Career Young Researchers | Cash for Questions: Research funding, policy and development

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.

ESRC – sweeping changes to the standard grants scheme

The ESRC have just announced a huge change to their standard grants scheme, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s going to prove somewhat controversial.

At the moment, it’s possible to apply to the ESRC Standard Grant Scheme at any time for grants of between £200k and £2million. From the end of June this year, the minimum threshold will raise from £200k to £350k, and the maximum threshold will drop from £2m to £1m.

Probably those numbers don’t mean very much to you if you’re not familiar with research grant costing, but as a rough rule of thumb, a full time researcher for a year (including employment costs and overheads) comes to somewhere around £70k-80k. So a rough rule of thumb I used to use was that if your project needed two years of researcher time, it was big enough. So… for £350k you’d probably need three researcher years, a decent amount of PI and Co-I time, and a fair chunk of non-pay costs. That’s a big project. I don’t have my filed in front of me as I’m writing this, so maybe I’ll add a better illustration later on.

This isn’t the first time the lower limit has been raised. Up until February 2011, there used to be a “Small Grants Scheme” for projects up to £200k before that was shut, with £200k becoming the new minimum. The argument at the time was that larger grants delivered more, and had fewer overheads in terms of the costs of reviewing, processing and administering. And although the idea was that they’d help early career researchers, the figures didn’t really show that.

The reasons given for this change are a little ~~disingenuous~~ puzzling. Firstly, this:

The changes are a response to the pattern of demand that is being placed on the standard grants scheme by the social science community. The average value of a standard grant application has steadily increased and is now close to £500,000, so we have adjusted the centre of gravity of the scheme to reflect applicant behaviour.

Now that’s an interesting tidbit of information – I wouldn’t have guessed that the “average value” would be that high, but you don’t have to be an expert in statistics (and believe me, in spite of giving 110% in maths class at school I’m not one) to wonder what “average” means, and further, why it even matters. This might be an attempt at justification, but I don’t see why this provides a rationale for change.

Then we have this….

The changes are also a response to feedback from our Grant Assessment Panels who have found it increasingly difficult to assess and compare the value of applications ranging from £200,000 to £2 million, where there is variable level of detail on project design, costs and deliverables. This issue has become more acute as the number of grant applications over £1 million has steadily increased over the last two years. Narrowing the funding range of the scheme will help to maintain the robustness of the assessment process, ensuring all applications get a fair hearing.

I have every sympathy for the Grant Assessment Panel members here – how do you choose between funding one £2m project and funding 10 x £200k projects, or any combination you can think of? It’s not so much comparing apples to oranges as comparing grapes to water melons. And they’re right to point out the “variable” level of detail provided – but that’s only because their own rules give a maximum of 6 A4 page for the Case for Support for projects under £1m and 12 for those over. If you think that sounds superficially reasonable, then notice that it’s potentially double the space to argue for ten times the money. I’ve supported applications of £1m+ and 12 sides of A4 is nowhere near enough, compared to the relative luxury of 6 sides for £200k. This is a problem.

In my view it makes sense to “introduce an annual open competition for grants between £1 million and £2.5 million”, which is what the ESRC propose to do. So I think there’s a good argument for lowering the upper threshold from £2m to £1m and setting it up as a separate competition. I know the ESRC want to reduce the number of calls/schemes, but this makes sense. As things stand I’ve regularly steered people away from the Centres/Large Grants competition towards Standard Grants instead, where I think success rates will be higher and they’ll get a fairer hearing. So I’d be all in favour of having some kind of single Centres/Large/Huge/Grants of Unusual Size competition.

But nothing here seems to me to be an argument for raising the lower limit.

But finally, I think we come to what I suspect is the real reason, and judging by Twitter comments so far, I’m not alone in thinking this.

We anticipate that these changes will reduce the volume of applications we receive through the Standard Grants scheme. That will increase overall success rates for those who do apply as well as reducing the peer review requirements we need to place on the social science community.

