Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide

Why this matters here

NSF’s Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide states merit-review principles and criteria that shape how proposals are evaluated—including attention to intellectual merit, broader impacts, feasibility, and related standards of fundable work. When Incentives Become the Moral Language cites those criteria among portable proxies—publication counts, citations, grant competitiveness—that become a practical definition of scholarly merit. PAPPG defines review rules; the book asks how fields learn which questions are worth attempting once funding speech sets the file.