Grant Writing Rules (and when to break them)

Last week I sat in on a mini-workshop by Dr. Robert Porter, who is a grant development expert and has written many fantastic articles on the topic. Dr. Porter took us through several exercises on boiling down grant language to be shorter and clearer. Below are some techniques and examples:

Use active language
Passive language often removes the subject from the start of a sentence making the sentence longer and more difficult to read. Dr. Porter offers the following example:

Example: It has been demonstrated by research that...
Improved: Research shows...

Use fewer words when you can
In writing, we often assume that all the words we use are necessary. I once had a Technical Writing Professor who insisted that we should never use the word "very" in our writing. She argued that when you removed it, you never changed the meaning of the sentence. It came across as useless hyperbole.

Example: At that point in time
Improved: Then


Use shorter words
I recently sent an academic article I'd co-authored to my parents, and my Mom complained that there were too many big words, although she was anxious to use some of them in her next scrabble game. Editors and target readers of academic articles rarely balk at big words, but grant reviewers want their grants to be succinct and clear. With that in mind...

Example: Utilize
Improved: Use

Always opt for what will make things clearer for reviewers
There is no shortage of writing rules that some folks propose as writing gospel. However, as grant writers, we have to be willing to throw any and all rules out the window if need be to offer the easiest and clearest read to our reviewers. With that in mind, I offer one final example of improving a sentence from an NSF abstract. Look at my revision and you'll likely see areas that I could continue cutting. I tried to maintain a balance of clarifying, shortening, and maintaining the meaning and intended emphasis. You be the judge.

Example:

The long-term objectives of this project are to enable a paradigm-shifting future for simulation-based engineering with big data and to demonstrate this future through specific applications to challenging problems in medical device design.

Improved:

Long term, this project will drive a paradigm shift for simulation-based engineering with big data where we will apply these solutions to medical device design challenges.

Resources:

Crafting a Sales for Your Grant Proposal - Robert Porter, Ph.D.

Why Academics Have a Hard Time Writing Good Grant Proposals - Robert Porter, Ph.D.

The Elements of Style (book) - William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

Priorities and Changes on the Horizon for NIH

I’m at the National Organization for Research Development Professionals (NORDP) annual conference this week, and we were excited to have a keynote by Sally Rockey, NIH’s Deputy Director for Extramural Research. Dr. Rockey writes a blog for NIH, which is a wonderful resource for those researchers interested in applying to the NIH.

Dr. Rockey addressed some upcoming changes to the NIH and their policies. She spoke about the NIH’s recent resubmission policy addressed on our blog a couple of weeks ago.  In addition she talked about the following:

Addressing Sex Differences in Preclinical Trials

Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Janine Clayton just published an article in Science calling for changes in the way NIH PIs address sex differences in preclinical trials. They highlight concerns around how researchers are making choices around the sex of animals being used in experimentation, and the unintended consequences such choices can produce. To combat the unintended bias in preclinical trials, the NIH is beginning to form new reviewer policies that will focus on these issues in grant review.

Reproducibility of Experiments

Dr. Rockey also spoke about the NIH’s concern over the lack of reproducibility in many funded experiments. She talked about how academic science journals generally publish positive results from researchers, which then inadvertently promotes those results even if the majority of like experiments might yield negative results. Additionally, academic promotion and tenure processes often unintentionally push researchers to produce and move quickly in their research sometimes to the detriment of careful and reproducible protocol. Lastly, we often see a limited methods section in scientific journals in part because researchers are protecting their intellectual property.

This means that the projects that are promoted are not necessarily those that represent the typical results. Thus research can begin to follow a path based on erroneous assumptions. To begin combatting this, the NIH is designing a training module and a checklist for researchers to promote their careful attention to reproducibility of their preclinical trials.

The NIH is also looking toward revising their required biosketch to allow PI’s to expand on their previous contributions beyond a simple list of publications, so that they can include the significance of their contributions beyond pubs.

For those who have been funded by the NIH and those who want to be, it is important to stay abreast of these issues to be at the forefront in designing your projects to address these sorts of challenges now. Start by taking a look at the resources below.

Resources

Rock Talk – Sally Rockey’s blog
Policy – NIH to Balance sex in cell and animal studies
Policy – NIH Plans to Enhance Reproducibility

The American Cancer Society: An Inside Scoop

Yesterday, ORDE offered our final Know Your Agency Lunch of the semester on the American Cancer Society (ACS). Dr. Alison Bauer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and recent ACS awardee, spoke to us about her experience applying to and working with the ACS. We also had Dr. Arthur Gutierrez-Hartmann, Professor in Molecular Biology, long-time ACS reviewer and former ACS council member participating in our discussion.

During the talk Drs. Bauer and Gutierrez-Hartmann shared some insights on the ACS based on their experience, outlined below.

