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Volume 9, Issue 1
President’s
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URLs in Grant Proposals
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Should ISCB Support Inclusion of
URLs in Grant Proposals?
Presented by the ISCB Public Affairs &
Policies Committee
The Public Affairs & Policies Committee of
the ISCB has discussed concerns with government funding agencies’
restrictions on including URLs in grant proposals, and the particular
challenges this imposes on proposals that rely on databases or software
packages resident on the web, and therefore most efficiently accessed
by reviewers through the web. The committee has asked the Board
of Directors to release a policy statement on this issue, and the
board would like your input before moving forward. The board seeks
to ensure they speak on behalf of the membership and bioinformatics
community at large in any policy statements. Therefore your input
is essential.
Please read the full proposed policy statement
below, including background, rationale and options of how ISCB could
help government agencies in the use of URLs. Then go to either of
the following URLs, read positive and negative feedback from others
if you would like, and make your way to the bottom of the blog to
post your comments so your input may be counted among the others
as the board assesses if and how to move forward.
The statement, background and rationale:
iscb-discussion.blogspot.com/2006/04/should-iscb-support-inclusion-of-urls.html
Technology options ISCB could offer:
iscb-discussion.blogspot.com/2006/04/technology-to-allow-reviewers-to.html
Please post your comments by Friday, May 12, 2006!
The Statement
1. ISCB recommends that bioinformatics funding agencies encourage
reviewers to follow those URLs in bioinformatics grant proposals
that provide information important to the grant review. Funding
agencies should not forbid reviewers from following URLs in grant
proposals.
2. ISCB recommends that bioinformatics funding agencies establish
proxy Web servers for use by reviewers to facilitate anonymous access
to applicant web sites.
Background
This statement is motivated in part by the current grants policy
of the US National Institutes of Health, which states "URLs
may not be used to provide information necessary to the review because
reviewers are under no obligation to view the Internet sites. Moreover,
reviewers are cautioned that they should not directly access an
Internet site as it could compromise their anonymity." (See
URL grants2.nih.gov/grants/funding/phs398/phs398.pdf)
That is, examination of web logs by an applicant might reveal the
identity of a reviewer.
In addition, several NIH review panels now take the more restrictive
position of forbidding reviewers to follow URLs.
Submission of software via a CD-ROM in conjunction with a grant
would be one way to avoid using the Internet to demonstrate software
or database capabilities to reviewers, however, the NIH also does
not allow CD-ROMs to be submitted with a grant proposal.
Funding agencies are also concerned that URLs could be used to circumvent
grant page restrictions if an applicant places additional information
on their web site.
Another concern behind this policy is that there is no permanent
record of the contents of any URL, and that if a grant PI later
challenges a review by saying, for example, "This review is
not competent because the reviewer's objection is clearly addressed
by this information on my web site" there is no way for NIH
to later validate what was on the PI's web site at an earlier time.
Rationale
There are several related issues here. One issue
pertains to third-party Web sites ("Third-party URLs")
such as articles in online journals. Another relates to Web sites
maintained by the applicant PI or their associates ("PI URLs");
1. Third-party URLs. There is simply no question that reviewers
should be allowed to access third-party sites. Grant applications
already contain extensive references to third-party information,
namely scientific publications. As the model of scientific publishing
evolves, some publications are available only through the web, and
others are most efficiently accessed via the web. It is a waste
of the reviewers’ time to forbid them from accessing such
sites. With third-party sites there are no issues of anonymity nor
of circumventing page limits.
2. PI URLs. The deliverables of many bioinformatics projects are
databases or software packages that are resident on the web, and
can most efficiently be accessed by reviewers through the web. Direct
review of database and software packages via the web is both extremely
informative, and extremely time efficient for the reviewer. To prevent
the reviewer from interacting directly with a database or software
package prevents the reviewer from having first-hand knowledge of
the database or software that is extremely valuable, and introduces
a serious risk that their knowledge is inadequate to perform an
informed review. In addition, for large projects, part of their
funding typically covers a service component that is also important
for reviewers to assess. However, reviewers should be cautioned
against basing a negative judgment on a single problematic session
that could be caused by network outages that are beyond the control
of the project. And small projects in particular cannot be expected
to provide perfect 24x7 service.
