Question to NSF: My policy is to make public both my proposals and criticisms of my research, on the ChaosBook.org homepages. Does placing NSF reviewers comments of my proposal on my homepage violate NSF confidentiality rules? I would cite only a selection of critical excerpts, with the byline "from the NSF review of this proposal". Motivation: I believe that openness and availability of such critical evaluations helps my colleagues enganged in related research communicate better to the larger physics community. sincerely yours Predrag Cvitanovic' ---------------------------- Answer from NSF: NSF shares reviews with PIs (but not the applicant institutions) -- minus reviewer identities. You should not receive reviewer-identifying information, but errors might be made. If that should occur, please respect their confidentiality. Otherwise, you are free to disclose the content of the reviews you received. Usually, this is with other selected researchers in your field, but it could extend to a web site. However, since this is atypical, we'd appreciate it if you added "I have posted these comments from the NSF review of this proposal". That will help make clear that you decided to do this. Otherwise, I expect we'll get questions about it, when it's ok if you'd like to do this. One caveat, and this is between you and your university. If your proposal (and possibly the reviews) might contain proprietary or potentially patentable material, you may want to talk with your SRO and university counsel about disclosure. Disclosure of such information on your web site would likely destroy any patent rights the university and you might have. I don't know if that might potentially apply to this proposal or not. D. Matthew Powell Assistant General Counsel Office of the General Counsel National Science Foundation 4201 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1265 Arlington, VA 22230