There’s a real problem with ESRC success rates, which dropped to 10% in the July open call, with over half the “excellent” proposals unfunded. This is down from around 25% success rates, much improved in the last few years. I don’t know whether this is a blip – perhaps a few very expensive projects were funded and a lot of cheaper ones missed out – but it’s not good news. So it’s hard not to see this change as driven entirely by a desire to get success rates up, and perhaps an indication that this wasn’t a blip.

In a recent interview with Adam Smith of Research Professional, Chief Exec Jane Eliot recently appeared to rule out the option of individual sanctions which had been threatened if institutional restraint failed to bring down the number of poor quality applications and it appears that the problem is not so much poor quality applications as lots of high quality applications, not enough money, plummeting success rates, and something needing to be done.

All this raises some difficult questions.

Where are social science researchers now supposed to go for funding for projects whose “natural size” is between £10k (British Academy Small Grants) and £350k, the proposed new minimum threshold? There’s only really the Leverhulme Trust, whose schemes will suit some project types and but not others, and they’re not exclusively a social science funder.
Where will the next generation of PIs to be entrusted with £350k of taxpayer’s money have an opportunity to cut their teeth, both in terms of proving themselves academically and managerially?
What about career young researchers? At least here we can expect a further announcement – there has been talk of merging the ‘future leaders scheme’ into Standard Grants, so perhaps there will be a lower minimum for them. But we’ll see.
Given that the minimum threshold has been almost doubled, what consultation has been carried out? I’m just a humble Business School Research Manager (I mean I’m humble, my Business School is outstanding, obviously) so perhaps it’s not surprising that this the first I’ve heard. But was there any meaningful consultation over this? Is there any evidence underpinning claims for the efficiency of fewer, longer and larger grants?
How do institutions respond? I guess one way will be to work harder to create bigger gestalt projects with multiple themes and streams and work packages. But surely expectations of grant getting for promotion and other purposes need to be dialled right back, if they haven’t been already. Do we encourage or resist a rush to get applications in before the change, at a time when success rates will inevitably be dire?

Of course, the underlying problem is that there’s not enough money in the ESRC’s budget to support excellent social science after years and years of “flat cash” settlements. And it’s hard to see what can be done about that in the current political climate.

Using Social Media to Support Research Management – ARMA training and development event

Last week I gave a brief presentation at a training and development event organised by ARMA (Association of Research Managers and Administrators) entitled ‘Using Social Media to Support Research Management’. Also presenting were Professor Andy Miah of the University of Salford, Sierra Williams of the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog, Terry Bucknell of Altmetric. and Phil Ward of Fundermentals and the University of Kent. A .pdf of my wibblings as inflicted can be found here.

I guess there are three things from the presentation and from the day as a whole that I’d pick out for particular comment.

Firstly, if you’re involved in research management/support/development/impact, then you should be familiar with social media, and by familiar I don’t mean just knowing the difference between Twitter and Friends Reunited – I mean actually using it. That’s not to say that everyone must or should dash off and start a blog – for one thing, I’m not sure I could handle the competition. But I do think you should have a professional presence on Twitter. And I think the same applies to any academics whose research interests involve social media in any way – I’ve spoken to researchers wanting to use Twitter data who are not themselves on Twitter. Call it a form of ethnography if you like (or, probably better, action research), I think you only really understand social media by getting involved – you should “inhabit the ecosystem”, as Andy Miah put it in a quite brilliant presentation that you should definitely make time to watch.

I’ve listed some of the reasons for getting involved, and some of the advantages and challenges, in my presentation. But briefly, it’s only by using it and experiencing for yourself the challenge of finding people to follow, getting followers, getting attention for the messages you want to transmit, risking putting yourself and your views out there that you come to understand it. I used to just throw words like “blog” and “twitter” and “social media engagement” around like zeitgeisty confetti when talking to academic colleagues about their various project impact plans, without understanding any of it properly. Now I can talk about plans to get twitter followers, strategies to gain readers for the project blog, the way the project’s social media presence will be involved in networks and ecosystems relevant to the topic.