It's important to work with the ACS Scientific Directors
The ACS encourages applicants to work with the Scientific Director in their program area. These Scientific Directors work very much like Program Officers, and are easy and eager to work with PI's as they develop their grants. Dr. Bauer attested to how important and useful it was to work with her Scientific Director throughout the process. Dr. Gutierrez-Hartmann recommended that if you're not funded the first time you apply, but receive good reviews, to continue working with your Scientific Director and they are likely to shepherd you through the process so that you're more likely to be funded in future submissions.

The ACS looks for on-going involvement from PI's
The ACS has a large philanthropic arm, including big fundraising events like their Relay for Life. Thus, ACS values their funded researchers' involvement in their community events. This includes encouraging funded researchers to get involved/volunteer, as well as favoring those grant applicants who have a history of volunteering and supporting ACS through their various outreach and fundraising programs.

ACS's "Pay If" Category
The funding rate for ACS is highly competitive, although they do not report success rates directly. In their review process, there are more projects that the reviewers recommend for funding than can be funded by the ACS immediately. These high-scoring grants are put into a "Pay If" category. These grants are not funded immediately; however, they are projects that are offered to ACS individual donors for funding if and when they are a good fit. In addition, if a PI that has been funded must turn down that funding (for instance, when they are offered funding by another source and choose to go with that one), then the ACS will go to those projects in the "Pay If" category to find a replacement project to fund. Learn more about this in the ACS grant application process or in this ACS press release (in the second to the last paragraph).

The ACS is a premiere sponsor, and if you think your research may be a good fit, then make sure to familiarize yourself with the ACS through their website: www.cancer.org and see the ORDE Know Your Agency Brief on the ACS to get started.

Resources
ORDE Know Your Agency Brief: American Cancer Society

ACS Organizational Outcomes 2013

Showing What Really Matters

One of the great challenges in grant-writing is conveying a large amount of important information and plans clearly and succinctly. One way of doing this is figuring out what is most important and highlighting that message. But, how does one show what's most important in her/his grant? The following are some ways to show reviewers what's most important in your grant.

Put it in your budget
In a recent ORDE seminar on developing an NSF CAREER grant, we developed the budget mantra: "Put their money where your mouth is." This was in reference to the importance of including the education component of your CAREER grant in your budget to show its significance to the project.

This can be used in other types of grants to show your reviewers your financial investment in significant project components. Although, it is true that sometimes there are significant project components that do not require large funding portions, it's worth looking at your budget to see if someone who was looking at it in isolation would understand your priorities.

Say it upfront
We tend to remember what we read first, and along with that, we expect what we read first to be important. Thus, the most significant component of your project should be talked about early on.

Reinforce it
Not only should you say what's important upfront in your grant, but you should also say it more than once. If it's truly significant to your project, say it soon and say it often. Not that you need to repeat word for word the same idea in each section, but finding ways to offer the information in different ways that reinforce it's essentiality is a good idea.

Assess it
When something is important, then it is likely important to measure. This applies to our earlier example of the NSF educational component. If your educational component is important, then you likely don't want to allow for loose ends. Instead, you want to show your outcomes and effectiveness with a clear assessment component. The same can be said for any significant component of your proposal, showing what the component does and how you will show the efficacy.

Resources:
How Not to Kill a Grant Application Summary - Science Careers
So What?: How Not to Kill a Grant Application - Science Careers

Framing Your Grant

It may seem natural when writing a grant to simply tell your reviewers what you're going to do. However, it's important to remember that if you begin by telling sponsors what you're going to do with their money, it forces them into your story at mid-point.

Jumping into the details of what you want to do right away skips over the overarching goals of your project and why what you're doing is important. Now, I'm not advocating for a chronological structuring of grants. You actually want to begin with the end in mind. Take for instance how the NIH or the NSF has you layout your grants - focusing first on Specific Aims or Intellectual Merit/Broader Impacts first, respectively.

This requirement prompts you to begin your grant at the end. What will happen as a result of your research? Reviewers want to know your end game before they journey with you through the details of how you're going to accomplish these goals.

Although these principles apply to the grant as a whole, they can also be applied to the very introduction of your grant, be that the project summary, abstract, or what have you. Aldridge and Derrington (2012) suggest a couple of different techniques for introducing your grant - Priming and Assert/Justify.

Priming is a technique where you preface your project goals with the reasons for why they're important. So, you don't tell your reviewers the purpose of the grant until you have shown them the need for such. Assert/justify is the antithesis of the priming approach in a sense, although either can work. With assert/justify, you immediately tell your reviewers the purpose of the grant and then immediately "justify" why what you're going to do is important, by demonstrating the need and elaborating on the importance of the grant.

In a recent ORDE Grant-Writing seminar we debated the benefits of each approach. We noted that for most awarded grant abstracts we saw, some of which were project summaries, the authors chose a priming approach. However, we also heard from reviewers, including some in the seminar, that they wanted to know immediately what the grant was about, and in that sense, reviewers often preferred an assert/justify approach.

You can certainly be successful, and many have been, with either approach, but always considering what the reviewer experience will be when they review your grant is important in choosing the right approach for you.

Sources:
The Research Funding Toolkit: How to Plan and Write Successful Grants by Aldridge & Derrington
Proposal Development Tips from ORDE