Preliminary Results - When do you have enough?

As you probably realize, there is no straightforward answer to what constitutes enough preliminary results to be ready to submit a major grant. It is dependent on the field, on the topic, and on the project. The only commonality, then, is that researchers across disciplines struggle with how much is enough.

Previously, I interviewed Dr. Jeffrey Stansbury, Professor and Associate Dean for Research for the School of Dental Medicine and Professor in Chemistry and Bio-Engineering at CU Boulder and he discussed with me a common mistake that he sees in Early Career Investigator (ECI) grants that he reviews: Often the ECIs could have done one more simple experiment and strengthened their preliminary results to a point where they would have likely been funded.

Yesterday, Dr. Stansbury spoke to a group of faculty at the ORDE Grant Writing Approach Faculty Seminar on the Anschutz Medical Campus and he offered some insight into this challenge. He urged ECI's to take a critical look at their research and preliminary results and to look for holes that peer reviewers would likely focus in on.

By acknowledging the gaps and trying to close them before writing your grant, sometimes you can discover some additional work that will be worth doing before you go after more funding.

Dr. Stansbury also suggested combing the literature to see what data is out there currently that you could possibly work with in another way instead of always creating what you need from scratch.

These are just a couple of expert suggestions around preliminary results, but let's not stop here...

How do you determine how far to go in gathering preliminary results before submitting a larger grant for your research?