Application advice | Cash for Questions: Research funding, policy and development

Mistakes in grant writing – cut and paste text

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in November 2018 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

Given the ever-expanding requirements of most research funding application forms, it’s inevitable that applicants are tempted to pay less attention to some sections and end up writing text so generic, so bland, that it could be cut and pasted – with minimal editing of names and topics – into almost any other proposal.

Resist that temptation. Using text that looks like it could be cut and pasted between proposals suggests that you haven’t thought through the specifics of your project or fellowship, and it will make it seem less plausible as a result.

Content free

I often see responses that are so content free they make my heart sink. For example:

1) “We will present the findings at major international conferences and publish in world class journals”

2) “The findings will be of interest to researchers in A, B, and C.”

3) “This is a methodologically innovative, timely, and original project which represents a step change in our understanding”

4) “We will set up a project Twitter account and a blog, and with the support of our outstanding press office, write about our research for a general audience.”

5) “Funding will enable me to lead my own project for the first time, and support me in making the transition to independent researcher”.

These claims might well be true and can read well in isolation. But they’re only superficially plausible, and while they contain buzzwords that applicants think that funders are after, they’re entirely content, evidence, and argument free.

Self harm

Why should you care? Because your proposal doesn’t just have to be good enough to meet a certain standard, it has to be better than its rivals. If there are sections of your application that could be transferred into any rival application, this might be a sign that that section is not as strong or distinctive as it could be and is not giving you any competitive edge.

Cut and paste sections may be actively harming your chances. They may read well in isolation but when compared directly to more thoughtful and more detailed sections in rival applications, they can look weak and lazy, especially if they don’t take full advantage of the word count.

Cut and pasteable text tends to occur in the trickier sections of the application form to write and those that get less attention: dissemination; impact pathway/plan; academic impact; personal development plan; data management plan; choice of host institution. Sometimes these generic statements emerge because the applicants don’t know what to write, and sometimes because it’s all they can be bothered to write for a section they wrongly regard of lesser importance.

Give evidence

Give these sections the time, attention and thought they deserve. Add details. Add specifics. Add argument. Add evidence. Find things to say that only apply to your application. If you don’t know how to answer a question strongly, get advice from your research development colleagues.

The more editing it would take to put it into someone else’s bid, the better. Here are some thoughts on improving the earlier examples:

1) “We will present the findings at major international conferences and publish in world class journals”. I find it hard to understand vagueness about plans for academic impact. Even allowing for the fact that the findings of the research will affect plans, it’s surely not too much to expect some target journals and conferences to be named. If applicants can’t demonstrate knowledge of realistic targets, it undermines their credibility.

2) “The findings will be of interest to researchers in A, B, and C.” I’d ban the phrase “of interest to” when explaining potential academic impact. It tells the reader nothing about the likely academic impact – who will cite your work, and what difference do you anticipate it will make to the field?

3) “This is a methodologically innovative, timely, and original project which represents a step change in our understanding” Who will use your methods? Who will use your frameworks? If all research is standing on the shoulders of giants, how much further can future researchers see perched atop your work? How exactly does your project go beyond the state of the art, and what might be the new state of the art after your project?

4) “We will set up a project Twitter account and a blog, and with the support of our outstanding press office, write about our research for a general audience.” If you’re talking about engaging with social media, talk about how you are going to find readers and/or followers. What’s your plan for your presence in terms of the existing ecosystem of social media accounts that are active in this area? Who are the current key influencers?

5) “Funding will enable me to lead my own project for the first time, and support me in making the transition to independent researcher”. How does funding take you to what’s next? What’s the path from the conclusions of this project to your future research agenda?

Looking for cut and paste text – and improving it where you find it – is an excellent review technique to polish your draft application, and particularly to improve those harder-to-write sections. Hammering out the detail is more difficult, but it could give you an advantage in the race for funding.

Eight tips for attending a research call information and networking day

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in July 2018 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

‘School of Athens’ by Raphael. Aristotle is willing to join Plato’s project as co-I, but only if his research group gets at least two FT research fellows. Unfortunately, Plato’s proposal turns out to be merely a pale imitation of the perfect (JeS) form and isn’t invited to full application stage.

Many major research funding calls for substantial UKRI investments now include one or more workshops or events. These events typically aim:

(a) to publicise the call and answer questions from potential bidders; and
(b) to facilitate networking and to develop consortia, often including non-academic partners.

There’s an application process to gauge demand and to allocate or ration places (if required) between different disciplines and institutions. These events are distinct from ‘sandpit’ events – which have a more rigorous and competitive application process and where direct research funding may result. They’re also distinct from scoping meetings, which define and shape future calls. Some of the advice below might be applicable for those events, but my experience is limited to the call information day.

I’ve attended one such meeting and I found it very useful in terms of understanding the call and the likely competition for funding. While I’ve attended networking and idea generation events before, this was my first UKRI event, and I’ve come up with a few hints and tips that might help other first time attendees.