It should be left to the discretion of the reviewer which URLs they
consider important to the grant review. Although bioinformatics
database and software-related applications are likely candidate
projects where consideration of Web information will be important,
the reviewer will be the best judge of when to follow a URL.
The anonymity concern of the NIH can be solved if reviewers use
proxy servers, which shield the identity of the person accessing
a web site. We recommend that the NIH fund the creation of proxy
servers for use by grant reviewers; ISCB would be willing to host
and operate such proxy servers.
NIH's page limitation concern can be solved if reviewers are not
REQUIRED to read anything accessible through URLs.
The NIH concern of the lack of a permanent record for URLs is valid,
but is outweighed by the other factors. Note also that reviewers
are already influenced by many other subjective factors that are
not part of the grant application.
How ISCB can help to allow the use of URL’s
related to bioinformatics grant proposals
Solution: ISCB could function as the “anonymizer” for
the reviewers.
Possible Technical implementation:
1. Use of an “anonymizer” service on the web
2. Implementation of a proxy server under the supervision of ISCB
3. Implementation of a terminal server under the supervision of
the ISCB
1) Using “anonymizer” services
The use of an anonymizer service is quite simple and can be done
without much user intervention. The basic principle of these services
is the use of one single static address (proxy or a net of proxies),
which is shared by many users. Examples for these services are:
anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html
www.the-cloak.com/anonymous-surfing-home.html
www.shadowsurf.com/
surfshield.net/
proxify.com/
www.guardster.com/?Services-Free_Web_Proxy
anonymouse.org/anonwww.html
2) Proxy-server setup by the ISCB
As an alternative to the above mentioned anonymizer services, one
can use a proxy server that would be owned by the ISCB. Proxy servers
are similar to the anonymizer, i.e. web pages are retrieved by the
proxy server rather than by the person actually browsing the Web.
By running such a proxy-server the ISCB could guarantee that no
information is collected or otherwise abused. But there are important
differences: proxy servers don't help with cookies, hostile applets
or code (see below: possible problems).
3) Setup of a terminal server on an ISCB server
This solution would require the setup of a server running Microsoft
“Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services”. The reviewer
would login into this terminal server and would start a web-browser
from this machine. By doing this all the traffic to the destination
web-server will originate from the ISCB terminal server and as such
protect the anonymity of the reviewer 100%.
Client software is freely available for Windows systems, Apple computer
and Linux systems.
The funding for such a solution would need to cover the basic hardware
for the server, the license for the operating system and the terminal
server licenses (per user) as well as the maintenance costs for
running this service.
Additional advantage: The URL’s can be password protected
and can contain even unpublished data. The user would then provide
the site login information in the grant proposal. By using the terminal
server solution the reviewers could login anonymously and the proposal
submitter would only know that her/his site is being reviewed.
Possible problems with solution 1 and 2:
There are ways of tracking down a web-surfer behind an anonymous
proxy server. The following technologies can be used to break the
anonymity of a user: Cookies, JavaScript, VBScript, Java, ActiveX
and plug-ins. There are methods to increase the security of the
user's own IP-number, but either they restrict the functionality
(cookies, JavaScript…), are not 100% secure or require substantial
knowledge and configuration of network setups (see www.freeproxy.ru/en/free_proxy/faq/anti_proxy.htm).
Due to these restrictions, option number three (terminal server)
seems to be the most appropriate solution to secure the anonymity
of reviewers and simplicity of use. The costs should be in a reasonable
range and could possibly be covered by a small grant for running
this service.
Possible
workflow of the implementation |
- User registers at the ISCB web-site (Name, e-mail,
title of proposal)
- Confirmation mail is sent to the user with a
link for activating the account (with or without administrator
intervention?
- ISCB server sends username and password for
the terminal server to the user
- User puts username and password into her/his
grant application
- Reviewer logs into ISCB terminal server
Validity of account: 6 months (maximum?; automatic
deletion after max days?)

Again, please visit either of the URLs above
to post your comments to the blog by Friday, May 12, 2006. Thank
you!

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