One misunderstanding that a lot of people have is that you have to tweet a lot of original content – in fact, it’s better not to. Andy mentioned a “70/30” rule – 70% other people’s stuff, 30% yours, as a rough rule of thumb. Even if your social media presence is just as a kind of curator – finding and retweeting interesting links and making occasional comments, you’re still contributing and you’re still part of the ecosystem, and if your interests overlap with mine, I’ll want to follow you because you’ll find things I miss. David Gauntlett wrote a really interesting article for the LSE impact blog on the value of “publish, then filter” systems for finding good content, which is well worth a read. Filtering is important work.

The second issue I’d like to draw out is an issue around personal and professional identity on Twitter. When Phil Ward, Julie Northam, David Young and I gave a presentation on social media at the ARMA conference in 2012, many delegates were already using Twitter in a personal capacity, but were nervous about mixing the personal and professional. I used to think this was much more of a problem/challenge than I do now. In last week’s presentation, I argued that there were essentially three kinds of Twitter account – the institutional, the personal, and what I called “Adam at work”. Institutional wears a shirt and tie and is impersonal and professional. Personal is sat in its pants on the sofa tweeting about football or television programmes or politics. Adam-at-work is more ‘smart casual’ and tweets about professional stuff, but without being so straight-laced as the institutional account.

Actually Adam-at-Work (and, for that matter You-at-Work) are not difficult identities to work out and to stick to. We all manage it every day. We’re professional and focused and on-topic, but we also build relations with our office mates and co-workers, and some of that relationship building is through sharing weekend plans, holidays, interests etc. I want to try to find a way of explaining this without resorting to the words “water cooler” or (worse) “banter”, but I’m sure you know what I mean. Just as we need to show our human sides to bond with colleagues in everyday life, we need to do the same on Twitter. Essentially, if you wouldn’t lean over and tell it to the person at the desk next to you, don’t tweet about it. I think we’re all well capable of doing this, and we should trust ourselves to do it. By all means keep a separate personal twitter account (because you don’t want your REF tweets to send your friends to sleep) and use that to shout at the television if you’d like to.

I think it’s easy to exaggerate the dangers of social media, not least because of regular stories about people doing or saying something ill-advised. But it’s worth remembering that a lot of those people are famous or noteworthy in some way, and so attract attention and provocation in a way that we just don’t. While a footballer might get tweeted all kinds of nonsense after a poor performance, I’m unlikely to get twitter-trolled by someone who disagrees with something I’ve written, or booed while catching a train. Though I do think a football crowd style crescendo of booing might be justified in the workplace for people who send mass emails without the intended attachment/with the incorrect date/both.

Having said all that… this is just my experience, and as a white male it may well be that I don’t attract that kind of negative attention on social media. I trust/hope that female colleagues have had similar positive experiences and I’ve no reason to think they haven’t, but I don’t want to pass off my experience as universal. (*polishes feminist badge*).

The third thing is to repeat an invitation which I’ve made before – if anyone would like to write a guest post for my blog on any topic relevant to its general themes, please do get in touch. And if anyone has an questions about twitter, blogging, social media that they think I might have a sporting chance of answering, please ask away.

Grant Writing Mistakes part 94: The “Star Wars”

Have you seen Star Wars? Even if you haven’t, you might be aware of the iconic opening scene, and in particular the scrolling text that begins

“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….”

(Incidentally, this means that the Star Wars films are set in the past, not the future. Which is a nice bit of trivia and the basis for a good pub quiz question). What relevance does any of this have for research grant applications? Patience, Padawan, and all will become clear.

