Tag Archives: Don’t waste your time

Catalogue

The posts discuss 8 themes:-

  1. How to write a Grant Application
  2. Strategy for writing grant applications
  3. Writing Style for Grant Applications
  4. Giving and Receiving Feedback on Grant Applications
  5. Dealing with referees reports and with rejection
  6. Interviews and Talks
  7. Software
  8. Academic Life and Afterlife

How to Write a Grant Application

Strategy for Grant Applications

Writing Style for Grant Applications

Friendly fire: Giving and receiving feedback

Dealing with referees reports and with rejection

Interviews and talks

Software for Writing Grant Applications

Academic life & Afterlife

We thank the referees for their helpful suggestions…….

PeerReviewCartoonIt may not be easy to keep your temper when responding to referees’ comments but you must make it seem like the easiest thing in the world. Whether the comments are on a grant application or a paper, you should compose your response with regard to the effect you want it to have on the reader. If you want your response to influence a grants committee to award your grant or a journal editor to publish your paper, anger is unlikely to help.

There are some differences between responding to grant-application referees and paper referees but most of the following recommendations apply to both.

Assume that the referee is trying to be helpful. You will do a better job if you can make the assumption of reasonableness. If you can convince yourself that the referees are doing their best to help you  and their comments are genuinely trying to help you improve your research project or your paper, it will be easier to follow most of the recommendations below. It doesn’t matter if the assumption is wrong and the referees are actually trying to sink your grant or turn your paper into tedious gibberish. The important point is that you will do a better job of responding to them if you assume that they are trying to help.

Take responsibility for the reader’s failure to understand. Some writers take pride in the knowledge that very few people understand their work. I have seen responses from grant applicants that berated referees for their stupidity. That is a risky attitude to take in any type of writing and is almost certain to lead to the failure of a grant application.

Express gratitude for referees’ suggestions. Derrington’s first law of responding to referees states “The less you feel gratitude, the more fulsomely you should express it”. This is probably more important in the case of a paper than a grant application because in the case of a paper the referee will usually be consulted about whether your response is satisfactory whereas in the case of a grant application your response will be usually assessed by the grants committee.  Of course it may help you to express gratitude if you can explain how the referees insightful suggestions have enabled you to transform the research project or paper.

Make it clear that the responding to the referees’ suggestions has enabled you to improve the research project (or paper). There are two reasons for this.

  • First, you want to give the impression that the final version of your paper (or grant application) is much better than the version that the referee evaluated and deserves a higher score than the referees gave it.
  • Second, you may want to distract the referee (or the grants committee) from the fact that you may not have made any changes at all. In this case, Derrington’s second law of responding to referees applies “The less you change, the more emphatically you state how much you have changed and how much this has transformed the paper.”

Derrington’s second law is more important for papers than for grants, because journal editors often regard referees’ recommendations as binding and authors often find them unacceptable. A grants’ committee is much more likely to recognise when a referee’s recommendation is ridiculous and accept a response that politely declines to implement it.

State clearly what you are responding to and how. This is particularly important when referees’ comments and suggestions are vague or ambiguous. It is often helpful to paraphrase the referees’ suggestions and to state what changes you have made in response to each one. This is a good way of dealing with the case when two or more referees suggest almost exactly the same thing. A list of your paraphrasings of the referees’ suggestions and a short statement about how you have responded to each one can make a very helpful executive summary that will reassure the reader that you have responded satisfactorily.

Some journals require you to do this but few funding agencies do. Even so, you should do it because it is likely to increase your chance of getting funded because it reassures the committee that you have responded satisfactorily to the referees’ criticisms.

Keep your overall response as short and simple as possible. This is more important with grant applications than with papers because the committee works under immense time pressure.

Know when to give up. If the referees’ reports on a grant are uniformly lukewarm it is unlikely to get funded whatever you say. Paradoxically, faint praise is more damning than strong condemnation because condemnation can give the impression that the referee is biased.