Don’t send Research Development staff. People like me are more experienced at identifying similarities/differences in emphasis in calls, but we can only go so far in terms of networking and representing academics. However well briefed, there will come a point at which we can’t answer further questions because we’re not academics. Send an academic if you possibly can.
Hone your pitch. A piece of me dies inside every time I use a phrase like “elevator pitch”, but the you’re going to be introducing yourself, your team, and your ideas many, many times during the day. Prepare a short version and a long version of what you want to say. It doesn’t have to be crafted word-for-word, but prepare the structure of a clear, concise introduction that you can comfortably reel off.
Be clear about what you want and what you’re looking for. If you’re planning on leading a bid, say so. If you’re looking to add your expertise on X to another bid TBC, say so. If you’re not sure yet, say so. I’m not sure what possible advantage could be gained about being coy. You could finesse your starting position by talking of “looking to” or “planning to” lead a bid if you want, but much better to be clear.
Don’t just talk to your friends. Chances are that you’ll have friends/former colleagues at the event who you may not see as often as you’d like, but resist spending too much time in your comfort zone. It’ll limit your opportunities and will make you appear cliquey. Consider arranging to meet before or after the event, or at another time to catch up properly.
Be realistic about what’s achievable. I’m persuadable that these events can and do shape the composition/final teams of some bids, but I wonder whether any collaboration starting from ground level at one of these events has a realistic chance of success.
Do your homework. Most call meetings invite delegates to submit information in advance, usually a brief biog and a statement of research interests. It’s worth taking time to do this well, and having a read of the information submitted by others. Follow up with web searches about potential partners to find out more about their work, follow them on twitter, and find out what they look like if you don’t already know. It’s not stalking if it’s for research collaboration.
Brush up your networking skills. If networking is something you struggle with, have a quick read of some basic networking guides. Best tip I was ever given – regard networking as a process to identify “how can I help these people?” rather than “how can I use these people to my advantage?” and it’s much easier. Also, I find… “I think I follow you on twitter” an effective icebreaker.
Don’t expect any new call info. There will be a presentation and Q&A, but don’t expect major new insights. As not everyone can make these events, funders avoid giving any unfair advantages. Differences in nuance and emphasis can emerge in presentations and through questions, but don’t expect radical additional insights or secret insider knowledge.

If your target call has an event along these lines, you should make every effort to attend. Send your prospective PI if you can, another academic if not, and your research development staff only if you must. Do a bit of homework… be clear about what you want to achieve, prepare your pitch, and identify the people you want to talk to, and you’ll have a much better chance of achieving your goals.

Applying for research funding – is it worth it? Part II – Costs and Benefits

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight on 9th March 2018 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

My previous post posed a question about whether applying for research funding was worth it or not, and concluded with a list of questions to consider to work out the answer. This follow-up is a list of costs and benefits associated with applying for external research funding, whether successful or unsuccessful. Weirdly, my list appears to contain more costs than benefits for success and more benefits than costs for failure, but perhaps that’s just me being contrary…

If you’re successful:

Benefits….

You get to do the research you really want to do
In career terms, whether for moving institution or internal promotion, there’s a big tick in the box marked ‘external research funding’.
Your status in your institution and within your discipline is likely to rise. Bringing in funding via a competitive external process gives you greater external validation, and that changes perceptions – perhaps it marks you out as a leader in your field, perhaps it marks a shift from career young researcher to fulfilling your evident promise.
Success tends to begat success in terms of research funding. Deliver this project and any future application will look more credible for it.

Costs…

You’ve got to deliver on what you promised. That means all the areas of fudge or doubt or uncertainty about who-does-what need to be sorted out in practice. If you’ve under-costed any element of the project – your time, consumables, travel and subsistence – you’ll have to deal with it, and it might not be much fun.
Congratulations, you’ve just signed yourself up for a shedload of admin. Even with the best and most supportive post-award team, you’ll have project management to do. Financial monitoring; recruitment, selection, and line management of one or more research associates. And it doesn’t finish when the research finishes – thanks to the impact agenda, you’ll probably be reporting on your project via Researchfish for years to come.
Every time any comparable call comes round in the future, your colleagues will ask you give a presentation about your application/sit on the internal sifting panel/undertake peer review. Once a funding agency has given you money, you can bet they’ll be asking you to peer review other applications. Listed as a cost for workload purposes, but there are also a lot of benefits to getting involved in peer reviewing applications because it’ll improve your own too. Also, the chances are that you benefited from such support/advice from senior colleagues, so pay it forward. But be ready to pay.
You’ve just raised the bar for yourself. Don’t be surprised if certain people in research management start talking about your next project before this one is done as if it’s a given or an inevitability.
Unless you’re careful, you may not see as much recognition in your workload as you might have expected. Of course, your institution is obliged to make the time promised in the grant application available to you, but unless you’ve secured agreement in advance, you may find that much of this is taken out of your existing research allocation rather than out of teaching and admin. Especially as these days we no longer thing of teaching as a chore to buy ourselves out from. Think very carefully about what elements of your workload you would like to lose if your application is successful.
The potential envy and enmity of colleagues who are picking up bits of what was your work.