What I’m calling the “Star Wars” error in grant writing is starting the main body of your proposal with the position of “A long time ago…”. Before going on to review the literature at great length, quoting everything that calls for more research, and in general taking a lot of time and space to lay the groundwork and justify the research. Without yet telling the reader what it’s about, why it’s important, or why it’s you and your team that should do it.

This information about the present project will generally emerge in its own sweet time and space, but not until two thirds of the way through the available space. What then follows is a rushed exposition with inadequate detail about the research questions and about the methods to be employed. The reviewer is left with an encyclopaedic knowledge of all that went before it, of the academic origin story of the proposal, but precious little about the project for which funding is being requested. And without a clear and compelling account of what the project is about, the chances of getting funded are pretty much zero. Reviewers will not unreasonably want more detail, and may speculate that its absence is an indication that the applicants themselves aren’t clear what they want to do.

Yes, an application does need to locate itself in the literature, but this should be done quickly, succinctly, clearly, and economically as regards to the space available. Depending on the nature of the funder, I’d suggest not starting with the background, and instead open with what the present project is about, and then zoom out and locate it in the literature once the reader knows what it is that’s being located. Certainly if your background/literature review section takes up more than between a quarter of the available space, it’s too long.

(Although I think “the Star Wars” is a defensible name for this grant application writing mistake, it’s only because of the words “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away….”. Actually the scrolling text is a really elegant, pared down summary of what the viewer needs to know to make sense of what follows… and then we’re straight into planets, lasers, a fleeing spaceship and a huge Star Destroyer that seems to take forever to fly through the shot.)

In summary, if you want the best chance of getting funded, you should, er… restore balance to the force…. of your argument. Or something.

Six writing habits I reckon you ought to avoid in grant applications…..

There are lots of mistakes to avoid in writing grant applications, and I’ve written a bit about some of them in some previous posts (see “advice on grant applications” link above). This one is more about writing habits. I read a lot of draft grant applications, and as a result I’ve got an increasingly long list of writing quirks, ticks, habits, styles and affectations that Get On My Nerves.

Imagine I’m a reviewer… Okay, I’ll start again.. imagine I’m a proper reviewer with some kind of power and influence…. imagine further that I’ve got a pile of applications to review that’s as high as a high pile of applications. Imagine how well disposed I’d feel towards anyone who makes reading their writing easier, clearer, or in the least bit more pleasant. Remember how the really well-written essays make your own personal marking hell a little bit less sulphurous for a short time. That. Whatever that tiny burst of goodwill – or antibadwill – is worth, you want it.

The passive voice is excessively used

I didn’t know the difference between active and passive voice until relatively recently, and if you’re also from a generation where grammar wasn’t really teached in schools then you might not either. Google is your friend for a proper explanation by people who actually know what they’re talking about, and you should probably read that first, but my favourite explanation is from Rebecca Johnson – if you can add “by zombies”, then it’s passive voice. I’ve also got the beginnings of a theory that the Borg from Star Trek use the passive voice, and that’s one of the things that makes them creepy (“resistance is futile” and “you will be assimilated”) but I don’t know enough about grammar or Star Trek to make a case for this. Sometimes the use of the passive voice (by zombies) is appropriate, but often it makes for distant and slightly tepid writing. Consider:

A one day workshop will be held (by zombies) at which the research findings will be disseminated (by zombies). A recording of the event will be made (bz) and posted on our blog (bz). Relevant professional bodies will be approached (bz)…

This will be done, that will be done. Yawn. Although, to be fair, a workshop with that many zombies probably won’t be a tepid affair. But much better, I think, to take ownership… we will do these things, co-Is A and B will lead on X. Academic writing seems to encourage depersonalisation and formality and distancing (which is why politicians love it – “mistakes were made [perhaps by zombies, but not by me]”.

