Annual Research Planning: Start the Year Off Right!

Summer is starting to wind down, and researchers are starting to look to the fall, which for many brings teaching and running their labs. It is also a good time to consider your annual research development plan. Now, creating this sort of annual plan assumes that you do have a 5-10 year research plan that outlines your goals and benchmarks, including when and where you need to apply for funding, produce publications, and continue your research work.

To develop your annual plan, you want to assess your previous academic year and summer. What did you achieve? What didn't go the way you expected? Do you need to update/revise your 5-10 year plan? What are the goals and benchmarks you hope to reach in the upcoming academic year?

At ORDE, we suggest that researchers plan along three threads: publications, project development, and funding. Certainly these three threads are intertwined and support each other, but each deserves focused and intentional planning.

Publications:
Certainly, as researchers and scholars, your publications are crucial, but they are also crucial to the development of your research plan. To be competitive for many grants, reviewers expect to see a solid list of publications related to the direction in which you're headed. They look for evidence of expertise and independence in these publications, so if your mentor is first author on all your publications, you may need to start thinking about how you can take the lead on the next publication.

Project Development:
You may be in the throes of completing your last funded research project, or perhaps you're focused on developing new courses or preparing for a fall teaching load. But, don't make the mistake of only looking at what's right in front of you. You don't want to wait until these things are complete before starting to think about developing your next research project, or you will likely find yourself playing the waiting game (for funding) later on. The most productive researchers have a constant stream of next projects in the works, so that they can submit their grants and hopefully have their next grant ready to go as they're finishing the last.

Funding:
As I mentioned, if you wait to develop a project and apply for funding right when you want to get going, you'll find yourself in a lull. Many agencies can take six months to a year to review your grant, make a funding decision and get you the funding you need to get started. Thus, most researchers can't afford to wait to start grant writing when they have a little more time. Certainly, in ORDE, our mantra might as well be "The time is now for grant writing!"

But, all kidding aside, we do realize that our faculty researchers have a huge load on their plates, and although we don't want to add any additional stress to your lives, we do know that this sort of planning and consistent focus on research and research development is something successful faculty researchers have in common.

But, we're here to help! If you're a faculty researcher at the University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campuses or one of our affiliates and you haven't had a fund search conducted in awhile, please contact us to set up a meeting so that you start off the year aware of what funding opportunities are upcoming.

Resources:
ORDE Fund Search