If you’re unsuccessful…

Benefits…

The chances are that there’s plenty to be salvaged even from an unsuccessful application. Once you’ve gone through the appropriate stages of grief, there’s a good chance that there’s at least one paper (even if ‘only’ a literature review) in the work that you’ve done. If you and your academic colleagues and your stakeholders are still keen, the chances are that there’s something you can do together, even if it’s not what you ideally wanted to do.
Writing an application will force you to develop your research ideas. This is particularly the case for career young researchers, where the pursuit of one of those long-short Fellowships can be worth it if only to get proper support in developing your research agenda.
If you’ve submitted a credible, competitive application, you’ve at least shown willing in terms of grant-getting. No-one can say that you haven’t tried. Depending on the pressures/expectations you’re under, having had a credible attempt at it buys you some license to concentrate on your papers for a bit.
If it’s your first application, you’ll have learnt a lot from the process, and you’ll be better prepared next time. Depending on your field, you could even add a credible unsuccessful application to a CV, or a job application question about grant-getting experience.
If your institution has an internal peer review panel or other selection process, you’ve put you and your research onto the radar of some senior people. You’ll be more visible, and this may well lead to further conversations with colleagues, especially outside your school. In the past I’ve recommended that people put forward internal expressions of interest even if they’re not sure they’re ready for precisely this reason.

Costs…

You’ve just wasted your time – and quite a lot of time at that. And not just work time… often evenings and weekends too.
It’ll come as a disappointment, which may take some time to get over
Even if you’ve kept it quiet, people in your institution will know that you’ve been unsuccessful.

I’ve written two longer pieces on what to do if your research grant application is unsuccessful, which can be found here and here.

Applying for research funding – is it worth it?

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight on 6th March 2018 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

Success rates are low and applications are more and more time consuming to write. Is it worth it? Here’s a quick list of considerations that might help you reach a better decision.

While the latest success rates from UK research councils showed a very modest overall improvement after five consecutive annual falls, most observers regard this as a blip rather than as a sign of better times to come. Outside the Research Councils, success rates are often even lower, with some social science/humanities fellowship schemes having single digit success rates.

While success rates have fallen, demands on applicants have steadily risen. The impact agenda has brought first the impact summary and then the pathways to impact statement, and more recently we’ve seen greater emphasis on data management plans and on detailed letters of support from project partners that require significant coordination to obtain. It would be one thing if it were just a question of volume – if you want a six or seven figure sum of what’s ultimately public money, it’s not unreasonable to be asked to work for it. But it’s not just that, it’s also the fiddly nature of using JeS and understanding funder requirements. I’m forever having to explain the difference between the pathways to impact and the impact summary, and there are lots of little quirks and hidden sections that can trip people up.

But beyond even that, there’s the institutional effort of internal peer review from research development staff and senior and very busy academic staff. Whether that’s an internal review mandated by the research council – shifting the burden of review onto institutions – or introduced as a means of improving quality, it’s another cost.

Given the low success rates, the effort and time required, and the opportunity costs of doing so, are we wasting our time? And how would we know?

The research

Do you need funding to do the research? If not, might it be a better idea just to get on with it, rather than spend a month writing an application and six months waiting for a response? And if you only need a small amount of funding, consider a smaller scheme with a less onerous application process.
Do you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve? If you can’t identify some clear research questions, and what your project will deliver, the chances are it needs more thinking through before it’s ready to be turned into an application.
Are you and your team passionate and enthused and excited about your proposal? If you’re not, why should anyone else be?
Is your research idea competitive? That’s not the same question as ‘is it good’? To quote a research director from a Canadian Research Council – it’s not a test, it’s a contest. Lots and lots and lots of good ideas go unfunded. Just because you could get something in that’s in scope and has at least some text in every box doesn’t mean you should.
Is your research idea significant? In other words, does it pass the ‘so what, who cares’ test? My experience on an NIHR funding panel is that once the flawed are eliminated, funding is a battle of significance. Is your research idea significant, would others outside your field regard it as significant, and can you communicate its significance?

Your motivations

Are they intrinsic to the research – to do with the research and what you and your team want to discover and achieve and contribute…. or are they extrinsic?
Are you applying for funding because you want promotion? When you come and talk to me and my colleagues about ‘applying for funding’ but have less a coherent project and more of a list of random keywords, don’t think we don’t know.
Is it because you/your research group/school is being pressured to bring in more funding? Football manager Harry Redknapp’s tactical instructions to a substitute apparently once consisted of “just flipping run around a bit” (I paraphrase) and I sometimes worry that in some parts of some institutions that’s what passes for a grant capture strategy that values activity over outcomes.
Is it because you want to keep researchers on fixed term contracts/your promising PhD student in work? That’s a laudable aim, but without the right application and idea, you risk giving them false hope if the application is just to do more of the same with the same people.

Practical considerations

Do you have the time you need to write a competitive application? Just as importantly, do your team? Will they be able to deliver on the bits of the application they’ll need to write? As Yoda said, “do or do not, there is no try” (Lucas, 1980). If you can’t turn your idea into a really well written, competitive, proposal in time, perhaps don’t.
Do you have your ducks in a row? Your collaborators and co-Is, your industry, government, or third sector partners lined up and on board? Are your impact plans ready? Or are you still scratching around for project partners while your competitors are polishing the fourth iteration of the complete application? Who are your rivals for this funding? Not relevant for ‘open’ calls, but for targeting schemes, who else is likely to be going for this?
Does what you want to do fit the call you’re considering applying for? Read the call, read it again, and then speak to your friendly neighbourhood Research Development professional and see if your understanding of the call matches hers. Why? Because it’s hard for researchers to read a call for proposals without seeing it through the lens of their own research priorities. Make sure others think it’s a good fit – don’t trust yourself or your co-Is to make that decision alone.
Is this the best use of your time right now? Might your time be better spent on impact, publishing papers from the last project, revising a dated module, running professional development courses?

