Fully funded research fellowship? I want one of those!

For an early-career researcher (ECR) looking to carve out a career in academia and make the eventual transition to research independence, the funding landscape can look dauntingly sparse. It’s a super-competitive world out there, and while options such as the UKRI Research Councils’ standard-funding schemes may in theory be open to some ECRs looking to win substantive funding (you’ll need to have an employment contract in place with your eligible host institution for at least the duration of the grant), the reality is that you’ll be up against some very senior, very experienced competitors. As I write this, many higher-education institutions in the UK are strapped for cash, meaning that research-focused ECRs who have yet to pull in some substantive grant funding often feel vulnerable and may struggle to secure long-term research positions.

One potential funding stream that can look very attractive to those in the early stages of a research career is the fellowship route. Although not exclusively the preserve of the ECR, many research-fellowship schemes are specifically designed to support less-experienced researchers to develop professionally and to gain the valuable knowledge, skills and experience that will equip them for a career as a leading independent researcher.

Fellowship scheme features

While every scheme is different, fellowships commonly include the following features:

• Salary support for the fellow for some or all of the duration of the fellowship, in addition to support for eligible project costs
• Time and resources set aside for skills acquisition and professional development
• A commitment from the host institution to support the fellow, during and sometimes after the fellowship period
• A mentorship/sponsorship support element, providing input and guidance from experienced senior academics
• A requirement that most or all of the fellow’s working time is devoted to the fellowship

Budget finances may be set at a particular limit or, in some cases, uncapped. UKRI-funded fellowships and some others include an element of overhead funding to cover institutional costs, which will warm the hearts of those people in your institution charged with balancing the books. Securing such funding won’t do any harm for your standing in your department, faculty and institution either. Some ECR fellowship schemes specify a maximum limit for the number of years post-PhD in their eligibility criteria, while others take a more flexible approach and assess each applicant on a case-by-case basis. Some funders offer several different fellowship schemes, with each being designed to support researchers at a particular stage in their career.

Nothing not to like so far, then. Unsurprisingly, however, competition for early-career fellowship places is intense, even in the absence of much more experienced senior applicants. Funders are looking for the very best candidates, with the best research ideas and projects, hosted within the institution/s that are best-placed to support them. I point this out not to deter would-be fellowship applicants – all of us probably question our credentials from time to time, and succumb to occasional bouts of imposter syndrome – but simply by way of a reality check. If you’re planning to go to the effort of putting together a fellowship application (and trust me, they do require some effort), then an objective self-appraisal with close reference to the funder’s criteria and evaluation guidance is a very useful starting point.

Bear in mind though that very many senior academics got to the top without ever winning fellowship funding, so it’s not for everyone and it’s certainly not the be-all and end-all of a successful academic career. In some ways, securing a fellowship is more like winning a prize than, say, getting a job or even being awarded a standard research grant. And by definition, there’s not room at the very top for everyone – not everyone can win the big prize. That said, someone has to win it, and you’re only an excellent proposal and perhaps an interview away from that someone being you. So if after some dispassionate self-reflection you still have the stars firmly set within your sights, then by all means shoot for them.

A catalyst to make special things happen

Key to determining whether you’re competitive for a fellowship scheme – and, if you are, to informing how you should pitch your fellowship proposal – is the answer to the question “why should anyone give me a fellowship?” Or, more specifically: “How will fellowship funding add value over and above standard project-grant funding?” In other words, what are the special things that will only happen if you’re awarded a funded research fellowship?

Let’s assume that your proposed research project is a good one. You’ve chosen a scientific, societal and/or economic problem that’s demonstrably worth addressing, and you’ve set a suitably-ambitious yet achievable project aim that promises to make an impact against that problem. Your research objectives seem likely to deliver your aim, and they’re backed up by a novel, robust and well-thought-out methodological approach. You have the right team on board, and access to the research environment and infrastructure that you’ll need to complete the project successfully. On balance then, you have a project proposal that would seem to be highly competitive for some flavour of standard project-grant funding. So why not pursue that?

When they grant a research fellowship, a funder is investing in two things: your project, and you. Sure, they’re looking for a great project, and scientific or scholarly excellence and possibly impact potential are likely to be important evaluation criteria. But funders understand that you’re an early-career researcher, and as such they’re not expecting you to change the world. Not yet, at any rate. Rampant over-ambition in a fellowship proposal will kill it just as surely as a stolid, cautious approach that smacks of comfort-zone dwelling and a lack of vision. What they really do want though is a thoroughly invest-able individual who shows great potential for future impact (scientific, scholarly and/or societal) as one of tomorrow’s research leaders. And they’re looking for individuals who might not fulfil all of that wonderful potential without the catalysing spark that fellowship funding would provide. Consider the following hypothetical example:

Anya is a postdoctoral researcher in the area of computational modelling who has had a successful career to date with some good papers and other outputs to her name, having made a significant contribution to research. She’s started developing her own ideas and research questions around using computational-modelling techniques in oncology, stimulated by but diverging from the research that she’s doing with her current supervisor (whose focus is in the field of cell growth and tissue mechanics). Her supervisor isn’t very interested in pursuing this new research direction though, and in any case their institution, The University of Here, doesn’t really have the resources or expertise needed to pursue it.