I think there are three reasons why I don’t like it. One is that it’s just dull. A second is that I think it can read like a way of avoiding detail or specifics or responsibility for precisely the reasons that politicians use it, so it can subconsciously undermine the credibility of what’s being proposed. The third reason is that I think for at least some kinds of projects, who the research team are – and in particular who the PI is – really matters. I can understand the temptation to be distant and objective and sciency as if the research speaks entirely for itself. But this is your grant application, it’s something that you ought to be excited and enthused by, and that should come across. If you’re not, don’t even bother applying.

First Person singular, First Person plural, Third Person

Pat Thomson’s blog Patter has a much fuller and better discussion about the use of “we” and “I” in academic writing that I can’t really add much to. But I think the key thing is to be consistent – don’t be calling yourself Dr Referstoherselfinthethirdperson in one part of the application, “I” in another, “the applicant” somewhere else, and “your humble servant”/ “our man in Havana” elsewhere. Whatever you choose will feel awkward, but choose a consistent method of awkwardness and have done with it. Oh, and don’t use “we” if you’re the sole applicant. Unless you’re Windsor (ii), E.

And don’t use first names for female team members and surnames for male team members. Or, worse, first names for women, titles and surnames for men. I’ve not seen this myself, but I read about it in a tweet with the hashtag #everydaysexism

Furthermore and Moreover…

Is anyone willing to mount a defence for the utility of either of these words, other than (1) general diversity of language and (2) padding out undergraduate essays to the required word count? I’m just not sure what either of these words actually means or adds, other than perhaps as an attempted rhetorical flourish, or, more likely, a way of bridging non-sequiturs or propping up poor structuring.

“However” and “Yet”…. I’ll grudgingly allow to live. For now.

Massive (Right Justified) Wall-o-Text Few things make my heart sink more than having to read a draft application that regards the use of paragraphs and other formatting devices as illustrative of a lack of seriousness and rigour. There is a distinction between densely argued and just dense. Please make it easier to read… and that means not using right hand justification. Yes, it has a kind of superficial neatness, but it makes the text much less readable.

Superabundance of Polysyllabic Terminology

Too many long words. It’s not academic language and (entirely necessary) technical terms and jargon that I particularly object to – apart from in the lay summary, of course. It’s a general inflation of linguistic complexity – using a dozen words where one will do, never using a simple word where a complex one will do, never making your point twice when a rhetorically-pleasing triple is on offer.

I guess this is all done in an attempt to make the application or the text seem as scholarly and intellectually rigorous as possible, and I think students may make similar mistakes. As an undergraduate I think I went through a deeply regrettable phase of trying to ape the style of academic papers in my essay writing, and probably made myself sound like one of the most pompous nineteen year olds on the planet.

If you find yourself using words like “effectuate”, you might want to think about whether you might be guilty of this.

Sta. Cca. To. Sen. Ten. Ces.

Varying and manipulating sentence length can be done deliberately to produce certain effects. Language has a natural rhythm and pace. Most people probably have some awareness of what that is. They are aware that sentences which are one paced can be very dull. They are aware that this is something tepid about this paragraph. But not everyone can feel the music in language. I think it is a lack of commas that is killing this paragraph. Probably there is a technical term for this.

So… anyone willing to defend “moreover” or “furthermore”? Any particularly irritating habits I’ve missed? Anyone actually know any grammar or linguistics provide any technical terms for any of these habits?

Meanwhile, over at the ESRC…

There have been a few noteworthy developments at the ESRC over the summer months which I think are probably worth drawing together into a single blog post for those (like me) who’ve made the tactical error of choosing to have some time off over the summer.

1. The annual report.

I’ve been looking forward to this (I know, I know….) to see whether there’s been any substantial change to the huge differences in success rates between different academic disciplines. I wrote a post about this back in October and it’s by some distance the most read article on my blog. Has there been any improvements since 2011/12, when Business and Management had 1 of 68 applications funded and Education 2 of 62, compared to Socio-Legal Studies (39%, 7 of 18), and Social Anthropology (28%, 5 from 18).

