The effect of impact

9 October 2018 by 12 Comments

This article first appeared in Funding Insight on 20 September 2018 under the title “Don’t fear the bogeyman”. It is reproduced with permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com.

“I … have made impactful contributions to industry and practice…”

As a research whisperer, I spend my life helping people to refine their grant applications. An important part of that is wielding the ‘big red pen of clarity’, and editing their material to help express their ideas more clearly.

You can imagine my reaction when I read ‘impactful’ in a grant application recently. I was appalled. In the Australian vernacular, I nearly choked on my Weeties. This horror appeared in an otherwise excellent application, written by an otherwise excellent applicant. We had words…

At about the same time, Tim Sherratt tweeted:

André Brett replied,

Read more of this post

Filed under Be strategic, funding Tagged with , , ,

Saving space

18 September 2018 by 9 Comments

References, listed without any gaps between them.

My least favourite way to save space – turn the reference list into a solid block of text.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you had all the space that you needed to explain your research carefully and completely to the funding agency?

Wouldn’t it be lovely if there was space for nuance and complexity?

Wouldn’t it be terrific if your application fitted within the stupid page limit and you didn’t have to delete another half a page…it’s already midnight and you just want to go to bed.

Much as I feel for your sleep-deprived editing self, it wouldn’t actually be very pretty at all. I’ve seen people provide thirty pages when they were asked for two. I’ve had researchers complain that they can’t attach their 50-page CV to an application. I know what it is like to have 130 pages of application to review and comment on, with just a couple of hours to do it. I know that there is never enough space to write what you want, in the way that you want.

I also know that there is never enough time to read what is submitted, with the attention that it deserves. Read more of this post

Filed under funding, Research communication Tagged with , , , ,

Laying the research groundwork

14 June 2018 by 1 Comment

This article first appeared in Funding Insight on 3 June 2018 and is reproduced with permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com.

Photo by Jon Tyson | unsplash.com

Photo by Jon Tyson | unsplash.com

When I’ve asked researchers about their funding streams, many want to talk about the projects they want grant money for. Drilling down a bit further, however, it becomes obvious that many of the projects aren’t actually projects…yet.

Some researchers have ideas for projects, while others have started initial discussions but haven’t gotten their collaborators to commit to the project yet. Some researchers have said they have a full-fledged project in their head but haven’t talked with anyone else about it. Often, even if the team has come together, the thinking around the project itself has not.

This makes it hard to talk to your university’s grants team because the research project you want funded isn’t properly baked. It’s all still a bit doughy and unformed. I’ve written before about why you should only submit golden-brown applications, and I know how much work it can take to get to that stage.

Most grants teams are fabulous and want to help you submit strong applications to those competitive funding rounds. However, it’s often neither their job nor do they have the capacity to get you to the project grant application starting block with a red-hot project and a team ready to go.

Grey areas

The problem here is the grey area of where this research development happens.

Particularly for early career researchers who may be fresh out of their PhD, starting that next big project—without a supervisor or the scaffolding of a degree—can be a significant challenge.  Read more of this post

Filed under Building your track-record, funding, Research life Tagged with , , , , ,

Research commercialisation: Tips for starting your journey

29 May 2018 by 1 Comment

Matt Frith is the managing director of kin8, a strategy consultancy that is building communities around the future of work.

He’s worked with universities including RMIT and the University of Queensland, developing their research and programs to better access the marketplace.

He tweets at @kin8ptyltd.

Photo by Riccardo Annandale | unsplash.com

Photo by Riccardo Annandale | unsplash.com

Research commercialisation can be daunting, but in a landscape of dwindling government funding and ever-shifting technological and commercial realities, it can be a powerful way to bring new ideas and change into the world.

For researchers and academics, however, the businesses, people and language can be so different that it’s almost alien.

The way a researcher or academic thinks, the goals they have to achieve in their career, are very different to those of a corporate department’s director or CEO.

So, how do you begin to feel comfortable exploring the world of research commercialisation?

For this post, we’ve put together some detailed tips, based on our experience working with both researchers and corporate partners. The biggest barriers are often emotional, so these tips are designed to get you both thinking and feeling, along with actions, to start your path forward. Read more of this post

Filed under Be strategic, funding Tagged with , , , ,

Choosing the unicorns – An ECR’s perspective on grant reviews

22 May 2018 by 4 Comments

Emma Birkett is a Teaching Associate in the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham and lives in the quiet backwaters of Derbyshire, UK.

