NICER Proposers Guide - Cycle 8
1. Overview
This
ROSES Research Opportunities,
NNH25ZDA001N-NICER
,
solicits General Observer proposals for NICER, for data analysis to be performed in the
March 1, 2026
to February 28, 2027 period.
Proposals in Cycle 8 are for analysis of archival data only, and may include analysis of data from other observatories as long as they were acquired in coordination with archival NICER observations and contribute materially to the proposed investigation. No new NICER observations may be requested in Cycle 8.
General information about the NICER mission and the X-ray Timing Instrument (XTI) can be found in the NICER Mission Guide document. More detailed information is available on the NICER Documentation page. Tools and files to assist in proposal preparation are available on the NICER Proposal Tools page.
2. Deadline
Proposals are due no later than
September 11, 2025, 4:30 pm ET
.
3. Proposal Elements and Submission Method
Additional details concerning Cycle 8 are provided in Appendix D.03 of ROSES-25. There will
be a two-phase proposal process. Phase 1 is for science proposals. Phase 2 is for budget proposals for successful Phase 1 proposers for whom funding is available.
Proposal submission is done via the HEASARC ARK/RPS online system. Hard-copy submission is not required. The following elements are required:
- Proposal form (cover page & general form) generated by, and submitted through, ARK/RPS.
- Scientific justification in PDF format: The science justification and
description of the NICER investigation should not exceed 4 pages. The reference list is not
included in that 4-page limit and may be provided on a separate page. These documents should be included in a single PDF totalling no more than 5 pages, which proposers will upload through ARK/RPS.
The following should not be submitted as part of the Phase 1 proposal:
- The PI's institution's own cover page.
- Supporting material (e.g., Curriculum Vitae, pending/current support).
- Formatted electronic copies of the ARK/RPS form.
- Hard copies of any of the above, including electronically required elements.
IMPORTANT!! For Cycle 4 and thereafter, science justifications should not include information identifying the proposer team. See the
Dual-Anonymous Review section for more information.
In order to submit a NICER proposal, PIs must first create an ARK account and/or join the NICER RPS group. PIs can then access the NICER Remote Proposal System form via ARK/RPS.
We provide below some key details for this cycle. For further details, consult the ARK/RPS help page for NICER.
Cover Page
- Provide a title (maximum 120 characters) and abstract (maximum 800 characters) for your NICER proposal. The Principal Investigator's name, institution, address, telephone and email address should be already populated. Incorrect information should be corrected within the PI's user profile, not in the NICER RPS form itself.
- In addition to investigations utilizing NICER archival observations alone, investigations
analyzing past observations coordinated between NICER and other observatories may also be proposed during Cycle 8.
- Institutional endorsement is not required by NASA in NICER phase 1 proposals. If endorsement is required or desired by the PI's institution, contact the NICER help desk for information on how to submit that endorsement.
General Form
- Enter the list of Co-Investigators (Co-Is) for your NICER proposal. To facilitate checking for conflicts of interest during the peer review process, the Co-I's institution must be chosen from the menu (thereby enforcing a uniform set of names). Please check the list of institutions and contact the RPS Help Desk as soon as possible if your Co-I's institution is not on this list.
- Up to 15 Co-Investigators can be entered into the RPS form. Any additional Co-Investigators can be specified in the team expertise PDF, which should include (again) the complete list of Co-Investigators.
- In some instances, the PI may wish the first Co-I to serve as a backup for communication regarding the NICER proposal. In this case, the "Contact First Co-Investigator" box must be checked, and a telephone number provided. If the box has not been checked, communications regarding the proposal will be routed ONLY through the PI.
- Note that bilateral collaborations between scientists affiliated with institutions from the USA and the People's Republic of China (PRC) are not allowed by United States Federal law. Multilateral collaborations that involve scientists from institutions in the USA, the PRC, and other countries are allowed, however. Please refer to the PRC FAQ for ROSES for details.
After completing all fields for a proposal in ARK/RPS, use the Verify button to confirm that all required entries exist and conform to the expected format. Forms that pass verification can then be submitted. ARK/RPS allows PIs to continue to modify submitted proposals until the deadline, so there is no penalty for submitting the proposal form early.
