A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in May 2026 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional͘. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com
From obvious red flags to hidden weaknesses
Research funding is a contest, not a test. Apart from a few schemes that use partial randomisation, it’s not about reaching a required standard, it’s about being ranked ahead of others and above the line at which funding runs out. Funding is not an unlimited good like a driving license or a PhD viva where your outcome in the morning has no impact on my chances in the afternoon. No, it’s a limited good, like an Olympic medal. And we can’t all have one.
I’ve recently argued that funders and universities should take concerted steps to reduce the number of uncompetitive applications (say, the least competitive 20 per cent) to diminish applicant and reviewer workload.
Here, I’m going to list some of the common features of uncompetitive applications. Take these as warning signs; if you find yourself looking over a bid (yours or someone else’s) and any of these characteristics are prominent, then there’s a low chance of success as it stands. I’ll start with the more obviously uncompetitive characteristics before moving on to subtler signs.
Obvious errors
A poorly articulated proposal is a poor proposal. Funders won’t fund what they don’t understand—whether it’s so technical that it’s incomprehensible to most of the panel or confused or inconsistent in its aims and objectives.
Closely related is the undercooked bid, where the idea clearly isn’t ready and needs further development, refining and some de-fudging. Such a bid might be undercooked conceptually, methodologically, or in terms of access to project partners or other resources. Rushed bids are often undercooked and poorly articulated.
Of course, a bid will be uncompetitive if it is not up to scratch scientifically. Here I’d include unachievable projects which can’t be executed with the time and resources available, the methodologically flawed, where methods are judged unable to generate the conclusions the applicants want, and the redundant, where applicants seem unaware of key developments in the literature.
The squeezed middle
Obviously uncompetitive applications are uncompetitive for obvious reasons. There is something wrong with them, and there’s a clear reason why they’re not getting funded.
But this only accounts for a minority of unsuccessful and uncompetitive applications. If a funding scheme has a success rate of about 20 per cent and let’s say a further 20 per cent fall into the obviously uncompetitive category, what about the remaining 60 per cent? Were they all competitive? That is, on another day with another panel (and perhaps other peer reviewers), might they have been funded instead?
The answer will vary from scheme to scheme, but in general I think the answer, for most of these bids, is no. I’d argue that there’s a further tranche of reasons why competent, comprehensible, feasible applications might nevertheless be de facto uncompetitive.
Nearly but not quite
The number one reason why proposals are uncompetitive, in my experience, is that they are worthy but dull and are damned to exist in panellists’ minds in The Zone of Meh. There’s nothing wrong with them, but neither are they anything to get excited about.
I’ve seen the phrases “incremental progress” and “incremental benefit” many times in reviewer comments over the years and it mostly reads like it’s damning the bid with faint praise: “Yeah, this is solid, competent science, but it’s not going to shift any paradigms.” In other words, these bids are fine as far as they go, but where they’re going isn’t competitive compared to rival proposals. This can be a problem of presentation, articulation and underselling, but no amount of spin can change the fundamental nature of the project.
This is a problem for scientific progress, since there’s only so much point in shifting paradigms and generating new understandings if these breakthroughs are not then exploited through further, less glamorous, work. It’s also a problem for fields where progress may only be possible through incremental progress. In research, there’s often talk of heterodox-but-high-reward projects being squeezed out, but I wonder if there’s a problem with getting low risk, cumulative reward projects funded, too.
Time and money
Next, we have projects deemed to offer poor value for money. Inaccurately or improbably costed projects are obviously uncompetitive, but there’s a further category of competently costed projects where the size of the scientific prize just doesn’t justify the budget sought.
This is especially true for themed calls. A themed call has clear purposes and will often list example topic areas (usually hedged with an ‘including but not limited to’ qualifier). If there are six core areas within remit, and your project addresses only part of one of them and asks for the maximum available budget, it’s unlikely to be competitive.
To avoid making this error, it’s worth looking at the maximum budget for the call, the number of projects to be funded (if stated), and the total breadth of the area. It may be that the funder is not expecting the portfolio of successful proposals to cover everything within that area, but given that the aim is to address a number of broad themes, you’d expect the panel to prioritise bids that nonetheless cover a decent amount of ground.
But it can also be true for open calls. Projects that require a sledgehammer budget to crack a walnut-sized research question are unlikely to be competitive.
Proposals can also be deemed uncompetitive because they are poorly timed. Timing is a tricky thing to judge, and there are two ways to get it wrong. The first is to apply before the ‘warrant for your research’ is properly established. By this, I mean the reasons for thinking that your hypothesis has a reasonable chance of being the correct one. Sometimes it can be worth waiting for a paper currently under review to be published if it adds significantly to your case for funding.
But you can also leave it too late, until a time when the accumulation of evidence (from the team and others) has reached a point where this feels more like development than research. Piling proof on top of proof is also poor value.
And projects can also be poorly or well-timed due to external factors. One of the most compelling proposals I’ve ever supported was so irresistibly competitive in part thanks to the imminent availability of new and unique datasets (and a concomitant lack of resource to exploit them) lining up perfectly with the call timetable.
A possible variant of proposals that are of poor value and poorly timed are bids on the wrong scale. Some research programmes need small-project funding to establish or develop a warrant for that programme. Going for larger funding pots may be seen as premature and therefore too risky (of which more later). On the other hand, if the warrant for your research is established, a further small grant to take another nibble at your research programme may be seen as under-ambitious. What might be needed is a larger project to take a much bigger bite.
Remit and risk
Next up are crowbarred or indirect projects.These are projects that are technically within remit, but which nonetheless can’t compete on relevance to the call. Such proposals often present research that the team is well-positioned and keen to undertake, but repositioned or framed to suit a call. That’s a legitimate strategy that can lead to success… unless the repositioning has left the research mangled out of shape and covered in crowbar marks.
The promise of indirect benefit is a frequent tell: “Ah, I see you’re interested in health outcomes. We’re interested in climate change, which has obvious implications for health [coughs, starts whispering] whicharebeyondthescopeofthisproject…” Well, yes. It’s related to the call, but it’s related at one remove, so it won’t be competitive.
Similar are poorly targeted proposals, which could be very competitive for another funding call, but due to the priorities and the rules of the one under consideration, won’t be and can’t be for this one.
Finally, there are proposals that are just too risky. I’ve tackled risk in a previous article, which also discusses the ‘research warrant’ concept in more detail, but for current purposes, I’ll say that if the research you propose is risky (for a good reason) you should pay extra attention to project planning and management, and include robust contingency plans.
Adam Forristal Golberg is strategic research development manager (research growth) at the University of Nottingham. He writes in a personal capacity. Adam can be found on Bluesky @Cash4Questions and blogs at socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk.