Ethical and Responsible Research | 24 604

Opportunity Information: Apply for 24 604

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) program is a discretionary grant opportunity designed to strengthen what responsible and ethical research looks like in practice across STEM fields, and to help institutions build cultures that consistently support, value, and reward those behaviors. At its core, ER2 funds projects that examine, develop, improve, and share research practices that promote integrity and ethical decision-making, not just at the individual level, but also across teams, organizations, and broader research communities. The program is also framed around the idea that responsible research is closely tied to creating a research environment that is inclusive, equitable, and respectful, meaning applicants can focus on policies, incentives, norms, training structures, mentoring systems, and other organizational factors that shape day-to-day conduct in research settings.

ER2 supports projects that look across one or multiple career stages, such as students, postdoctoral researchers, faculty, and practitioners, and it encourages investigators to study how ethical research practices develop, where they break down, and what helps them hold up under real-world pressures. Projects can target responsible conduct within a lab group or multi-lab team, within an institution, across a professional community, or at the boundary between researchers and the public. The scope is broad enough to include diagnosing and documenting challenges that undermine ethical research (for example, misaligned incentives, poor supervision, excessive competition, unclear authorship norms, weak accountability mechanisms, or communication failures), and then testing or evaluating strategies to prevent or reduce those risks.

A major emphasis of ER2 is intervention-oriented work that produces actionable improvements, not only descriptive findings. Competitive projects may design, pilot, implement, and assess interventions that promote ethical and responsible practices, including interventions suited to multidisciplinary collaborations, inter-organizational partnerships, cross-sector or translational work, and even international contexts when cross-border participation materially improves the project. International collaborations are explicitly encouraged when unique expertise, resources, facilities, or locations outside the United States strengthen the work, with the expectation that proposers follow NSF guidance in the Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG). If a proposal routes funding to an international branch campus of a US institution (including via subawards or consultants), the application must clearly explain why activities need to occur at that branch campus and why they cannot be done at the US-based campus.

Eligibility to submit proposals is limited to two main categories: (1) US-based non-profit, non-academic organizations directly tied to education or research activities, such as independent museums, observatories, research laboratories, and professional societies; and (2) accredited US institutions of higher education, including two-year and four-year colleges (community colleges included), submitting on behalf of their faculty. The program also signals a strong interest in broadening participation and institutional diversity in the research on ethics and research culture. Proposals that come from, or include substantial collaboration with, organizations in EPSCoR-eligible jurisdictions, minority-serving institutions, womens colleges, or organizations that primarily serve persons with disabilities are encouraged.

Project leadership is expected to be genuinely interdisciplinary in capability, blending subject-matter expertise in the relevant STEM areas with expertise in ethics, values, evaluation, or pedagogy. In other words, NSF is looking for teams that can both understand the research environments being studied and credibly design and assess educational, cultural, or organizational change. For proposals submitted as Partnership for Transformational Research Projects, NSF strongly recommends that at least one senior administrator from each partner organization be part of the project leadership, signaling that high-level institutional commitment and decision-making authority are important for large-scale or durable change efforts.

Key administrative details include the funding opportunity title Ethical and Responsible Research, opportunity number 24-604, with NSF as the sponsoring agency. The mechanism is a grant under the broad category of science and technology research and development, and it lists multiple CFDA numbers (47.041, 47.049, 47.050, 47.070, 47.074, 47.075, 47.076, 47.079, 47.083, 47.084). The original closing date is January 23, 2025. NSF anticipates making about 15 awards. The award ceiling is not specified in the provided source, so applicants would need to consult the full solicitation and NSF budget guidance to understand typical award sizes and any constraints.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Ethical and Responsible Research" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.041, 47.049, 47.050, 47.070, 47.074, 47.075, 47.076, 47.079, 47.083, 47.084.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-09-06.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2025-01-23. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 15 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

Apply for 24 604

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