At many agencies, resubmitted grants have a higher success rate than first-time grant submissions. Yet many researchers are deterred from resubmitting when reviewer comments and critique are difficult to swallow. The most successfully funded researchers have usually received as many no's as they have yes's and often more. However, when you receive a "no," you have a decision to make. If you decide to resubmit, you want to move as quickly as you can to revise and resubmit.
As you consider resubmitting and what you might do in your resubmission to enhance your chances of success, consider the following questions and suggestions:
What level are the suggested changes?
Getting comments from reviewers that suggest you clarify a section of your grant or make minor changes to your methods are very different from comments that suggest a flawed hypothesis or a poor fit between your research goals with the agency's funding priorities. Determining if reviewers are excited about your project and whether changes you make can move you from a not funded to funded in the next iteration is key to deciding if you should revise and resubmit to the same agency.
Is there a better agency fit?
Sometimes in reading reviewer comments, you may get a sense that there is a fundamental disconnect between your project and the agency's mission or goals. If this is the case, you may want to begin to search for agencies whose mission might better align with your work.
Which comments hold water?
One of the most frustrating aspects of reviewer comments is when you get contradicting opinions or comments that seem out of left field. Despite initial reactions to comments, after you've taken a couple of days to mull them over, go back to your proposal and honestly weigh which comments can make your project better and which can't and why they can't. For those that can help you improve, be grateful for them and begin incorporating them. For those that are not helpful, see if there are ways you can improve your proposal to make your decisions and line of thinking more clear. Perhaps a reviewer misunderstood aspects of your proposal, which led to their questionable comment. Are there ways you can revise to avoid such confusion by future reviewers?
Must you respond to all comments?
Of course some of your reviewer comments will be good to respond to or incorporate into your grant resubmission, but the question of whether you need to respond to all comments depends on whether the agency to which you're submitting allows a response statement in your resubmission. Agencies such as the NIH request an introduction to the grant that outlines your responses to your summary statement. In cases where you must respond directly, it's wise to respond to all of the comments, especially when you will have the same reviewers for your resubmission. If, like at the NSF, all grants are considered new even if they are resubmissions, you needn't respond to each and every comment in your grant if it does not make sense to do so.
Should you talk with your Program Officer?
The answer to this question is almost always - Yes! But, with resubmissions, make sure that you're not angry or trying to defend yourself before you pick up the phone. Once you're ready to have the conversation, do call/email your Program Officer. Oftentimes, your Program Officer was in the room during the review of your grant and they can offer you some clarification, advise you on changes you're considering making, and even help you make the decision as to whether you should resubmit.
To learn more, register for one of our upcoming seminars on Grant Resubmissions.
Resources
Resubmitting Your Grant - Wayne State University
Resubmission of the Grant Proposal - Chapter from Writing Dissertation and Grant Proposals (Chasan-Taber, 2014)
Friday, March 27, 2015
Friday, March 20, 2015
Receiving and Using Feedback
Years ago, I attended a seminar on Getting/Giving feedback, hoping to learn how to best receive feedback. To my chagrin, the seminar was really just on giving feedback, and although I got some useful tips on how to better offer feedback, I had really wanted to know how I could better solicit and integrate feedback to get better professionally.
Happily, there are now some resources available to offer this kind of advice. Although a lot of these resources focus on feedback in the corporate world, the tips are very relevant to researchers who receive feedback from colleagues or comments from grant reviewers.
Kevin Kruse for Forbes suggests that when you receive feedback, you should evaluate it slowly. After you put reviewer comments in the drawer for a few days to allow for the sting of a rejection to subside, then take them out and spend time poring over them. Be thoughtful and reflective both around what comments you think are good to accept and incorporate into your grant and those that you don't think are helpful. Just as you should not reject all the comments you get, nor should you accept them all at face value either. Sometimes reviewers are spot on and sometimes they are off base.
Simply being aware of why it's difficult to take feedback can help us better prepare to accept and use good feedback. Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone in their Harvard Business Review article and book identify three triggers that make it difficult for people to accept feedback, described briefly below.
