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Panelists will flag proposals that contain identifying information for review by staff in the Science Mission Office (SMO). For the initial cycle, this will not result in a disqualification of the proposal, but only a warning. However, in future cycles, we will be more strict about requiring anonymity, and STScI reserves the right to disqualify any offending proposals. Feedback will be provided to the authors of the proposal when the reviewers comments are returned after the TAC has concluded and the director has made the selections.

How

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Let's discuss this one, I'm unclear on how continuing programs work now...

How can I be sure that someone won't plagiarize my proposal from a previous cycle?

STScI has strict plagiarism software that monitors all submissions. Suspicious cases will be flagged and reviewed by SMO staff, and plagiarized proposals may be disqualified. However, a similarity of ideas and proposals that can compete for the best use of HST to test these ideas is crucial to the scientific process.

How will the process deal with conflicts?

In some respects, the reviewer conflicts with a given proposal are a bit simpler. If the reviewers do not know who the proposers are, how can they be conflicted? However, there will still be checks within our system for reviewer conflicts, largely institutional or collaborative, and those with identified conflicts will be excused from the review of the proposal. As always, reviewers can (and should) identify issues not identified by our system, personal conflicts or possible competing proposals.