Of course, if you are overwhelmed by the desire to let the referees know how stupid their comments are, you probably won’t be able to follow any of the advice I have given so far. In that case I suggest that you wait until you can. Responding to referees is like inviting an  elderly relative to dinner, better not to do it than to do it with bad grace.

Get the Framework in Place – Quickly

Framework

In this post I want to describe the framework of a grant application. Its components are the key sentences in the case for support that define its essential message. I will explain what the sentences are and how you use them to build the framework. Then I want to explain how you can draft the sentences very very quickly.

The essential message of a grant application’s case for support is carried in ten key sentences, which make the case in headlines. The rest of the document fleshes out that case, provides evidence and makes it believable. But the key sentences set out what has to be believed. They say what the research project will achieve, why it is important, how it will achieve its goal and what you will do with the results. That is the sense in which they carry the essential message.

So what are the 10 key sentences?

Sentence 1 is very important. Its function is to make the reader want to read on by giving them a sense of what your research project will achieve. A good way to do this is to state the overall outcome of the project and to specify enough detail about the project to make it seem both feasible and distinctive. For example, the sentence “This project will develop a new potential treatment for stroke based on a family of synthetic metabolic inhibitors that our group has discovered, tested and synthesised” does all this. Like many introductory sentences, it is quite long. The length is due to extra information that makes it clear both what the approach is and that the project is building on previous work by the applicants. The project would have seemed less feasible and less distinctive if the sentence had stopped at the word “stroke“.

Sentence 2 should give evidence that the problem to be solved is important. A good sentence 2 (assuming it’s true) would be “There are 152000 strokes per year  and over 600,000 disabled stroke survivors in the UK: a suitable metabolic inhibitor could reduce the disability caused by stroke.” It is a common mistake to say something like this in the first sentence but it does not engage the reader so effectively as a promise that the project will bring us closer to solving the problem.

Sentences 3-5 state that we need the outcomes of the research project. In order to make it easy to explain your project it is best to break it into 3 sub-projects, each of which will have a clear outcome. Before you describe the project, sentences 3-5 sell the project to the reader by stating  that each of the outcomes is important. Each of the sentences can be a simple statement that “We need to know” whatever the sub-project will discover.

Sentence 6 introduces the research project. It is an introductory sentence and it can help to add some complexity to make the project seem more feasible and more distinctive. For example, the hypothetical stroke project would be helped by some reference to the achievements of the research team or to the distinctive facilities available.

Sentences 7-9 describe each of the sub-projects. Each sentence says what the sub-project consists of and what its outcome will be. It is crucial that the outcomes match exactly the outcomes sentences 3-5 said were important.

Sentence 10 says something about what will be done with the outcomes to maximise the benefit that will accrue from the project.

Where do the key sentences appear?

Each of the key sentences should be used three times. First they appear consecutively in the introduction of the case for support. The introduction may also include some linking statements but no other substantive messages.

The sentences appear again in the main body of the case for support. This time each sentence introduces a significant section of text that fleshes out and justifies its message.

Third, the summary of the project should be virtually an exact copy of the introduction to the case for support.

How do you write the key sentences quickly?

As I will explain below, it should be possible to produce first drafts of the key sentences in less than an hour. I recommend that you use the draft key sentences as a framework for writing the two main sections of the case for support, the background and the description of the research project.

The first sentences to write are sentences 7-9. Each one states what research you will do in one of your sub-projects and what the outcome of that research will be. Usually the outcome will be that you will know something or understand something that currently is not known or understood. For example, if you were carrying out a project on the importance of writing in the practice of social work, sentence 7 might be:-

We will analyse and quantify texts and explore how writing is being managed alongside other commitments in order to discover the institutional writing demands of contemporary social work.

If you have worked out what your project will consist of and why it is worth doing then it should be really easy to write sentences 7-9. And if you haven’t, you shouldn’t be writing, you should be designing your project.

