding level are both C, which is a bit surprising.
Looking at the age distribution again, the applicants for the 13 funds are mainly concentrated between 30-35 years old. Statistics show that the funding rate for 30, 32, 33, and 34-year-olds exceeds 50%.
Fund re-evaluation: omission of "key technology" and direct downgrade
After the initial evaluation of the fund project, I did not immediately follow up with the re-evaluation. Instead, I rested for two days, adjusted my status, and then started to re-evaluate.
First, I conducted the first round of re-evaluation on two projects with a funding level of A and one project with a comprehensive evaluation of D; then, I conducted a second round of re-evaluation on five projects with a funding level of B; For the six projects of C, the third round of re-evaluation will be carried out.
This re-evaluation is basically a project-by-project review, from project basis, research objectives, research content, research plan, to innovation, research foundation, working conditions, and finally look at personal resume and representative works.
For each project, first read it from beginning to end, and then repeatedly read the project basis, research content, research plan and innovation.
In this way, it usually takes about an hour for a project to be evaluated. In this way, the project focused on re-evaluation for two days, and finally summarized the results.
During the re-evaluation process, a small accident occurred. Among the 13 funded projects reviewed this time, there are actually 12 projects that missed the item of key technology when writing the research proposal . When I saw it for the first time, I was quite angry, and directly lowered this project by one level.
However, I still have an extra mind. When evaluating other projects, pay special attention to whether there are key technologies. Later, it was found that none of the 12 projects were written, so I had to write the lack of key technologies in the "Other Suggestions" column.
Finally, the re-evaluation results of the 13 projects are as follows: the comprehensive evaluation level is 1A5B6C1D, and the comprehensive evaluation of B or above accounts for 46.2%; the funding level is 3A3B7C, and the proportion of B or above funding is also 46.2%.
This is the result data of the fund project re-evaluation.
Among them, the funding rate of 985 colleges and universities dropped from 100% to 50%, and one project was downgraded from B grade to C grade after the re-evaluation of the application .
The funding rate of 211 universities and other universities is consistent with the results of the initial evaluation of the fund. Although the overall funding rate has not changed, but for a specific project, the level of funding has risen and decreased.
Among other colleges and universities, one project’s comprehensive evaluation has been upgraded from B to A, making it the only project among 13 projects with an A comprehensive evaluation and priority funding for A.
Judging from the above 13 projects, 985 universities and 211 universities have natural resource endowments in applying for the National Natural Science Foundation of China . They not only have national-level and ministerial-level laboratories as hard support platforms, but also books, software and other software resources. Sexual resources, which is also the place that attracts young doctors.
The situation in the real world may be that the funding rate of other universities is about 50% of that of 211 universities; the funding rate of 211 universities is about 50-70% of that of 985 universities. In other words, the real funding rate of other colleges and universities is about 10%, and it may be lower.
Of course, there are also some dark horses in other colleges and universities. For example, Shenzhen University, Southern Medical University . In recent years, the school has invested heavily in digging talents from all over the world to form disciplines and teams. Therefore, the number of projects approved and their funding rate are at the same level as those of 985 universities.
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