Dominant group/Letter of intent

"Some NSF program solicitations require or request submission of a letter of intent (LOI) in advance of submission of a full proposal." [Bold added].

Notations
Notation: let the symbol NSF stand for the United States of America National Science Foundation.

Notation: let the symbol LOI stand for a Letter of Intent.

Dominant groups
Dominant group is an original research proposal here at Wikiversity that seeks the answers to many questions focused on the term dominant group and its synonyms. The term dominant group has found application in the sciences and the humanities. It also appears in reference to technology.

Two initial questions are
 * 1) "What is dominant group?" and
 * 2) "What is a dominant group?

Examples from primary sources are to be used to prove or disprove each hypothesis. These can be collected per subject or in general.


 * 1) Accident hypothesis: dominant group is an accident of whatever processes are operating.
 * 2) Artifact hypothesis: dominant group may be an artifact of human endeavor or may have preceded humanity.
 * 3) Association hypothesis: dominant group is associated in some way with the original research.
 * 4) Bad group hypothesis: dominant group is the group that engages in discrimination, abuse, punishment, and additional criminal activity against other groups. It often has an unfair advantage and uses it to express monopolistic practices.
 * 5) Control group hypothesis: there is a control group that can be used to study dominant group.
 * 6) Entity hypothesis: dominant group is an entity within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
 * 7) Evolution hypothesis: dominant group is a product of evolutionary processes, such groups are the evolutionary process, produce evolutionary processes, or are independent of evolutionary processes.
 * 8) Identifier hypothesis: dominant group is an identifier used by primary source authors of original research to identify an observation in the process of analysis.
 * 9) Importance hypothesis: dominant group signifies original research results that usually need to be explained by theory and interpretation of experiments.
 * 10) Indicator hypothesis: dominant group may be an indicator of something as yet not understood by the primary author of original research.
 * 11) Influence hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article containing original research to indicate influence or an influential phenomenon.
 * 12) Interest hypothesis: dominant group is a theoretical entity used by scholarly authors of primary sources for phenomena of interest.
 * 13) Metadefinition hypothesis: all uses of dominant group by all primary source authors of original research are included in the metadefinition for dominant group.
 * 14) Null hypothesis: there is no significant or special meaning of dominant group in any sentence or figure caption in any refereed journal article.
 * 15) Object hypothesis: dominant group is an object within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
 * 16) Obvious hypothesis: the only meaning of dominant group is the one found in Mosby's Medical Dictionary.
 * 17) Original research hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article by the author to indicate that the article contains original research.
 * 18) Primordial hypothesis: dominant group is a primordial concept inherent to humans such that every language or other form of communication no matter how old or whether extinct, on the verge of extinction, or not, has at least a synonym for dominant group.
 * 19) Purpose hypothesis: dominant group is written into articles by authors for a purpose.
 * 20) Regional hypothesis: dominant group, when it occurs, is only a manifestation of the limitations within a region. Variation of those limitations may result in the loss of a dominant group with the eventual appearance of a new one or none at all.
 * 21) Source hypothesis: dominant group is a source within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
 * 22) Term hypothesis: dominant group is a significant term that may require a 'rigorous definition' or application and verification of an empirical definition.

Letters of intent
"A letter of intent ... is a document outlining an agreement between two or more parties before the agreement is finalized. ... Such agreements may be Asset Purchase Agreements, Share Purchase Agreements, Joint-Venture Agreements and overall all Agreements which aim at closing a financially large deal."

"LOIs resemble written contracts, but are usually not binding on the parties in their entirety. Many LOIs, however, contain provisions that are binding, such as non-disclosure agreements, a covenant to negotiate in good faith, or a "stand-still" or "no-shop" provision promising exclusive rights to negotiate. A LOI may sometimes be interpreted by a court of law as binding the parties to it, if it too-closely resembles a formal contract."

"[A]n LOI is typically written in letter form and focuses on the parties' intentions".

"[A]n LOI outlines the intent of one party toward another with regard to an agreement, and may only be signed by the party expressing that intent".

