Preparing Effective Grant Applications

Abstract

A successful research career hinges as much on a scientist’s ability to secure funding as it does on the scientist’s skills at the bench, in the clinic, or in statistical analyses. Much postgraduate training focuses on the later elements and gives short shrift to the earlier ones. This article attempts to fill that gap by discussing a pivotal element of the funding process: preparing effective grant applications. In addition to discussing the fundamental features of the pivotal sections of a standard National Institutes of Health (NIH) R-series application (see “Types of Grant Programs” on the Web site of the NIH Office of Extramural Research for a complete list of NIH-sponsored grant programs1), the sections below outline measures preliminary to the actual grant writing process, rhetorical perspectives and tactics useful to grant writers, the NIH grant application review and scoring process, and the importance of revision and resubmission. Grant applications (hereafter I often use the common shorthand “grant” to mean “grant application”) are, of course, judged not only on the text, tables, and figures reviewed by the funding agency but also on everything that stands behind the document: the ideas, the researchers and their collective experience, and the researchers’ host institutions. A successful grant must persuade reviewers that all of these bases have been covered and that the probability of delivering fruitful findings is high. Thus, a necessary preliminary step in planning any research project is to secure the enthusiastic support of department heads, deans, and managers. Demonstrating that the proposed research has institutional support (in the form of researcher time, support staff, physical space, access to necessary equipment, etc) reassures reviewers that the research will be nurtured in a propitious environment. Second, assembling the best team possible to prepare the grant and to accomplish the work is imperative. This …