Sadly, we still don’t know, because this information is nowhere to be found in the annual report. We know the expenditure by region and the top 11 (sic) recipients of research expenditure, research and training expenditure, and the two combined. But we don’t know how this breaks down by subject. To be fair, that information wasn’t published until October last year, and so presumably it will be forthcoming. And presumably the picture will be better this year.

That’s not to say that there’s no useful information in the annual report. We learn that the ESRC Knowledge Exchange Scheme has a very healthy success rate of 52%, though I think I’m right in saying that the scheme will have been through a number of variations in the period in question. Historically it’s not been an easy scheme to apply for, partly because of the need for co-funding from research partners, and partly because of a number of very grey areas around costing rules.

For the main Research Grants Scheme success rates are also up, though by how much is unclear. The text of the report (p. 18) states that

After a period where rates plummeted to as low as 11 per cent, they have now risen to 35 per cent, in part because we have committed additional funding to the scheme [presumably through reallocation, rather than new money] but also because application volume has decreased. This shows the effects of our demand management strategy, with HEIs now systematically quality assuring their applications and filtering out those which are not ready for submission. We would encourage HEIs to continue to develop their demand management strategies as this means academics and administrators in both HEIs and the ESRC have been able to focus efforts on processing and peer-reviewing a smaller number of good quality applications, rather than spending time on poor quality proposals which have no chance of being funded.

Oddly the accompanying table gives a 27% success rate, and unfortunately (at the time of writing) the document with success rates for individual panel meetings hasn’t been updated since April 2012, and the individual panel meeting documents only list funded projects, not success rates. But whatever the success rate is, it does appear to be a sign that “demand management” is working and that institutions are practising restraint in their application habits. Success rates of between a quarter and a third sound about right to me – enough applications to allow choice, but not so many as to be a criminal waste of time and effort.

The report also contains statistics about the attendance of members at Council and Audit Committee Meetings, but you’ll have to look them up for yourself as I have a strict “no spoilers” policy on this blog.

I very much look forward – and I think the research community is too – to seeing the success rates by academic discipline at a later date.

2. A new Urgency Grants Mechanism

More good news…. a means by which research funding decisions can be taken quickly in response to the unexpected and significant. The example given is the Riots of summer 2011, and I remember thinking that someone would get a grant out of all this as I watched TV pictures my former stomping ground of Croydon burn. But presumably less… explosive unexpected opportunities might arise too. All this seems only sensible, and allows a way for urgent requests to be considered in a timely and transparent manner.

3. ESRC Future Research Leaders call

But “sensible” isn’t a word I’d apply to the timing of this latest call. First you’ve heard of it? Well, better get your skates on because the deadline is the 24th September. Outline applications? Expressions of interest? Nope, a full application. And in all likelihood, you should probably take your skates off again because chances are that your institution’s internal deadlines for internal peer review have already been and gone.

The call came out on or about the 23rd July, with a deadline of 24th September. Notwithstanding what I’ve said previously about no time of the academic year being a good time to get anything done, it’s very hard to understand why this happened. Surely the ESRC know that August/September is when a lot of academic staff (and therefore research support) are away from the university on a mixture of annual leave and undertaking research. Somehow, institutions are expected to cobble together a process of internal review and institutional support, and individuals are expected to find time to write the application. It’s hard enough for the academics to write the applications, but if we take the demand management agenda seriously, we should be looking at both the track record and the proposed project of potential applicants, thinking seriously about mentoring and support, and having difficult conversations with people we don’t think are ready. That needs a lot of senior time, and a lot of research management time.

This scheme is a substantial investment. Effectively 70 projects worth up to £250k (at 80% fEC). This is a major investment, and given that the Small Grants scheme and British Academy Fellowship success rates are tiny, this is really the major opportunity to be PI on a substantial project. This scheme is overtly picking research leaders of the future, but the timetable means that it’s picking those leaders from those who didn’t have holiday booked in the wrong couple of weeks, or who could clear their diaries to write the application, or who don’t have a ton of teaching to prepare for – which is most early career academics, I would imagine.

