Writing successful grant applications (without being a workaholic {or climber} )

Stefan Doerr, Professor of Physical GeographySchool of the Environment and Society

Tel: +44 (0)1792 295147 Fax: +44 (0)1792 295955 Email: s.doerr@swan.ac.uk

Personal perspectives

Stefan Doerr, Professor of Physical GeographySchool of the Environment and Society

Tel: +44 (0)1792 295147 Fax: +44 (0)1792 295955 Email: s.doerr@swan.ac.uk

a) Applicant

b) Reviewer and Panel Member

• Necessary evil/burden?

• Career development?

• Opportunities and fun?

Motivation?

• Necessary evil/burden?

• Career development?

• Opportunities and fun?

Motivation?

Common Pitfalls

• Missed Deadlines• Concise Narrative – word limits• Project Returns• Attachments• Failing at Peer Review• Competition – Standing Out from the Crowd

Start with a good idea

Ensure that the idea fills a clear, well-defined research

gap and genuinely pushes forward the research frontier.

Success is not based upon the number of applications you submit but on their

quality!

To have any chance of success, the quality of the application must be very high. If you do not think you

have compiled the best application that you are capable of writing, DO NOT SUBMIT IT – SPEND MORE TIME

POLISHING AND WAIT FOR THE NEXT GRANT ROUND.

In other words:

If you do not submit the best application possible, you can

be sure your competitors will!!!

Prepare materials so that you can write a proposal that is structured around your

good idea throughout.

• Don’t wander from the core idea / theme.

• Don’t refer to the literature unless it is highly relevant and needed to construct / support your argument / research plan.

• Only include carefully-designed research components that are fully justified, closely linked / structured and contain no loose ends.

‘Background’ to the proposal

In writing the ‘background’ section of your application, think clearly and use the literature to identify and justify the

research gap. The background / context section should illustrate:

• Why your research idea is new/innovative

• Why it is important/exciting

• Why you need to do the research now

• What the research will achieve

In other words:

The importance of your work must be entirely clear to a non-specialist from the first paragraph (or at least the first page).

Otherwise your chances of success diminish

‘Aims and Objectives’

Your overall aim should be more than ‘to measure’, ‘to attempt’, ‘to develop ideas on’. ‘to find out more about’.

You need an overarching aim, where the end point is clear. Even if you are not sure what the detail will be, provide a

question that you will answer or a concept that you will test.

‘Aims and Objectives’

Research proposals are clearest when they are explicitly hypothesis driven, so try to frame your overall aim and objectives in the form of hypotheses that you will test.

The structure of the rest of the proposal then becomes a series of elaborations on how will you test each hypothesis and link the outcomes to produce a well-rounded research

programme to meet the overarching aim?

1. Check schemes, guidelines, eligibility, deadlines

2. Begin several weeks to months before deadline

3. Check evaluation criteria and forms

4. Draft a good summary

5. Invite potential partners

6. Ask colleagues to be available for peer-review

7. Get the finances sorted (in draft form)

8. Write the case for support

9. Get feedback from specialists and non-specialists

Logistics

SOTEAS peer review scheme

SOTEAS peer review scheme

• Grants are enabling

• The first proposal is the hardest

• Do not expect success to come easy

• Give it 100% (others will!)

• A failed proposal will still bring many benefits

• Focus your case around reviewer guidelines

• Make sure the case is convincing very early on

• Get feedback from colleagues!!!

• Perseverance – if it is a good idea you will get funding!

Key points