As soon as you have written sentences 7-9 you need to write sentences 3-5. Each of these sentences has to state the reason that the outcome of one of your sub-projects is important. It should use exactly the same wording to describe that outcome as its corresponding sentence 7-9. So the sentence 3 corresponding to the sentence 7 above could say something like:-

We need to know the institutional writing demands of contemporary social work so that we can identify the writing skills that social workers need.

Notice that the description of what the sub-project will discover appears in exactly the same words in both sentences.

Sentence 6 should also be fairly easy. It is a descriptive sentence that summarises the main features of the research project. These features are itemised in the first clauses of each of the sentences 7-9. You simply need an overarching summary. It should only take you a couple of minutes.

If you haven’t thought hard about dissemination it will be impossible to draft the definitive version of sentence 10 at this stage. However, you should force yourself to write something quickly now. What you write may be rather unconvincing at this stage, but the effort of writing it will be a stimulus for you to think about that phase of the project as you flesh out the case for support. Don’t spend more than 5 minutes on it at this stage.

Now it is time for sentence 1. This is the hardest sentence to write and it’s nearly impossible if you try to write it too soon. It should be pretty easy now because you have written sentences 3-10. The ideal form of sentence 1 is that it states a big question to which all of your sub-projects contribute. It then adds some detail about how you will do the project. This detail should be drawn from sentence 6. With the preparation you have done, sentence 1 should take no more than 10 minutes.

Don’t worry that your sub-projects don’t answer the big question completely. They never do. The knack is to find a big question that fits loosely, but not too loosely, around your project. It has to be clear that your project will contribute to answering the big question you have chosen. It is accepted that there is a trade-off between how completely you answer the question and how big it is – everybody knows that it took more than one research project grant to find the Higgs particle.  You cope with the fact that your project will not answer your big question completely by choosing your words carefully. Notice that, in my sentence 1, I have been careful to use the term “potential treatment”. It would be implausible to claim that the project would develop an actual treatment.

Once you have a draft of sentence 1, sentence 2 should be very quick and easy to draft. All you need to do is to give a reason that your contribution to answering the big question is important.  This reason should be a fact about the world (the If drafting sentence 2 takes you more than a minute then you need to redraft sentence 1. Even with a redraft, you should have your framework well within the hour. If it takes you more than two hours, then you are not ready to write the grant. Find out how to get ready by reading this post.

Are you ready to start?

Starting Line Photo

Starting Line

In this post I will tell you how to decide whether you should start writing a grant application. In essence it’s about how to check whether you have a viable, fundable research project before you go to the trouble of writing the grant application.

This is the third in a series of posts prompted by a desire to show people the easiest possible way to write a research grant application really quickly. I also want to help people avoid wasting time by trying to write grant applications that are unlikely to be finished and virtually certain to be rejected.

In the first post in the series, I argued that you should not start writing until you are ready to write the description of your research project. For me this is a no-brainer. It’s not just that I have seen many people waste years writing flabby, no-hoper grant applications that carefully define a big question and fail to say how they will answer it. It’s more fundamental. The whole point of a grant application is that it is an attempt to sell a research project to a funding body. How can you start trying to sell something before you can say what it is?

In the second post in the series, I advised that a good way to make sure that you are always ready to write a research project at short notice, is to use a process that I call ‘outlining’ to maintain an outline, a catalogue of possible sub-projects. A sub-project is a discrete piece of research; three or four sub-projects make a nice, saleable research project.

I explained that the outline consists of five lists for each sub-project:-

  • a list of discoveries or outcomes, what each sub-project will achieve;
  • a list of the activities that will be carried out in order to make the discovery;
  • a list of the skills that will be needed to carry out the activities;
  • a list of the resources that will be needed to carry out the activities.
      • The resource list will be split into two sub-lists. The first will list the resources that will be paid for by the grant and the second will list those that will be, or have already been, paid for by the institution. It is often necessary to move items between these two sub-lists because funders have different rules about what resources they will pay for.

Whether or not you maintain a catalogue of sub-projects, you should prepare an outline of your proposed research project before you begin to write bout it. That is, you should compile the 5 lists of information for the three or four sub-projects in your proposed research project.