Now it might be objected that we should have know that the call was coming. Well…. yes and no. The timing was similar last year, and it was tight then, but it’s worse this year – it was announced on about the same date, but with a deadline 4th October, almost two working weeks later. Two working weeks that turns it from a tall order into something nigh on impossible, and which can only favour those with lighter workloads in the run-up to the new academic year. And even knowing that it’s probably coming doesn’t help. Do we really expect people to start making holiday plans around when a particular call might come out? Really? If we must have a September deadline, can we know about it in January? Or even earlier? To be fair, the ESRC has got much better with pre-call announcements of late, at least for very narrow schemes, but this really isn’t good enough.

I also have a recollection (backed up by a quick search through old emails, but not by documentary evidence) that last year the ESRC were talking about changing the scheme for this year, possibly with multiple deadlines or even going open call. Surely, I remember thinking, this start-of-year madness can only be a one-off.

Apparently not.

News from the ESRC: International co-investigators and the Future Leaders Scheme

"They don't come over here, they take our co-investigator jobs..." I’m still behind on my blogging – I owe the internet the second part of the impact series, and a book review I really must get round to writing. But I picked up an interesting nugget of information regarding the ESRC and international co-investigators that’s worthy of sharing and commenting upon.

ESRC communications send round an occasional email entitled ‘All the latest from the ESRC’, which is well worth subscribing to, and reading very carefully as often quite big announcements and changes are smuggled out in the small print. In the latest version, for example, the headline news is the Annual Report (2011-12), while the announcement of the ESRC Future Leaders call for 2012 is only the fifth item down a list of funding opportunities. To be fair, it was also announced on Twitter and perhaps elsewhere too, and perhaps the email has a wider audience than people like me. But even so, it’s all a bit low key.

I’ve not got much to add to what I said last year about the Future Leaders Scheme other than to note with interest the lack of an outline stage this year, and the decision to ring fence some of the funding for very early career researchers – current doctoral students and those who have just passed their PhD. Perhaps the ESRC are now more confident in institutions’ ability to regulate their own submission behaviour, and I can see this scheme being a real test of this. I know at the University of Nottingham we’re taking all this very seriously indeed, and grant writing is now neither a sprint nor a marathon but more like a steeplechase, and my impression from the ARMA conference is that we’re far from alone in this. Balancing ‘demand management’ with a desire to encourage applications is a topic for another blog post. As is the effect of all these calls with early Autumn deadlines – I’d argue it’s much harder to demand manage over the summer months when applicants, reviewers, and research managers are likely to be away on holiday and/or researching.

Something else mentioned in the ESRC is a light touch review of the ESRC’s international co-investigator policy. One of the findings was that

“…grant applications with international co-investigators are nearly twice as likely to be successful in responsive mode competitions as those without, strengthening the argument that international cooperation delivers better research.”

This is very interesting indeed. My first reaction is to wonder whether all of that greater success can be explained by higher quality, or whether the extra value for money offered has made a difference. Outside of the various international co-operation/bilateral schemes, the ESRC would generally expect only to pay directly incurred research costs for ICo-Is, such as travel, subsistence, transcription, and research assistance. It won’t normally pay for investigator time and will never pay overheads, which represents a substantial saving on naming a UK-based Co-I.

While the added value for money argument will generally go in favour of the application, there are circumstances where it might make it technically ineligible. When the ESRC abolished the small grants scheme and introduced the floor of £200k as the minimum to be applied for through the research grants scheme, the figure of £200k was considered to represent the minimum scale/scope/ambition that they were prepared to entertain. But a project with a UK Co-I may sneak in just over £200k and be eligible, yet an identical project with an ICo-I would not be eligible as it would not have salary costs or overheads to bump up the cost. I did raise this with the ESRC a while back when I was supporting an application that would be ineligible under the new rules, but we managed to submit it before the final deadline for Small Grants. The issue did not arise for us then, but I’m sure it will (and probably has) arisen for others.