Resources:
How to Receive Feedback and Criticism - Kevin Kruse (Forbes)
Get Better at Receiving Feedback - Sheila Heen (HBR)
Happily, there are now some resources available to offer this kind of advice. Although a lot of these resources focus on feedback in the corporate world, the tips are very relevant to researchers who receive feedback from colleagues or comments from grant reviewers.
Kevin Kruse for Forbes suggests that when you receive feedback, you should evaluate it slowly. After you put reviewer comments in the drawer for a few days to allow for the sting of a rejection to subside, then take them out and spend time poring over them. Be thoughtful and reflective both around what comments you think are good to accept and incorporate into your grant and those that you don't think are helpful. Just as you should not reject all the comments you get, nor should you accept them all at face value either. Sometimes reviewers are spot on and sometimes they are off base.
Simply being aware of why it's difficult to take feedback can help us better prepare to accept and use good feedback. Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone in their Harvard Business Review article and book identify three triggers that make it difficult for people to accept feedback, described briefly below.
- Truth triggers: Stone and Heen suggest that people have a difficult time seeing, hearing, or reading themselves. So, although my grant might make sense to me, I have a more difficult time spotting the holes and flaws than an outside reader.
- Relationship triggers: I recently had someone explain something to me where I considered myself well-versed and I didn't think he knew what he was talking about. I found myself totally blocking him out until I realized what I was doing and thought there was no harm in trying to understand his perspective. This trigger causes us to ignore or reject feedback based on the source and our relationship with that person.
- Identity triggers: Identity triggers cause us to disregard feedback because it infringes on our accepted identity. For instance, I once had someone give me the feedback that I needed to work on my writing. For me, who had been a professional technical writer and taught graduate courses in writing and editing, the feedback giver might as well have slapped me in the face. Now, it turned out that she was talking about a specific piece I'd written, which did indeed need some work, but I had the hardest time hearing it after her first comment struck me in such a core piece of my identity.
The point here is if we can recognize what's being triggered in us that keeps us from hearing and understanding feedback, sometimes we can get past our frustration and use the feedback, even when it's poorly delivered, to get better.
Resources:
How to Receive Feedback and Criticism - Kevin Kruse (Forbes)
Get Better at Receiving Feedback - Sheila Heen (HBR)
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Writing for the Layperson
When writing a research grant, few applicants consider the layperson early on in the process, but yet it would behoove them to do so. Even though it's easy to dismiss the lay reader, telling yourself that you're writing for the same scholarly colleagues to whom you've submitted your latest manuscript, the truth is, the layperson may be an audience for your grant in a variety of ways you may not have considered. If you're applying to NIH or NSF, you may have the lay people in congress combing through your abstract and title after you've been awarded. Or, if you're submitting to some facet of the DoD, you'll likely have "consumers" or entrepreneurs on your review panel and these are lay people who often have a different kind of stake in your research.
So, with that said, here are some tips to remember when writing for the layperson:
Tap into the excitement:
Remember, lay readers will often not be up to speed with the details of your research and understand how revolutionary they may be, so show them explicitly. Describe the potential health, environmental, social, or financial implications and benefits that will result from your research. Connect it to their lives to get them excited too!
Offer context:
I know I've written this before, but Dr. Amy Brooks-Kayal, Chief and Ponzio Family Chair in Pediatric Neurology, begins each of her presentations with the statistics on epilepsy, because the truth is that most people don't know how widespread it is, how many people are impacted, nor the costs for treatment. See Dr. Brooks-Kayal discuss "How to Persuade Reviewers".
Don't dumb it down:
Do not make the mistake that your lay audience is not smart or that your work is over their heads. The lay reader is particularly adept at noticing when they are being patronized. Explaining your work in such a way that people understand it is your responsibility. As Einstein said, "If you can't explain something simply you don't know enough about it."
Pull out the jargon and acronyms:
One of the ways that you can explain something more simply is by removing the jargon and the excessive acronyms. This forces you to explain (again more simply) what you're doing and why it's important.
