As some of you may know, this semester ORDE hosted its first virtual book club. We read the book "Writing Successful Science Proposals" by Andrew Friedland, Carol Folt, and Jennifer Mercer. Yesterday, we held our book club meeting and highlighted strategies from the book and from our own experiences, which I outline below.
What to include in the Specific Aims/Project Overview
The Specific Aims/Project Overview is the most important component of your proposal. Given this, you should focus on offering an overview of your project, as well as making a case for why this project is so important. One PI recommended including the "who, what, when, where, why, and how" in your Specific Aims. It's important to give your reviewers a clear understanding of your project as well as why it's needed right at the get-go. Another tip is to make sure you end your Specific Aims/Project Overview with the vision of your research. Where are you going from here? What's the ultimate goal of your research trajectory? This helps your reviewer get excited about the possibilities of your research.
Taking a Reviewer Perspective
When writing your grant proposal, it is crucial to consider your reviewer. Remembering that reviewers look at many proposals at once, anything you do that might frustrate them can really sink your chances for funding. Our group agreed that, because of this, it's important to make your proposal easy to read - leave space between paragraphs and include a conceptual diagram and other visuals that can quickly communicate what you're doing. Also, as we discussed, some reviewers still print out proposals before reviewing them, while others review them completely online. Make sure that your final proposal is proofed and is easy to read in different forms. Also, consider ability when putting your proposal together, remembering that some people can't see color. Some people who are sighted still have difficulty seeing really small text that might be in your figures.
Discussing authorship early for research teams
As more and more researchers are participating in team research, strategies for collaboration and considering team dynamics are significant. Our group talked extensively about the importance of discussing and agreeing to authorship and order of authors at the start of a team's work together. Even as you begin working together to develop a project and grant proposal, discuss how many publications you anticipate and who will do what work on those, and who will be first, last, or in other author positions. This can help prevent confusion, frustration, and conflict down the line.
Overall, our group found the book to be a valuable resource for grant development, particularly for early career investigators. Stay tuned for ORDE's Spring 2021 Book Club!
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