External Panelists

This page describes the role and responsibilities of External Panelists in the JWST Peer Review process.

See also: Guide for External Panelists, Review Policies and Instructions, Tips for a Smooth Review, Orientation Materials

The Guide for External Panelists provides an overview of roles, responsibilities, deadlines, and resources for External Panelists.

External panelists should be familiar with the Review Policies and Instructions.

The External Panels assess and grade:

  • all Very Small GO (≤20 hours) proposals;
  • Small GO (>20 and ≤50 hours) proposals in all science categories except Solar System Astronomy and Interstellar Gas and Dust;
  • all regular AR proposals.


During the review period

Report to the Science Policy Division, the PSS, or the Panel Manager any proposal that you think should be disqualified for violating proposal guidelines (e.g., DAPR, page limits, template changes, GAI, etc.). Not doing so in a timely manner (i.e., waiting to report it until after the proposal has been discussed) wastes precious review resources if the proposal ends up being disqualified.

Reviewers are forbidden from using Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) tools to assist with any part of their reviews since this violates the confidentiality of the review process. This means that it is forbidden to upload proposal contents or review materials to GAI tools. It is also forbidden to upload your written comments to GAI tools for the purpose of constructing your final review or polishing the language.

The external review is a one-stage process. External reviewers are responsible for:  

  • Checking for and reporting Conflicts of Interest with their assigned proposals as soon as possible, so that the proposal with the conflict can be reassigned to a different reviewer.  
  • Reading their assigned proposals.
  • Entering numerical scores as grades for each proposal they are assigned in SPIRIT, using the guidelines described in Selection Criteria and Scoring System. 
  • Writing brief proposal feedback comments (strengths and weaknesses) for each proposal they are assigned, which are relayed to the proposers. Comments must follow the guidelines described in Proposal Feedback Comments.

Please remember to remove review materials from your computer after the review.


Next: Discussion Panelists



Notable updates


Originally published