A companion piece on the costs and benefits to researchers of applying for funding will be republished here next week.

Mistakes in Grant Writing, part 95 – “The Gollum”

Image: Alonso Javier Torres [CC BY 2.0] via Flickr

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight on 20th July 2017 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com
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Previously I’ve written about the ‘Star Wars Error’ in grant writing, and my latest attempt to crowbar popular culture references into articles about grant writing mistakes is ‘the Gollum’. Gollum is a character from Lord of the Rings, a twisted, tortured figure – wicked and pitiable in equal measure. He’s an addict whose sole drive is possession of the Ring of Power, which he loves and hates with equal ferocity. A little like me and my thesis.

Only begotten

For current purposes, it’s his cry of “my precious!” and obsession with keeping the Ring for himself that I’m thinking of in terms of an analogy with research grant applicants, rather than (spoilers) eating raw fish, plunging into volcanoes, or murdering friends. Even in the current climate of ‘demand management’, internal peer review, and research development support, there are still researchers who treat their projects as their “precious” and are unable or unwilling to share them or to seek comment and feedback.

It’s easy to understand why – there’s the fear of being scooped and of someone else taking and using the idea. There’s the fear of public failure – with low success rates, a substantial majority of applications will be unsuccessful, and perhaps the thought is that if one is going to fail, few people should know about it. And let’s not pretend that internal review/filtering processes don’t at least raise questions about academic freedom.

Power play

But there are other fears. The first is about sabotage or interference from colleagues who might be opposed to the research, whether through ideological and methodological differences, or because they’re on the other side of some major scientific controversy. In my experience, this concern has been largely unfounded. I’ve been very fortunate to work with senior academics who are very clear about their role as internal reviewer, which is to further improve competitive applications and ideas, while filtering out or diverting uncompetitive ideas, or applications that simply aren’t ready. But while internal reviewers will have their views, I’ve not seen anyone let that power go to their heads.

Enough of experts

Second, if the concern isn’t about integrity or (unconscious) bias, it might be about background or knowledge. One view I’ve encountered – mainly unspoken, but occasionally spoken and once shouted – is that no-one else at the institution has the expertise to review their proposal and therefore internal review is a waste of time.

It might well be true that no-one else internally has equivalent expertise to the applicant, and (apart from early career researchers) that’s to be expected and welcomed. But if it’s true internally, it might also be true of the external expert reviewers chosen by the funder, and it’s even more likely to be true of the people on the final decision-making panel. The chances are that the principal applicant on any major project is one of the leaders in that field, and even if she regards a handful of others as appropriate reviewers, there’s absolutely no guarantee that she’ll get them.

Significant other

Ultimately, the purpose of a funding application is to convince expert peer reviewers from the same or cognate discipline and a much broader panel of distinguished scientists of the superior merits of your ideas and the greater significance of your research challenge compared to rival proposals. Because once the incompetent and the unfeasible have been weeded out – it’s all about significance.

A quality internal peer review process will mirror those conditions as closely as possible. It doesn’t matter that internal reviewer X isn’t from the same field and knows little about the topic – what’s of use to the applicant is what X makes of the application as a senior academic from another (sub)discipline. Can she understand the research challenges, why they’re significant and important? Does the application tell her exactly what the applicant proposes to do? What’s particularly valuable are creative misunderstandings – if an internal reviewer has misunderstood a key point or misinterpreted something, a wise applicant will return to the application and seek to identify the source of that misunderstanding and head it off, rather than just dismissing the feedback out of hand.

Forever alone

And that’s without touching on the value that research development support can add. People in my kind of role who may not be academics, but who have seen a great many grant applications over the years. People who aren’t academic experts, but who know when something isn’t clear, or doesn’t make sense to the intelligent lay person.

Most institutions that take research seriously will offer good support to their researchers. Despite this, there are still researchers who only engage with others where they absolutely must, and take little notice of feedback or experience during the grant application process. Do they really think that others are unworthy of gazing upon the magnificence of The Precious?

I’d like to urge them here to turn back, to take the advice and feedback that’s on offer, lest they end up wandering the dark places of the world, alone and unfunded.

“Once more unto the breach” – Should I resubmit my unsuccessful research grant application?

A picture of a boomerang This article first appeared in Funding Insight on 11th May 2017 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com
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Should I resubmit my unsuccessful research grant application?

No.

‘No’ is the short answer – unless you’ve received an invitation or steer from the funder to do so. Many funders don’t permit uninvited resubmissions, so the first step should always be to check your funder’s rules and definitions of resubmission with your research development team.

To be, or not to be

That’s not to say that you should abandon your research proposal – more that it’s a mistake to think of your next application on the same or similar topic as a resubmission. It’s much better – if you do wish to pursue it – to treat it as a fresh application and to give yourself and your team the opportunity to develop your ideas. It’s unlikely that nothing has changed between the date of submission and now. It’s also unlikely that nothing could be improved about the underpinning research idea or the way it was expressed in the application.

