Funding | Cash for Questions: Research funding, policy and development

Getting better feedback on your research grant proposals

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in December 2021 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

How to nudge your draft-bid reviewers to deliver their sharpest insights

A picture of Edmund Blackadder with a caption asking if he can change one tiny aspect of the document he is erading — Rowan Atkinson as Edmund Blackadder, in Blackadder the Third. The one tiny aspect of the document that he wants to change is ‘the words’.

Have you ever asked a colleague for feedback on a draft grant proposal and been told: “looks fine to me, but it’s not really my area”? Not particularly helpful, is it? Well, in this article I’m going to help you avoid ever hearing those words again, by detailing how you can raise your chances of getting better feedback on draft bids. (Next week, I’ll try and help you avoid ever uttering those words again with some tips on giving good feedback.)

A peek inside a research funding panel

Understanding how funding panels usually work can help you write a more competitive application, says Adam Forristal Golberg.

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in November 2021 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

When it comes to research funding, I’ve been poacher and gamekeeper. I’m a research development manager, but I’ve also served two terms as a public member of a research funding panel, and I still review the odd proposal. I’m going to draw upon that experience to try to explain how funding panels tend to work. They obviously vary depending on funder and scheme. So treat this article as based on a true story, but with certain scenes invented for dramatic purposes.

Read all about it! How to read a funding call

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in July 2021 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

What to pay attention to when consulting call documentation

‘Make sure you read the call spec’ is one of the most frequently dispensed pieces of advice from grants managers and research offices alike. It might sound mind-numbingly obvious but, still, a not insignificant proportion of applicants to most funding schemes—especially the smaller ones—won’t have followed it and their chances of success will be slim to none.

While most applicants won’t make such an elementary error, it can still pay to unpack what following this apparently self-evident advice actually entails. Knowing how call literature is usually written and presented, what to look out for and how to read it can, in the final analysis, make the difference between your bid sinking and swimming.

The art of the sift

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in February 2022 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

How to select bids when funders restrict the number that each university can submit

Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665), The Judgment of Solomon (1649), oil on canvas, 101 x 150 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

One of the most awkward challenges in research development is responding to a ‘restricted’ funding call that only permits a limited number of applications per university. This requires an internal selection process. I’m going to share some of the things I do when I set one up. I don’t have all the answers, and I’d be interested to hear what others do, via twitter, or email or the comments.

This article refers primarily to funding schemes with a hard limit on application numbers. In the UK, that includes the Leverhulme Trust’s major calls and the Academy of Medical Science’s Springboard Awards. Some of the suggestions may also be relevant to panels for schemes with a ‘soft’ limit. These typically don’t set a formal limit on application numbers, but require universities to have a process to manage demand, submit only their most competitive applications, and not support others. There are good arguments for saying that we should be doing this sift anyway, if only to prevent our researchers wasting time and effort.

Postdoc Fellowships: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in March 2022 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com

Is relocation always advisable for a postdoc fellowship, and what if it’s not possible?

Most postdoctoral fellowship programmes encourage potential applicants to move institutions, though the strength of that steer and the importance placed on researcher mobility varies from scheme to scheme. At the extreme end, in Europe, the Marie Curie Fellowships programme (not exclusively a postdoc scheme) requires international mobility for eligibility.

“Until tomorrow, the whole world is my home…”

In the UK, most schemes have softened their steer over recent years. Where once staying at your current institution required ‘exceptional justification’ or some similar phrasing, there’s now an increasing awareness that researcher mobility doesn’t make sense for everyone and enforcing it has negative ramifications for equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). It’s much harder and more disruptive for researchers with family commitments to move institutions, and harder for those with partners who are tied to a particular location for family or job reasons. There will be other researchers who are already in the best environment for their research, and so any move would be a backward step. It’s now common for application forms to allow space for both (a) personal/EDI reasons why moving institutions is not possible; and (b) intellectual/research reasons for not wanting to move.