Notices of intent
With respect to submitting proposals to NASA, a "Notice of Intent (NOI) [to Propose] is not required, merely desirable. Appendix A, Earth Science, and Appendix D, Astrophysics, use NOIs, although some programs in those Appendices don't ask for NOIs. A NOI may be submitted by an individual, it doesn't require that the organization approve or submit in NSPIRES. See for comparison FAQ #5 on the two-step proposal submission process in which the NOI is replaced by a required "Step-1" proposal that must be submitted by the institution."

"The information provided in the NOI is of considerable value to both the Proposer and NASA because it is used to help expedite the proposal-review activities. Material in an NOI is confidential and will be used for NASA planning purposes only. NOIs must be submitted via NSPIRES even when the intent is to submit the proposal via Grants.gov. Grants.gov does not support NOI submittal. Offerors must be registered with NSPIRES to create and submit an NOI. An NOI is submitted by logging into NSPIRES at http://nspires.nasaprs.com and then clicking on the “Proposals” link. Space is provided for the applicant to provide, at a minimum, the following information, although additional special requests may also be indicated:"
 * A Short Title of the anticipated proposal (50 characters or less);
 * A Full Title of the anticipated proposal (which should not exceed 254 characters and is of a nature that is understandable by a scientifically trained person);
 * A brief description of the primary research area(s) and objective(s) of the anticipated investigation (Note: the information in this item does not constrain in any way the Proposal Summary that must be submitted with the final proposal); and
 * The names of any Co-Investigators and/or Collaborators as may be known by the time the NOI is submitted. In order to enter such names, such team members must have previously accessed and registered in NSPIRES themselves; a PI cannot do this for them.

"After completing the indicated fields, the NOI is then submitted electronically. A copy may be printed for reference."

"Although it is most helpful to NASA if the NOI is submitted by the specified due date, a late NOI is still of value since the receipt of even a few unanticipated proposals can significantly delay and/or complicate the review process. A late NOI that contains (i) the name and identifier for the NRA of interest, (ii) the name and address of the applicant, and (iii) the key information listed above for an NOI may be submitted by email directly to the program officer identified in the NRA."

"For some ROSES calls the NOI is replaced by a Step-1 proposal. A Step-1 proposal is a prerequisite to submit a full (Step-2) proposal, i.e., you must have submitted a Step-1 proposal or you cannot submit a full proposal later. Whereas a NOI may be submitted by a proposer alone, a Step-1 proposal must be submitted by an institution i.e., by the "AOR" for NSPIRES. Proposals to the Heliophysics and Planetary Science Divisions (Appendix A and C) use the 2-Step submission process. In some cases the Step-1 proposal will be just a few lines, but in other cases it must be a few pages long and will be evaluated. For more information about the 2-Step process see Section IV.(vii) on page 17 of the ROSES-2014 Summary of Solicitation.""

Justifications
"The predominant reason for its use is to help NSF program staff to gauge the size and range of the competition, enabling earlier selection and better management of reviewers and panelists. In addition, the information contained in a LOI is used to help avoid potential conflicts of interest in the review process."

"In the solicitation of government grants, a letter of intent is highly encouraged but it is not required or binding, and does not enter into the review of a subsequent application. The information that it contains allows agency staff to estimate the potential workload and plan the review. "

Purposes
"The most common purposes of an LOI are:
 * To clarify the key points of a complex transaction for the convenience of the parties
 * To declare officially that the parties are currently negotiating, as in a merger or joint venture proposal
 * To provide safeguards in case a deal collapses during negotiation.
 * To verify certain issues regarding payments done for someone else".

Contents
"A LOI normally contains the PI's and co-PI's names, a proposed title, a list of possible participating organizations (if applicable), and a synopsis that describes the work in sufficient detail to permit an appropriate selection of reviewers."

Submissions
LOIs "are submitted electronically via the NSF FastLane System."

Details
"A LOI is not binding. ... A LOI is not externally evaluated or used to decide on funding."

The Research Council of Norway
"Quality assessment [f]or future coordinated projects we suggest that scientists first submit short pre-proposals (letter of intent), which are evaluated for their scientific relevance by an executive committee."

Hypotheses

 * 1) Considering the possible contracting nature of a letter of intent, it is best to precede such a letter with some form of a letter of interest which bears no contracting nature.