However, sometimes the best approach is to let an idea go, cut your losses, avoid the sunk costs fallacy. Onwards and upwards to the next idea. I was recently introduced to the concept of a “negative CV”, which is the opposite of a normal CV, listing only failed grant applications, rejected papers, unsuccessful conference pitches and job market rejections. Even the most eminent scholars have lengthy negative CVs, and there’s no shame in being unsuccessful, especially as success rates are so low. It’s really difficult – you’ve got your team together, you’ve been through the discussions and debates and the honing of your idea and then the grant writing, and then the disappointment of not getting funded. It’s very definitely worth having meetings and discussion to see what can be salvaged and repurposed – publishing literature reviews, continuing to engage with stakeholders etc. It’s only natural to look for some other avenue for your work, but sometimes it’s best to move on to something else.

Here are two bits of wisdom that are both true in their own way:

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try try again (William Edward Hickson)
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results (disputed- perhaps Einstein or Franklin, but I reckon US Narcotics Anonymous)

So what should you do? What factors should you consider in deciding whether to rise from the canvas like Rocky, or instead emulate Elsa and Let It Go?

What being unsuccessful means… and what it doesn’t

As a Canadian research council director once said, research funding is a contest, not a test. Research funding is a limited commodity, like Olympic medals, jobs, and winning lottery tickets. It’s not an unlimited commodity like driving licenses or PhDs, commodities which everyone who reaches the required standard can obtain. Sometimes I think researchers confuse the two – if the driving test examiner says I failed on my three point turn, if I get it right next time (and make no further mistakes) I’ll pass. But even if I respond adequately to all of the points made in the referees’ comments, there’s still no guarantee I’ll get funded. The quality of my driving in the morning doesn’t affect your chances of passing your test in the afternoon, but if too many applications are better than yours, you won’t get funded. And just as many recruitment exercises produce more appointable candidates than posts, so funding calls attract far more fundable applications than the funds available.

Sometimes referees’ comments can be misinterpreted. Feedback might list the real or perceived faults with the application, but (once the fundamentally flawed have been excluded) ultimately it’s a competition about significance. What significance means is defined by the funder and the scheme and doesn’t necessarily mean impact – it could be about academic significance, contribution to the field and so on.

As a public panel member for an NIHR scheme I’ve seen this from the inside – project proposals which are technically competent, sensible and feasible. Yet either because they fail to articulate the significance or because their research challenge is just not that significant an issue, they don’t get funded because they’re not competitive against similarly competent applications taking on much more significant and important research challenges. Feedback is given which would have improved the application, but simply addressing that feedback will seldom make it any more competitive.

When major Research Centre calls come out, I often have conversations with colleagues who have great ideas for perfectly formed projects which unfortunately I don’t think are significant enough to be one of three or four funded across the whole of social sciences. Ideally the significance question, the “so what/who cares?” question should be posed before applying in the first place, but you should definitely look again at what was funded and ask it again of your project before considering trying to rework it.

Themed Calls Cast a Long Shadow

One of the most dispiriting grant rejection experiences is rejection from a targeted call which seemed perfect. It’s not like an open call where you have to compete with rival bids on significance from all across your research council’s remit – rather, the significance is already recognised.

Yet the reality is that narrower calls often have similarly low success rates. Although they’re narrower, everyone who can pile in, does pile in. And deciding what to do next is much harder. Themed calls cast a long shadow – if as a funder I’ve just made a major investment in field X through niche call Y, I’m not sure how I’m going to feel about an X-related application coming back in through the open call route. Didn’t we just fund a lot of this stuff? Should we fund more, especially if an idea like this was unsuccessful last time? Shouldn’t we support something else? And I think this effect might be true even with different funders who will be aware of what’s going on elsewhere. If a tranche of projects in your research area have been funded through a particular call, it’s going to be very difficult to get investment through any other scheme anytime soon.

Switching calls, Switching funders

An exception to this might be the Global Challenges Research Fund or perhaps other areas where there’s a lot of funding available (relatively speaking) and a number of different calls with slightly different priorities. Being unsuccessful with an application to an open call or a broader call and then looking to repurpose the research idea in response to a narrower themed call is more likely to pay off than the other way round, moving from a specific call to a general one. But even so, my advice would be to ban the “r” word entirely. It’s not a ‘resubmission’, it’s an entirely new application written for a different funding scheme with different priorities, even if some of the underlying ideas are similar.

This goes double when it comes to switching funders. A good way of wasting everyone’s time is trying to crowbar a previously unsuccessful application into the format required by a different funder. Different funders have different priorities and different application procedures, formats and rules, and so you must treat it as a fresh application. Not doing so is a bit like getting out some love letters you sent to a former paramour, changing the name at the top, and reposting them to the current object of your affections. Neither will end well.

The Leverhulme Trust are admirably clear on this point, they’re “keen to avoid assuming the role of ‘funder of last resort’; that is, of routinely providing support for proposals which have been fully matched to the requirement of another funding agency, but have failed to win support on the grounds of either lack of quality or insufficient available funds.” If you’re going to apply to the Leverhulme Trust, for example, make it a Leverhulme-y application, and that means shifting not just the presentational style but also the substance of what you’re proposing.

Whatever the change, forget any notion of resubmission if you’re taking an idea from one call to another. Yes, you may be able to reuse some of your previous materials, but if you submit something clearly written for another call with the crowbar marks still visible, you won’t get funded.