The advantage of using an outline is that it makes the task of writing and submitting a grant much more efficient. The outline contains the information you need for the three main tasks involved in writing and submitting a grant application.

  • It contains the information you need to check the viability of your proposed project, which is the subject of this post.
  • It contains the information you need to negotiate, and to calculate in detail,  the resourcing of the project.
  • It contains essential information that must be used in writing the project.

How to test your project before you start.

To check the viability of your project you should ask the questions below. All of these questions will be asked, either by the funder or by your institution, after your grant application is written. It will save time to ask them now and make sure that the answers are appropriate before you start writing. I have set out the questions in sections according to the list that has the information needed to answer them. The sections are in the order resources, activities, skills and discoveries.

Resources

  • Are all the resources being requested allowable under the chosen funding scheme?
    • If not, you have three choices. Find a different funder; find a different source of funds to pay for the ineligible resources; or change the sub-project for one that doesn’t need them.
    • Don’t make the mistake of assuming that an especially persuasive application will persuade the funder to bend the rules.
  • Will the resources to be provided by the institution definitely be available to the project?
    • Now is the time to check with your line manager or Head of Department.
    • Don’t forget to include your time if you have a salaried position.
    • Don’t forget the research and office space and equipment that will be needed for the research and the researchers.
  • Is the grant requested the right size?
    • This is not just a matter of whether it is within the stated limits of the funding scheme for which you are applying. It should be within the typical range both for the scheme and for an applicant of your standing. Your institution’s research office, or the funding body will usually be happy to give you good advice on this.
    • If your grant is the wrong size, do not make the mistake of trying to fix it by changing the resource list: change the whole project by scaling up or scaling down sub-projects until you have a project that is the right size.
  • Is the complete set of resources adequate to carry out all the activities of the project?
    • It is very common for grants to be rejected outright because of a mismatch.
    • Asking for too little is definitely worse than asking for too much but neither is good.

 Activities

  • Will the specified activities lead to the specified outcomes?
    • This is the heart and soul of the research proposal. You sell the project on the basis of the outcomes it will produce (see below). You will have to write a description of the project that will convince the reader that what you plan to do will do will produce the outcomes you claim. You will only be able to convince them if your description is comprehensive.
  • Can all the activities be done within the specified times?
    • It is a common and fatal mistake to promise far too much and to be vague about how it will get done. It is important to be realistic about what can be done by ordinary mortals in modest time-frames.
    •  And remember it is important to adjust the project rather than to make unrealistic promises about how long it will take.

Skills

  • Does the project team have all the skills?
    • The test that a grants’ committee will apply is whether the research team has peer-reviewed publications that demonstrate the use of the skills. If not, then you need to enhance your team or reduce your project. If you can’t do that, write papers, not a grant.
  • Are the skills sufficient to carry out the activities?
  • Do the skills justify the staff to be paid for by the grant?
    • If you want to hire a post-doc to do a project, it will need to be clear that advanced research skills are part of the project. 

Discoveries or Outcomes

  • Do we need to know that?
    • Are the research outcomes important enough to deserve funding? Funding agencies all have their own statements about their criteria for evaluating research outcomes. Typically they are  interested in discoveries that advance understanding in an important subject or field of study, or that will improve health or economic or social well-being. Although you don’t need chapter and verse at this stage you do need to be reasonably certain that your research will lead to new knowledge or understanding that will have an impact on your field or on society, or on both.
    • It is important that none of your sub-projects could possibly produce results that would render the other sub-projects pointless. For example a project that starts by isolating the bacterium responsible for a disease and then doing lots of experiments to understand the physiology of the bacterium and how the disease can be cured or prevented will fail at the first step if the bacterium cannot be isolated. Many projects fail to get funded because they appear to have this kind of dependency between the early and late phases.
    • Do not claim that your research will show everybody else is wrong, even if you think it will. It is better to put a positive spin on the current state of knowledge and explain how your work will advance it.

