We’ve been so busy, Jonathan and I managed to miss this blog’s 9th birthday!

A lot of the momentum in the posts when we first started the Research Whisperer in 2011 was around finding funding and grants, how to apply, and all the frustrations that go with these processes.

I thought it might be fitting for this sort-of, kind-of birthday post to do a round-up of a selection of these grantseeking articles. They are broken up into sub-sections below, and these are by no means the only posts about grants and funding on this blog. When I was deciding what to list here, I was thinking of a researcher who was applying for their first competitive grant. What might they want to know? What’s the most useful thing to share with them at that stage?

Hopefully, some of these hit the mark for you, early career grantseekers!

Getting started

• Five types of funding (Jonathan O’Donnell)
• Guidelines to grant success (Tseen Khoo)
• Help! I have to write a grant application (Jonathan O’Donnell/Tseen Khoo)
• Tips for capturing unicorns – writing your first successful application (Adam Micolich)
• Top tips for internal grants (Reza Mohammed)
• What do the headings mean? (Jonathann O’Donnell)

Planning your grant application

• Building your track-record (Deb Brian)
• Golden-brown grant applications (Tseen Khoo)
• Should I apply? (Jonathan O’Donnell)
• Work backwards (Jonathan O’Donnell)

Methods/methodology

• How to write a simple research methods section (Jonathan O’Donnell)
• Mixed-up methods (Jonathan O’Donnell)
• Research methods vs approaches (Jonathan Laskovsky)
• The nitty and the gritty [about detail in methodology] (Jonathan O’Donnell)

Budgets

• Constructing your budget (Jonathan O’Donnell)
• Conquer the budget, conquer the project (Tseen Khoo)
• How NOT to pad your budget (Tseen Khoo)
• How to make a simple research budget (Jonathan O’Donnell)
• What makes a winning budget? (Jonathan O’Donnell)

Making applications look good

• Less is more – cherishing white space (Tseen Khoo)
• Saving space (Jonathan O’Donnell)

Applying for fellowships

• Advice for fellowships (Jonathan O’Donnell)
• Boost your postdoc chances (Kerstin Fritsches)
• What does your soul (read: postdoc application) look like? (Jonathan Laskovsky)

Grant review process 

• Talking about lockdown and COVID-19 (Jonathan O’Donnell)
• Choosing the unicorns – An ECR’s perspective on grant reviews (Emma Birkett)
• How I assess a funding application – Part 1 | Part 2 (Tseen Khoo)
• What makes a strong rejoinder (Jonathan O’Donnell)
• Rational responses to referees (Adam Golberg,  Tseen Khoo, Jonathan O’Donnell)

Impact and research

• The prickly impact statement (Wade Kelly)
• Impact metrics for researchers (Stacy Konkiel)
• The emerging impact landscape (Wade Kelly)
• The impact producer (Jonathan O’Donnell)
• The measurement tail should not be wagging the impact dog (Helen Sowey)

————————————————

As I said right at the start, these are not all the posts there are funding-relevant on Research Whisperer – that would be THESE!

Happy reading!

And if you think to yourself, “I wish they would say something about <MISSING THING>…”, let us know! We are happy to be directed to topics and, even if we don’t know enough to write a post about it, we may well know people who are uber-brains in that area.

Note: Updated 9 June 2021.