The Five Stages of Grant Application Failure

I’m reluctant to draw this comparison, but I wonder if responding to grant application rejection is a bit like the Kubler-Ross model of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance). Perhaps one question to ask yourself is if your resubmission plans are coming from a position of acceptance – in which case fine, but don’t regard it as a resubmission – or a part of the bargaining stage. In which case…. perhaps take a little longer to decide what to do.

Further reading: What to do if your grant application is unsuccessful. Part 1 – What it Means and What it dDoesn’t and Part 2 – Next Steps.

How useful is reading examples of successful grant applications?

This article is prompted by a couple of twitter conversations around a Times Higher Education article which quotes Ross Mounce, founding editor of Research Ideas and Outcomes, who argues for open publication at every stage of the research process, including (successful and unsuccessful) grant applications. The article acknowledges that this is likely to be controversial, but it got a few of us thinking about the value of reading other people’s grant applications to improve one’s own.

I’m asked about this a lot by prospective grant applicants – “do you have any examples of successful applications that you can share?” – and while generally I will supply them if I have access to them, I also add substantial caveats and health warnings about their use.

The first and perhaps most obvious worry is that most schemes change and evolve over time, and what works for one call might not work in another. Even if the application form hasn’t changed substantially, funder priorities – both hard priorities and softer steers – may have changed. And even if neither have changed, competitive pressures and improved grant writing skills may well be raising the bar, and an application that got funded – say – three or four years ago might not get funding today. Not necessarily because the project is weaker, but because the exposition and argument would now need to be stronger. This is particularly the case for impact – it’s hard to imagine that many of the impact sections on RCUK applications written in the early days of impact would pass muster now.

The second, and more serious worry, is that potential applicants take the successful grant application far too seriously and far too literally. I’ve seen smart, sensible, sophisticated people become obsessed with a successful grant application and try to copy everything about it, whether relevant or not, as if there was some mystical secret encoded into the text, and any subtle deviation would prevent the magic from working. Things like… the exact balance of the application, the tables/diagrams used or not used (“but the successful application didn’t have diagrams!”), the referencing system, the font choice, the level of technical detail, the choice and exposition of methods, whether there are critical friends and/or a steering group, the number of Profs on the bid, the amount of RA time, the balance between academic and stakeholder impact.

It’s a bit like a locksmith borrowing someone else’s front door key, making as exact a replica as she can, and then expecting it to open her front door too. Or a bit like taking a recipe that you’ve successfully followed and using it to make a completely different dish by changing the ingredients while keeping the cooking processes the same. Is it a bit like cargo cult thinking? Attempting to replicate an observed success or desired outcome by copying everything around it as closely as possible, without sufficient reflection on cause and effect? It’s certainly generalising inappropriately from a very small sample size (often n=1).

But I think – subject to caveats and health warnings – it can be useful to look at previously successful applications from the same scheme. I think it can sometimes even be useful to look at unsuccessful applications. I’ve changed my thinking on this quite a bit in the last few years, when I used to steer people away from them much more strongly. I think they can be useful in the following ways:

Getting a sense of what’s required. It’s one thing seeing a blank application form and list of required annexes and additional documents, it’s another seeing the full beast. This will help potential applicants get a sense of the time and commitment that’s required, and make sensible, informed decisions about their workload and priorities and whether to apply or not.
It also highlights all of the required sections, so no requirement of the application should come as a shock. Increasingly with the impact agenda it’s a case of getting your ducks in a row before you even think about applying, and it’s good to find that out early.
It makes success feel real, and possible, especially if the grant winner is someone the applicant knows, or who works at the same institution. Low success rates can be demoralising, but it helps to know not only that someone, somewhere is successful, but that someone here and close by has been successful.
It does set a benchmark in terms of the state of readiness, detail, thoroughness, and ducks-in-a-row-ness that the attentive potential applicant should aspire to at least equal, if not exceed. Early draft and early stage research applications often have larger or smaller pockets of vaguery and are often held together with a generous helping of fudge. Successful applications should show what’s needed in terms of clarity and detail, especially around methods.
Writing skills. Writing grant applications is a very different skill to writing academic papers, which may go some way towards explaining why the Star Wars error in grant writing is so common. So it’s going to be useful to see examples of that skill used successfully… but having said that, I have a few examples in my library of successes which were clearly great ideas, but which were pretty mediocre as examples of how to craft a grant application.
Concrete ideas and inspiration. Perhaps about how to use social media, or ways to engage stakeholders, or about data management, or other kinds of issues, questions and challenges if (and only if) they’re also relevant for the new proposal.

So on balance, I think reading (funder and scheme) relevant, recent, and highly rated (even if not successful) funding applications can help prospective applicants…. provided that they remember that what they’re reading and drawing inspiration from is a different application from a different team to do different things for different reasons at a different time.

And not a mystical, magical, alchemical formula for funding success.

Getting research funding: the significance of significance

"So tell me, Highlander, what is peer review?" — “I’m Professor Connor Macleod of the Clan Macleod, and this is my research proposal!”

In a excellent recent blog post, Lachlan Smith wrote about the “who cares?” question that potential grant applicants ought to consider, and that research development staff ought to pose to applicants on a regular basis.