Her research examines motor timing deficits in children and adults with developmental disorders, especially dyslexia.

She teaches in the areas of child development, dyslexia and educational assessment. She is currently developing a module for a new master’s programme in developmental disorders, setting up a research project on ensemble timing in children and conducting a study on active teaching methods for her post-graduate teaching certificate.

Emma can be found on Twitter at @emskibirkett. Her ORCID is 0000-0001-8358-3085. 

The other day, I read the guest blog on Research Whisperer by Adam Micolich about capturing unicorns, a.k.a landing your first successful grant application. I found it really helpful for early career researchers such as myself, and wanted to offer another perspective on the funding process: that of a grants reviewer.

I recently had the pleasure of reviewing two grant submissions.

Unicorn [Photo by Yosuke Muroya | http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamur0w0%5D (Shared via CC BY-NC 2.0)

Once my initial imposter syndrome worries evaporated, I found it was a useful learning experience.

I wanted to share what I’ve learned with other early career creatures on their journey towards capturing that mythical unicorn of a successful grant application! It’s really interesting to compare Adam’s and my tips, given our differences in career stage and grant application experience.

The first application I reviewed this year arrived on my desk in autumn. Two colleagues were submitting an expression of interest to a charitable organisation and I was asked to be the internal reviewer. As in many departments, this internal review process is a quality check prior to external submission.

The second opportunity to review a grant application came after a colleague recommended me as an external reviewer to another charitable body.

The first proposal was outside my research area whereas the second was a close fit with my knowledge and experience. Both reviews provided a great opportunity to learn about what happens after grants are submitted and what reviewers expect. Read more of this post

Filed under funding Tagged with , , , , ,

Tips for capturing unicorns – writing your first successful application

15 May 2018 by 7 Comments

Adam MicolichAdam Micolich is an Associate Professor in the School of Physics at the University of New South Wales. He has a long­standing interest in issues affecting early and mid­-career researchers, some of which he has written about on his blog “Fear and Loathing in Academia“.

He can be found on Twitter at @ad_mico. His ORCID is 0000-0003-2855-3582. 

Tapestry of a unicorn, captured within a round fence.

The Unicorn in Captivity, from The Cloisters [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

In my previous post, “The anxieties of sharing grant applications“, I talked about issues related to accessing successful grant applications that can impede progress for young researchers learning to write their first funding proposals. Successful grant applications are the unicorn in the zoo of documents that one must write in research. Truly magical when you have one, but obtaining them in the first place can be a soul-destroying process.

In this post, I share the key lessons I’ve learned from having broken into the system, fallen out for many years, and then broken back in again, reading many proposals along the way.

Read more of this post

Filed under funding Tagged with , , , ,

The anxieties of sharing grant applications

8 May 2018 by 5 Comments

Adam MicolichAdam Micolich is an Associate Professor in the School of Physics at the University of New South Wales. He has a long-­standing interest in issues affecting early and mid­-career researchers, some of which he has written about on his blog “Fear and Loathing in Academia“. He can be found on Twitter at @ad_mico. His ORCID is 0000-0003-2855-3582. 

In the first of two articles, Adam sheds some light on why people do, and do not, share their grant applications, and some of the issues with libraries of successful applications.

One of the toughest skills to master as a young researcher is writing successful grant applications. These are the unicorn in the zoo of documents that one must write in research. Mired in myth, with great controversy about their true nature and appearance, they sometimes turn out to be little more than a donkey wearing a party hat, that was mistaken for a unicorn because it was being ridden by a silverback gorilla.

A big impediment for young researchers is that successful grant applications are rarely openly shared. This can make it hard to see enough of them to truly know what it is that makes the good ones good. Being on a grant agency panel is about the only way to see a very large number of proposals – sadly, that role only comes once you’ve had a lot of successful grant applications.

An ape dressed as a cardinal, followed by an ape reading from a hymnal, process into a church

Apes parodying the Church. Psalter. Ghent (Flanders). ca. 1320-1330. Oxford, the Bodleian Library, Ms. Douce 6, fol. 17v, detail.

My institution tries to addresses this void by providing a library of successful applications. However, these are only made available internally by people volunteering to do so in the initial administration of their grant. This means that only a small number are available. The library is selective towards authors willing to share and therefore probably somewhat deceptive. I’ve sunk solid days into mining this resource, taking careful notes and looking for patterns. Truth is, there are few gold nuggets to be found.

Read more of this post

Filed under funding, Research culture Tagged with , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →