GSC Structure Review Advisory Committee - Terms of Reference

Terms of Reference - April 28, 2007

Background

NSERC is reviewing the current Grant Selection Committee (GSC) structure for the Discovery Grants program, with the goal of ensuring that the peer review process can accommodate the evolution in research areas, the increase in interdisciplinary research and the growing workload of many committees.

The Committee will take into consideration:

1. The growth of interdisciplinary, newly emerging areas of research and changes within disciplines;
2. Mechanisms for enabling appropriate complementarity between GSCs and reducing unnecessary overlaps in the purview of the GSCs, as well as reducing and/or allowing the appropriate management of gaps between GSCs;
3. Differences in culture and practices (methodological approaches, indicators for assessing performance, quality and impact of research, funding philosophies and patterns) among the disciplines and research areas;
4. The pros and cons of the past “GSC proliferation” approach to manage an increasing number of applications;
5. The need to maintain the credibility, integrity and transparency of the current peer review system.

Membership

The Committee will have 14 members. Members will have broad perspectives, which may come from holding senior positions as researchers or administrators within Canadian or foreign universities, granting agencies, government departments or the private sector. They should be familiar with the main issues facing research today and the way in which it is organized and carried out. Committee members will also have an excellent knowledge of peer review grant-selection processes. Members will not represent their own disciplines or their own institutions. Rather, they will use their broadly-based experience on behalf of the Canadian natural sciences and engineering research community.

Mandate

The Advisory Committee will provide external oversight of the GSC Structure Review Project. The committee will report to Isabelle Blain, NSERC’s Vice-President, Research Grants and Scholarships (RGS). The work of the Committee will be supported by Andrew Woodsworth, the Project Director, and by other NSERC staff as required.

The Committee will advise NSERC senior management on the following:

• An appropriate GSC structure that is forward looking, ensuring that changes to the existing GSC structure:
  • are supported by clear justification,
  • lead to significant improvements in the GSC process,
  • include consideration of their impact on other NSERC programs such as Scholarships,
  • ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of any peer review process, and
  • provide for maximum accountability to the research community, government and taxpayers;
• Possible new operational procedures of the GSCs;
• The management of the project, its effectiveness and completeness;
• The consultation process, ensuring that:
  • a sufficiently broad sample of the community has been engaged, and
  • an appropriate range of issues have been considered;
• An appropriate transition road map, if substantial changes to the structure are recommended, ensuring that the process for changing from the current system to the recommended system is:
  • viable, and
  • designed to minimize disruption to the client community of researchers and to GSC members;
• Mechanisms and processes that would clearly demonstrate to the Canadian public the value that results from funding research in the natural sciences and engineering.

The committee will present its report to the Committee on Grants and Scholarships and to Council.

The detailed management of the project will be the responsibility of an NSERC internal Steering Committee, chaired by the Vice-President, RGS.

Frequency of meetings

The Committee will meet every few months, at key points during the project. While some meetings will be held through telephone conference calls, others will be held face-to-face. The work of the committee should last approximately 18 months.