Why is this research important, and why should it be funded? And crucially, why should we fund this, rather than that? In a comment on a previous post on this blog Jo VanEvery quoted some wise words from a Canadian research funding panel member: “it’s not a test, it’s a contest”. In other words, research funding is not an unlimited good like a driving test or a PhD viva where there’s no limit to how many people can (in principle) succeed. Rather, it’s more like a job interview, qualification for the Olympic Games, or the film Highlander – not everyone can succeed. And sometimes, there can be only one.

I’ve recently been fortunate enough to serve on a funding panel myself, as a patient/public involvement representative for a health services research scheme. Assessing significance in the form of potential benefit for patients and carers is a vitally important part of the scheme, and while I’m limited in what I’m allowed to say about my experience, I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn when I say that significance – and demonstrating that significance – is key.

I think there’s a real danger when writing – and indeed supporting the writing – of research grant applications that the focus gets very narrow, and the process becomes almost inward looking. It becomes about improving it internally, writing deeply for subject experts, rather than writing broadly for a panel of people with a range of expertise and experiences. It almost goes without saying that the proposed project must convince the kinds of subject expert who will typically be asked to review a project, but even then there’s no guarantee that reviewers will know as much as the applicant. In fact, it would be odd indeed if there were to be an application where the reviewers and panel members knew more about the topic than the applicant. I’d probably go as far as to say that if you think the referees and the reviewers know more than you, you probably shouldn’t be applying – though I’m open to persuasion about some early career schemes and some very specific calls on very narrow topics.

So I think it’s important to write broadly, to give background and context, to seek to convince others of the importance and significance of the research question. To educate and inform and persuade – almost like a briefing. I’m always badgering colleagues for what I call “killer stats” – how big is the problem, how many people does it affect, by how much is it getting worse, how much is it costing the economy, how much is it costing individuals, what difference might a solution to this problem make? If there’s a gap in the literature or in human knowledge, make a case for the importance or potential importance in filling that gap.

For blue skies research it’s obviously harder, but even here there is scope for discussing the potential academic significance of the possible findings – academic impact – and what new avenues of research may be opened out, or closed off by a decisive negative finding which would allow effort to be refocused elsewhere. If all research is standing on the shoulders of giants, what could be seen by future researchers standing on the shoulders of your research?

It’s hugely frustrating for reviewers when applicants don’t do this – when they don’t give decision makers the background and information they need to be able to draw informed conclusions about the proposed project. Maybe a motivated reviewer with a lighter workload and a role in introducing your proposal may have time to do her own research, but you shouldn’t expect this, and she shouldn’t have to. That’s your job.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that the existence of a gap in the literature is not itself an argument for it being filled, or at least not through large amounts of scarce research funding. There must be a near infinite number of gaps, such as the one that used to exist about the effect of peanut butter on the rotation of the earth – but we need more than the bare fact of the existence of a gap – or the fact that other researchers can be quoted as saying there’s a gap – to persuade.

Oh, and if you do want to claim there’s a gap, please check google scholar or similar first – reviewers, panel members (especially introducers) may very well do that. And from my limited experience of sitting on a funding panel, there’s nothing like one introducer or panel member reeling of a list of studies on a topic where there’s supposedly a gap (and which aren’t referenced in the proposal) to finish off the chance of an application. I’ve not seen enthusiasm or support for a project sucked out of the room so completely and so quickly by any other means.

And sometimes, if there aren’t killer stats or facts and figures, or if a case for significance can’t be made, it may be best to either move on to another idea, or a different and cheaper way of addressing the challenge. While it may be a good research idea, a key question before deciding to apply is whether or not the application is competitive for significance given the likely competition, the scale of the award, the ambition sought by the funder, and the number of successful projects to be awarded. Given the limits to research funding available, and their increasing concentration into larger grants, there really isn’t much funding for dull-but-worthy work which taken together leads to the aggregation of marginal gains to the sum of human knowledge.I think this is a real problem for research, but we are where we are.

Significance may well be the final decider in research funding schemes that are open to a range of research questions. There are many hurdles which must be cleared before this final decider, and while they’re not insignificant, they mainly come down to technical competence and feasibility. Is the methodology not only appropriate, but clearly explained and robustly justified? Does the team have the right mix of expertise? Is the project timescale and deliverables realistic? Are the research questions clearly outlined and consistent throughout? All of these things – and more – are important, but what they do is get you safely though into the final reckoning for funding.

Once all of the flawed or technically unfeasible or muddled or unpersuasive or unclear or non-novel proposals have been knocked out, perhaps at earlier stages, perhaps at the final funding panel stage, what’s left is a battle of significance. To stand the best chance of success, your application needs to convince and even inspire non-expert reviewers to support your project ahead of the competition.

But while this may be the last question, or the final decider between quality projects, it’s one that I’d argue potential grant applicants should consider first of all.

The significance of significance is that if you can’t persuasively demonstrate the significance of your proposed project, your grant application may turn out to be a significant waste of your time.

ESRC success rates 2014/2015 – a quick and dirty commentary

The ESRC has issued its annual report and accounts for the financial year 2014/15, and they don’t make good reading. As predicted by Brian Lingley and Phil Ward back in January on the basis of the figures from the July open call, the success rate is well down – to 13% – from the 25% I commented on last year , 27% on 2012-13 and 14% of 2011-2012.

Believe it or not there is a staw-grasping positive way of looking at these figures… of which more later.