So what?

Of course all these questions can, and should, be asked by somebody reading your grant application after it is written. However, by asking the right questions before you start writing you make it easier to write a good grant application quickly. You also make it possible to begin the detailed work necessary to make sure that your research project is properly resourced and costed as soon as you start writing it, rather than after you have finished. Many grant applications have been compromised by the need to make hasty last-minute adjustments because of difficulties about resourcing that only became apparent after the writing was done.

Next week I will explain how, using the information in the outline of your research project, you should be able to sketch out your case for support in a couple of hours.

Be Prepared

3383951_sIn this post I want to tell you how you can be prepared to write a grant application quickly and with minimum effort. Last week I warned you about the trap of the never-ending grant application. This week I am telling you how you can make sure you never fall into it.

The essence of the approach is that you use a process that I call ‘outlining’ to compile a personal catalogue of possible research sub-projects. Each sub-project consists of a piece of research that you would like to do, but for which you don’t currently have the time or the resources. If you can create a suitable catalogue you will be able to design a viable research project very quickly. If you cannot create such a catalogue, you are not ready to write a grant application and you should not waste the time.

This approach is the easiest way to discover whether you are able to start writing the description of a research project. I will discuss how you create the basic building block of your research project, a sub-project, and how you create a catalogue of sub-projects.

The definition of a sub-project is very flexible and is very much up to you. We point out in the book, The Research Funding Toolkit, that a research project is much easier to write about if it can be broken down into about four components. These components are the sub-projects. So for the 2-3 year research project of a typical grant-application a sub-project will be about 6 plus or minus 2 months full-time research.

Sub-projects should be conceptually discrete but they might overlap in time and in resources. For example, imagine a psychology research project to test whether particular numerical and verbal skills develop at different rates in boys and girls. It might consist of a series of discrete sub-projects each of which measures a different set of numerical and verbal skills. Each sub-project can be defined in terms of what research will be done, what resources will be needed and what the sub-project will discover. However, the sub-projects might well be carried out during the same time period using the same equipment.

The point of the sub-project is that, when you are explaining a big research project, it is very helpful to break it down into a small number of discrete components, which together build up into a significant package. And when you are trying to design a significant research project, it is usually easier to build it up out of a number of sub-projects.

In compiling the kind of catalogue you need for writing research grants it is essential to record 5 sets of information about each sub-project. These are:-

  • What the sub-project will discover or establish. Ideally a sub-project will discover something that can be expressed in a single sentence. For example, one of the sub-projects in our hypothetical psychology project might establish whether ability to solve arithmetic problems is equally related with ability to write complex sentences in boys and girls.
  • What activities the sub-project consists of. For example, our hypothetical sub-project might involve the design of testing materials; the development of suitable testing apparatus; the selection of a suitable group of schools to be involved in the project; liaison with the schools; selection and screening of suitable children within each school; administration of the tests; processing of test results; writing of reports and papers.
  • What skills are needed to carry out the activities.
  • What resources will be used in the sub-project. This should be separated into two lists, resources that are already available and new resources that must be paid for by the grant. These lists should go beyond the obvious resources of equipment and consumables and include things like your time and the time of other staff who would be involved, which should be quantified both because some funders will treat it as a cost that can be funded from the grant and because your employer may need to know what they are committing to the project. They should also include facilities that may be needed like laboratories. In our hypothetical sub-project on child development it could also include the relationships which you will have established with schools that provide you with research participants – if you have them, otherwise you will need to budget for the work that must be done to build such relationships.

These 5 lists are what I call the ‘outline’. They include all the information you will need about a sub-project in order to write about it as part of a research grant. I strongly recommend that you develop the habit of turning your ideas about possible research projects into a catalogue of sub-projects. The essence of the outline is that you maintain the 5 lists for each sub-project. As soon as you have a few sub-projects you can consider whether you have enough to generate a coherent and fundable research project. I will tell you how to make that decision in my next post.