Give them some space:
Because the layperson is not usually used to reading dense academic work or grant proposals, consider the format of things they do read, e.g., newspapers, magazines, books, and websites. Some of these formats tend to include visuals, the typeface is large enough to read easily, and there are Headings and other directives so the reader can skip around looking for what's most useful to them. And, as the heading suggests, lay readers are used to having some white space on a page to give them a visual break and make a text easier to navigate.
Certainly, you are bound by grant format requirements, but where there is flexibility, consider how you can make your grant more accessible. If the lay person can understand your research, you've broadened your audience and likely your appeal!
Resources:
Document Density Chart - The Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing (MIT)
Writing a Lay Summary is easy, right? - Bournemouth University
So, with that said, here are some tips to remember when writing for the layperson:
Tap into the excitement:
Remember, lay readers will often not be up to speed with the details of your research and understand how revolutionary they may be, so show them explicitly. Describe the potential health, environmental, social, or financial implications and benefits that will result from your research. Connect it to their lives to get them excited too!
Offer context:
I know I've written this before, but Dr. Amy Brooks-Kayal, Chief and Ponzio Family Chair in Pediatric Neurology, begins each of her presentations with the statistics on epilepsy, because the truth is that most people don't know how widespread it is, how many people are impacted, nor the costs for treatment. See Dr. Brooks-Kayal discuss "How to Persuade Reviewers".
Don't dumb it down:
Do not make the mistake that your lay audience is not smart or that your work is over their heads. The lay reader is particularly adept at noticing when they are being patronized. Explaining your work in such a way that people understand it is your responsibility. As Einstein said, "If you can't explain something simply you don't know enough about it."
Pull out the jargon and acronyms:
One of the ways that you can explain something more simply is by removing the jargon and the excessive acronyms. This forces you to explain (again more simply) what you're doing and why it's important.
Give them some space:
Because the layperson is not usually used to reading dense academic work or grant proposals, consider the format of things they do read, e.g., newspapers, magazines, books, and websites. Some of these formats tend to include visuals, the typeface is large enough to read easily, and there are Headings and other directives so the reader can skip around looking for what's most useful to them. And, as the heading suggests, lay readers are used to having some white space on a page to give them a visual break and make a text easier to navigate.
Certainly, you are bound by grant format requirements, but where there is flexibility, consider how you can make your grant more accessible. If the lay person can understand your research, you've broadened your audience and likely your appeal!
Resources:
Document Density Chart - The Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing (MIT)
Writing a Lay Summary is easy, right? - Bournemouth University
Friday, March 6, 2015
New Biosketch Format for NIH
The NIH has been discussing their new biosketch format for the past year, and at this point they are recommending applicants use the new biosketch form for their grant submissions, but are not requiring it until May 25, 2015. So, at this point, investigators should start to develop their new biosketches for the NIH, and below are some resources to help you.
The NIH posted their latest announcement about the biosketch in December of last year. These are the biggest biosketch changes:
The NIH posted their latest announcement about the biosketch in December of last year. These are the biggest biosketch changes:
- The page limit has gone from four to five pages.
- The format includes a contributions section where applicants can list up to five major contributions.
- The contributions section expands the ways the applicant is able to show the significance of their work and their contributions.
- Applicants will be able to include a link to all of their publications.
To get started, it's important to read the specific instructions and see an example of the new biosketch, which can be found here.
My favorite NIH blogger, Deputy Director for Extramural Research, Sally Rockey, offered some explication for the changes when they began rolling out the pilot last May. The NIH made this change to allow applicants themselves to describe their own research contributions that might not be obvious when looking just at their publications. This also allows for the integration of nontraditional contributions, which may not have yielded publications. As Dr. Rockey described, "We strongly believe that allowing a researcher to generate an account of his or her own work will provide a clearer picture of each individual's contributions and capabilities." (read the blog)
This new biosketch is the result of a request for information and a pilot process, which all began in the summer of 2012. These changes should prompt applicants to not only begin to update their biosketches, but to also consider their biosketch for each application. Does it make sense to submit the same biosketch, outlining the same contributions for every grant you write to the NIH? Maybe, but maybe not. The biosketch is one of the first things that NIH reviewers read, so with that in mind, it's wise to re-read and update your biosketch with every submission.
Resources:
Changes to Biosketch - Rock Talk
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