The LaTeX, PostScript, and PDF buttons of ARK/RPS can be used to generate formatted versions of the proposal forms. Although it is often useful for the PIs to keep formatted copies of the forms for the record, it is not a required part of the proposal submission process.
5. Scientific Justification and Page Limits
Page Limits and Format
- The scientific justification for a NICER-only program must not exceed 4 Letter size pages. References are not included in that 4-page limit, and may be provided on a 5th page, if needed.
Science justifications may therefore have a length of no more than 5 pages in total.
- Proposals must use a font having no more than 15 characters per inch
(horizontally), typical of 12-pt Times New Roman font. The scientific justification can be
generated using the software of the PI's choice, as long as it is converted to PDF format before
submission.
- We suggest that proposers use the LaTeX template or the
Word template for
the scientific justification. When using these templates, the user should double-check that the
top, bottom, right and left margins are at least 1 inch.
Content
Proposals should:
- include a description of the scientific objectives;
- show that existing data (NICER archival observations and data at other
wavelengths) are sufficient to achieve the objectives;
- list the NICER data sets to be used in the analysis or provide informative archive search criteria to specify them;
- demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed analysis;
- and describe how the proposed investigation contributes to NICER's scientific legacy.
The full list of observed NICER targets can be found using the HEASARC/Browse NICER Master table.
6. Dual-Anonymous Review
The overarching objective of
dual-anonymous peer review is to reduce unconscious bias in the evaluation of the merit of a proposal. Under this system, not only are proposers unaware of the identity of the members on the review panel, but the reviewers do not have explicit knowledge of the proposal teams.
Proposers should consult the "
Guidelines for Anonymous Proposals" document in the "Other Documents" section on the NSPIRES page of this program element for instructions on writing proposals appropriate for dual-anonymous peer review. The instructions here and in that document supersede the default instructions given in the NASA Guidebook for Proposers and the ROSES Summary of Solicitation. Proposers will also be required to upload a separate "Expertise and Resources - Not Anonymized" document, which is not anonymized. The "Guidelines for Anonymous Proposals" document contains complete information on how to write this separate document.
In order to meet the objectives of dual-anonymous peer review, review panels will be instructed to evaluate the anonymized proposals based on their scientific merit, without initially taking into account the proposing team's qualifications. As a final check, and only after the scientific evaluation is finalized for all proposals, the panel will be provided with the "Expertise and Resources - Not Anonymized" documents. The panel will validate the qualifications of the team in order to allow the reviewers to assess the team capabilities required to execute a given proposed science investigation.
Key factors for PIs to keep in mind are:
- Proposals should eliminate language that identifies the proposers or institutions, as discussed in the Guidelines for Anonymous Proposals.
- PIs are required to upload a one-page "Expertise and Resources - Not Anonymized" PDF through ARK as a separate upload when submitting the science justification. This document must not be anonymized.
- NASA understands that dual-anonymous peer review represents a major shift in the evaluation of General Observer proposals, and as such there may be occasional slips in writing anonymized proposals. However, NASA reserves the right to return without review proposals that are particularly egregious in terms of the identification of the proposing team.
A summary of the key requirements for preparing anonymized Phase-1 proposals is provided in the table below.
| Item | Requirement |
| Anonymization | Phase-1 proposals are anonymized. Phase-2 (cost) proposals are not anonymized. |
| Submission | Phase-1 proposals are submitted through ARK/RPS. Phase-2 (cost) proposals are submitted through NSPIRES. |
| References | References should be in the [1], [2] format. |
| Proposal length | 4 pages for NICER science justification. 1 page for references. |
| Separate "Expertise and Resources - Not Anonymized" document | This document provides a list of all team members, their roles, expertise, and contributions to the work. The document should also discuss any specific resources that are key to completing the proposed work. |
Additional information may also be found on the web at:
https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/dual-anonymous-peer-review.
If you have any questions concerning NICER or the NICER GO program, visit the Feedback form.
Last modified: Thursday, 31-Jul-2025 09:50:10 EDT
