first five years, the IDOE Office received some 778 proposals, and funded 

 422, or about 54 percent, at an average of $160,000. (Each such grant 

 may be one of five or six making up a single project whose total funding 

 is on the order of $1 million.) By way of comparison, the Oceanography 

 Section of the Division of Environmental Sciences in NSF's Research 

 Directorate considered in a typical year (fiscal 1974) 460 unsolicited 

 proposals, and funded 282 (61 percent) in amounts averaging about 

 $48,300. During the first year or two, there was some confusion reported 

 between NSF's IDOE Office and the scientific community as to IDOE's 

 purpose and substance. As a consequence a number of the early proposals 

 were not funded because they were inappropriate to the kind of program 

 that was slowly taking shape. With the passage of time the process has 

 become smoother and more efficient, and communication between IDOE 

 program managers and the scientific community has improved. Recent 

 proposal turndowns have been primarily either for poor scientific quality, 

 insufficient funds for potentially good projects (the Indian Ocean leg of 

 GEOSECS, for example), or because the guidelines would be stretched 

 too far to justify support (the land aspects of metallogenesis) . 



Although IDOE initially took on several projects which were already 

 underway or in an advanced stage of planning,^ for the most part the 

 ]3rocess of identifying potential topics for IDOE support and laying the 

 initial groundwork for project development has been accomplished through 

 workshops and planning grants. The philosophy and practice are described 

 in Appendix 2; the result has been that to a large extent, ideas emanate 

 from and are developed by the scientists themselves, with guidance from 

 NSF. While this has undoubtedly done much to keep the program attuned 

 to current ideas and capabilities within the scientific community, one con- 

 sequence has been that scientists who participate in the initial workshop 

 and planning grant that develops a new ])roject appear to be at an 

 advantage when it comes to submitting proposals to participate in that 

 project. This, combined with the nearly level funding of the IDOE 

 program and the long-term nature of most IDOE projects, has made it 

 difficult for scientists not already in the program to break in. 



To manage IDOE projects, a ])ractice iw^hich is described in Ap- 

 pendix 2) has been developed in which much of the management func- 

 tion is carried out by the participating scientists themselves, rather than 

 by government officials. This has avoided problems arising from manage- 

 ment insensitivity to conditions conduci\e to good science. However it 

 has imposed a substantial demand on the scientists' time for una\oidable 



NORPAX and CLE.\ were adapted from ongoing studies; GEOSECS, CLIMAP, 

 MODE, South /Xtlantic Margins and Xa/.ca Plate were in ad\anced stages of 

 planning. 



12 



