Category: Funding

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.

Top application tips for postdoc fellowships in the social sciences

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

Post-doctoral or early career research fellowships in the social sciences have low success rates and are scarcely less competitive than academic posts. But if you have a strong proposal, at least some publications, realistic expectations and a plan B, applying for one of these schemes can be an opportunity to firm up your research ideas and make connections.

Reality check

If you’re thinking of applying for a postdoc or early career social science fellowship, you should ask yourself the following:

  • Are you likely to be one of the top (say) six or seven applicants in your academic discipline?
  • Does your current track record demonstrate this, or at least trajectory towards it?
  • Is applying for a Fellowship the best use of your time?

There’s a lot of naivety about the number of social science fellowships there are and the competition for them. Perhaps some PhD supervisors paint too rosy a picture, perhaps it is applicant wishful thinking, or perhaps the phrasing of some calls understates the reality of what’s required of a competitive proposal. But the reality is that Postdoc Fellowships in the social sciences are barely less competitive than lectureships. Competitive pressures mean that standards are driven sky high and demand exceeds supply by a huge margin.

The British Academy has a success rate of around 5%, with 45 Fellowships across arts, humanities, and social sciences. The Leverhulme Trust success rate is 14%, with around 100 Fellowships across all the disciplines they support (i.e. nearly all). The ESRC scheme is new – no success rates yet – but it will support 30-35 social science Fellowships. Marie Curie Fellowships are still available, but require relocating to another European country. There are the new UKRI Future Leader Fellowships which will fund 100 per call, but that’s across all subjects, and these are very much ‘future leader’ not ‘postdoc’ calls. Although some institutions have responded to a lack of external funding by establishing internal schemes – such as the Nottingham Research Fellowships – standards and expectations are also very, very high.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t apply – Fellowships do exist, applicants do get them – but you need to take a realistic view of your chances of success and decide about the best use of your time. If you’re writing a Fellowship application, you’re not writing up a paper, or writing a job application.

Top Tips for applications

  • Credible applicants need their own (not their supervisor’s) original, detailed and significant Fellowship project. Doing ‘more of the same’ is unlikely to be competitive – it’s fine to want to mine your PhD for publications and for there to be a connection to the new programme of work, but a Fellowship is really about the next stage.
  • If you don’t have any publications, you have little to make you stand out, and therefore little to no chance. Like all grant applications, this is a contest, not a test. It’s not about being sufficiently promising to be worth funding (most applicants are), it’s about presenting a stronger and more compelling case than your rivals.
  • If you have co-authored publications, make your contribution clear. If you have co-written a paper with your supervisor, make sure reviewers can tell whether (a) it is your work, with supervisory input; or (b) it is your supervisor’s work, for which you provided research assistance.
  • Give serious consideration to moving institution unless (a) you’re already at the best place for what you want to do; or (b) your personal circumstances prevent this. Moving institution doubles your network, may give you a better research environment, and gives you a fresh start where you’re seen as an early career researcher, not as the PhD student you used to be. If you’re already at the best place for your work or you can’t move, make the case. Funders are becoming a bit less dogmatic on this point and more aware that not everyone can relocate, but don’t assume that staying put is the best idea.
  • Don’t neglect training and development plans. Who would you like to meet or work with, what would you like training in, what extra research and impact skills would you like to have? Fellowships are about producing the researcher as well as the research.
  • Success rates are very low. Don’t get your hopes up, and don’t put all your eggs in one basket and neglect other opportunities.
  • Much of the rest of my advice on research grant writing applies to Fellowships too.

Even if you’re ultimately unsuccessful, you can also use the application as a vehicle to support the development of your post-PhD research agenda. By expressing a credible interest in applying for a Fellowship at an institution that’s serious about research, you will get feedback on your research plans from senior academics and potential mentors and from research development staff. It also forces you to put your ideas down on paper in a coherent way. Whether you apply for a Fellowship or not, you’ll need this for the academic job market.

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.