New Proposal Process – for apple horticulture/postharvest and apple crop protection committees only
Significant changes have been made to this portion of the process
Committee research priorities are organized into review categories based on proposals received. Examples of review categories for apple horticulture and postharvest might include organic, food safety, and postharvest. Once established, each committee member is assigned to at least one content panel based on their expertise/interest and asked to review new full proposals which fall within the assigned category(ies).
Each content panel will have several reviewers, avoiding conflicts of interest. Individuals who have a conflict of interest (example: listed as cooperator on proposal), will recuse themselves from scoring that proposal. Some reviewers may be assigned to multiple panels, depending on their expertise, interests and need. Proposal files will be forwarded to the content panelists for review and scoring. Content panelists will review the proposals and grade them against the scoring criteria (see scorecard link below). Scorecards are to be returned to the Administrative Officer (AO) by the deadline date. Committee members are required to submit reviews of each full proposal assigned to their content panel and are also encouraged to read all proposals in preparation for committee discussion.
If a content panelist has questions about proposed projects, s/he will send them to the AO. The AO will forward the questions to the researcher and ask to respond. All questions and responses will be sent to the entire content panel.
Once all scores have been received, the AO will prepare a spreadsheet which reflects all proposal scores from highest to lowest and all comments for presentation at the committee meeting in February. The AO will also send the compiled scores and comments of the content panels to its members. At the meeting, the scoring of each proposal will be shared with the group along with comments. The entire group is then encouraged to add additional comments on the proposal and determine whether the scoring accurately reflects the group’s opinion of the project. After all projects have been reviewed, the proposal scores will be sorted in order from highest ranked to lowest and those results will be shared with the WTFRC board for final review and determination of funding.