The ESRC has clarified the circumstances under which they will pay overseas co-investigator salary costs:

“….only in circumstances where payment of salaries is absolutely required for the research project to be conducted. For example, where the policy of the International Co-Investigator’s home institution requires researchers to obtain funding for their salaries for time spent on externally-funded research projects.

In instances where the research funding structure of the collaborating country is such that national research funding organisations equivalent to the ESRC do not normally provide salary costs, these costs will not be considered. Alternative arrangements to secure researcher time, such as teaching replacement costs, will be considered where these are required by the co-investigator’s home institution.”

This all seems fairly sensible, and would allow the participation of researchers involved in Institutes where they’re expected to bring in their own salary, and those where there isn’t a substantial research time allocation that could be straightforwardly used for the project.

While it would clearly be inadvisable to add on an ICo-I in the hope of boosting chances of success or for value for money alone, it’s good to know that applications with ICo-Is are doing well with the ESRC even outside of the formal collaborative schemes, and that we shouldn’t shy away from looking abroad for the very best people to work with. Few would argue with the ESRC’s contention that

[m]any major issues requiring research evidence (eg the global economic crisis, climate change, security etc.) are international in scope, and therefore must be addressed with a global research response.

How can we help researchers get responses for web questionnaires?

A picture of an energy saving lightbulb — *Insert your own hilarious and inaccurate joke about how long energy saving lightbulbs take to warm up here*

I’ve had an idea, and I’d like you, the internet, to tell me if it’s a good one or not. Or how it might be made into a good one.

Would it be useful to set up a central list/blog/twitter account for ongoing research projects (including student projects) which need responses to an internet questionnaire from the general public? Would researchers use it? Would it add value? Would people participate?

Every so often, I receive an email or tweet asking for people to complete a research questionnaire on a particular topic. I usually do (if it’s not too long, and the topic isn’t one I consider intrusive), partly because some of them are quite interesting, partly because I feel a general duty to assist with research when asked, and partly because I probably need to get out more. The latest one was one which a friend and former colleague shared on Facebook. It was a PhD project from a student in her department about sun tanning knowledge and behaviour, and it’s here if you feel like taking part. Now this is not a subject that I feel passionately about, but perhaps that’s why it might be useful for the likes of me to respond.

I guess the key assumptions that I’m making are that there are sufficient numbers of other people like me who would be willing to spend a few minutes every so often completing a web survey to support research, and that nothing like this exists already. If there is, I’ve not heard about and I’d have thought that I would have done. But I’d rather be embarrassed now rather than later! Another assumption is that such a resource might be useful. I strongly suspect that any such resource would have a deeply atypical demographic – I’d imagine it would be mainly university staff and students. But I’d imagine that well designed research questionnaires would be asking sufficiently detailed demographic information to be able to factor this in. For some student projects where the main challenge can be quantity rather than variety, this might not even matter too much. I guess it depends what questions are being asked as part of the research.

I’ve not really thought this through at all yet. I would imagine that only projects which could be completed by anyone would be suitable for inclusion, or at least only projects where responses are invited from a broad range of people. Very specific projects probably wouldn’t work, and would make it harder for participants to find ones which they can do. Obviously all projects would need to have ethical approval from their institution. There would be an expectation that beneficiaries are prepared to reciprocate and help others in return. And clearly there has to be a strategy to tell people about it.

In practical terms, I’m thinking about either a separate blog or a separate page of this one, and probably a separate twitter account. Researchers could add details in a comment on a monthly blog post, and either tweet the account and ask for a re-tweet, or email me a tweet to send. Participants could follow the twitter feed and subscribe to the comments and blog.

So… what do you think? Please comment below (or email me if you prefer). Would this be useful? Would you participate? What have I missed? If I do set this up, how might I go about telling people about it?