This research professional article has a nice overview which I can’t add much to, so read it first. Three caveats about these figures, though…

They’re for the standard open call research grant scheme, not for all calls/schemes
They relate to the financial year, not the academic year
It’s very difficult to compare year-on-year due to changes to the scheme rules, including minimum and maximum thresholds which have changed substantially.

In previous years I’ve focused on how different academic disciplines have got on, but there’s probably very little to add. You can read them for yourself (p. 38), but the report only bothers to calculate success rates for the disciplines with the highest numbers of applications – presumably beyond that there’s little statistical significance. I could be claiming that it’s been a bumper year for Education research, which for years bumped along at the bottom of the league table with Business and Management Studies in terms of success rates, but which this year received 3 awards from 22 applications, tracking the average success rate. Political Science and Socio-Legal Studies did well, as they always tend to do. But it’s generalising from small numbers.

As last year, there is also a table of success rates by institution. In an earlier section on demand management, the report states that the ESRC “are discussing ways of enhancing performance with those HEIs where application volume is high and quality is relatively weak”. But as with last year, it’s hard to see from the raw success rate figures which these institutions might be – though of course detailed institutional profiles showing the final scores for applications might tell a very different story. Last year I picked out Leeds (10/0), Edinburgh (8/1), and Southampton (14/2) as doing poorly, and Kings College (7/3), King Leicester III (9/4), Oxford (14/6) as doing well – though again, one more or less success changes the picture.

This year, Leeds (8/1) and Edinburgh (6/1) have stats that look much better. Southampton doesn’t look to have improved (12/0) at all, and is one of the worst performers. Of those who did well last year, none did so well this year – Kings were down to 11/1, Leicester 2/0, and Oxford 11/2. Along with Southampton, this year’s poor performers were Durham (10/0), UCL (15/1) and Sheffield (11/0) – though all three had respectable enough scores last time. This year’s standouts were Cambridge at 10/4. Perhaps someone with more time than me can combine success rates from the last two years, and I’m sure someone at the ESRC already has….

So… on the basis of success rates alone, probably only Southampton jumps out as doing consistently poorly. But again, much depends on the quality profile of the applications being submitted – it’s entirely possible that they were very unlucky, and that small numbers mask much more slapdash grant submission behaviour from other institutions. And of course, these figures only relate to the lead institution as far as I know.

It’s worth noting that demand management has worked… after a fashion.

We remain committed to managing application volume, with
the aim of focusing sector-wide efforts on the submission
of a fewer number of higher quality proposals with a
genuine chance of funding. General progress is positive.
Application volume is down by 48 per cent on pre-demand
management levels – close to our target of 50 per cent.
Quality is improving with the proportion of applications now
in the ‘fundable range’ up by 13 per cent on pre-demand
management levels, to 42 per cent. (p. 21).

I remember the target of reducing the numbers of applications received by 50% as being regarded as very ambitious at the time, and even if some of it was achieved by changing scheme rules to increase the minimum value of a grant application and banning resubmissions, it’s still some achievement. Back in October 2011 I argued that the ESRC had started to talk optimistically about meeting that target after researcher sanctions (in some form) had started to look inevitable. And in November 2012 things looked nicely on track.

But reducing brute numbers of applications is all very well. But if only 42% of applications are within the “fundable range”, then that’s a problem because it means that a lot of applications being submitted still aren’t good enough.This is where there’s cause for optimism – if less than half of the applications are fundable, your own chances should be more than double the average success rate – assuming that your application is of “fundable” quality. So there’s your good news. Problem is, no-one applies who doesn’t think their application is fundable.

Internal peer review/demand management processes are often framed in terms of improving the quality of what gets submitted, but perhaps not enough of a filtering process. So we refine and we polish and we make 101 incremental improvements… but ultimately you can’t polish a sow’s ear. Or something.

Proper internal filtering is really, really hard to do – sometimes it’s just easier to let stuff from people who won’t be told through and see if what happens is exactly what you think will happen, which it always is. There’s also a fine line (though one I think that can be held and defended) between preventing perceived uncompetitive applications from doing so and impinging on academic freedom. I don’t think telling someone they can’t submit a crap application is infringing their academic freedom, but any such decisions need to be taken with a great deal of care. There’s always the possibility of suspicion of ulterior motives – be it personal, be it subject or methods-based prejudice, or senior people just overstepping the mark and inappropriately imposing their convictions (ideological, methodological etc) on others. Like the external examiner who insists on “more of me” on the reading list….

The elephant in the room, of course, is the flat cash settlement and the fact that that’s now really biting, and that there’s nowhere near enough funding to go around for all of the quality social science research that’s badly needed. But we can’t do much about that – and we can do something about the quality of the applications we’re submitting and allowing to be submitted.

I wrote something for research professional a few years back on how not to do demand management/filtering processes, and I think it still stands up reasonably well and is even quite funny in places (though I say so myself). So I’m going to link to it, as I seem to be linking to a disproportionate amount of my back catalogue in this post.

A combination of a new minimum of £350k for the ESRC standard research grants scheme and the latest drop in success rates makes me think it’s worth writing a companion piece to this blog post about potential ESRC applicants need to consider before applying, and what I think is expected of a “fundable” application.

Hopefully something for the autumn…. a few other things to write about first.

Category: Application advice

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