However, Anya is aware that in another institution, The University of Somewhere Else, there’s an academic whose laboratory is doing some of the most exciting cutting-edge research in computational oncology, working within a very well-equipped facility. Moreover, in a different department at that institution, another leading researcher is working in the separate but complementary (for Anya's research) discipline of artificial intelligence in radiology, within which Anya will need to gain new skills if she’s going to pursue this new research direction. The University of Somewhere Else is keen to recruit and support promising early-career researchers like Anya who are working in her particular field, and after discussions with the academics and departmental heads involved they agree to support a fellowship application for her to come and work there.

Assuming that Anya’s research ideas are good ones, if she can identify a funder whose mission and remit would be served by the project and by the future potential of her interdisciplinary research focus (several funders spring to mind) then she has an excellent chance of attracting fellowship funding. Importantly, without such fellowship funding she may never get to pursue her novel ideas, and her long-term potential for future impact in an important area of medical science might never be realised. Fellowship funding is very clearly the essential catalyst here for making something rather special happen.

Do I have to move institution then?

The fellowship in the above example involved a move to a new institution. This was once more or less a prerequisite for securing a fellowship, but it’s perhaps less so now as acceptance grows that, for various good reasons, excellent researchers don’t necessarily need to be highly mobile. Examples of leading researchers who still work in the same institution where they completed their PhD and even their undergraduate degree abound. Nevertheless, consider this: is the team, group, department, faculty and institution that you’re in now demonstrably the very best place to pursue the next stage of your research career? If you’re genuinely among the best of the best then the world really is your oyster, so you’ll be expected to feast on the juiciest bits of whatever’s on offer out there.

Certainly, you’ll be expected to build things like external mentorship, time spent in other institutions or groups, externships and other horizon-expanding activities into your fellowship proposal to show that you’ve put together an integrated package of high-quality experiential opportunities and support. Equally, it’s absolutely essential to show that you’re branching out in a new direction, moving away from your supervisor and expanding your own research horizons, rather than simply developing ideas and activities that fit within the bailiwick of your existing group and/or represent a linear continuation of whatever it is you’re going at the moment. If you’re at a very early stage in your research career, be warned that fellowship funders are emphatically not looking for ‘PhD 2.0’!

So not all fellowships look like the above example, not all involve a move to a new institution, and there are different ways of putting together a strong fellowship proposal that will resonate with the funder. But all successful fellowship proposals will have in common an essential ‘added-value’ element that makes the case for investing in the individual and their future potential, enabling them to pursue and achieve something worthwhile that they might not otherwise be in a position to do.

The Wellcome Trust gives some helpful case-study examples of successful fellowship scenarios in their guidance for applicants to the Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme (Word document – see page 3).

So how do I show that I’m invest-able?

You’ve put together a great project based on a novel idea, and you can describe it clearly and compellingly. You’re planning to do the research in an excellent environment and you’ve lined up appropriate support from leading academics in the field. This already goes a long way to demonstrating your invest-ability as a would-be fellow. But there’s no getting away from the fact that evaluators will want to see evidence that you are what you claim to be – an ECR with clear potential to become a leader in your field. Perhaps the easiest way for them to do this is to look at what you’ve already achieved to date by examining your track record. This is something you can’t really do much about in the short term, but over the longer term it really pays to take a strategic approach to developing a track record that, when you need it to, will back up your claim to being among the best researchers at your particular career stage.

Your publications record is an obvious starting point, and reviewers will typically look for a reasonable number (for your career stage) of first-author publications across a decent spread of high-impact journals. Depending on your field and discipline there might also be books, book chapters and monographs. Other outputs and contributions to research like abstracts, conference presentations, invited lectures and similar will further build your track record, as will indicators of esteem such as prizes and awards. Internal and external (to your institution) positions and responsibilities that you’ve taken on, such as editorships and editorial-board memberships, professional-society leadership, institutional committee posts and other administrative roles, will all evidence a willingness to contribute, lead and make your voice heard. Anything that shows early evidence of leadership, initiative and nascent research independence really is a definite a plus.

Depending on your career stage, one thing that can be great to have in your track record is some evidence that you have already sought and won some research funding in your own right. Of course, if you’ve previously secured substantive funding as the principal investigator then this is likely to rule you out of most fellowship schemes, as you’ll be deemed to have progressed too far down the road towards research independence to be eligible. But bidding for and winning small pots of funding will send a clear message that you’re branching out in your own direction and seeking to pursue your own research agenda. It will also demonstrate that other funding bodies have considered you to be invest-able, and it can help to give comfort that you have some experience of undertaking, managing and delivering a research project. A track record of contributing to other projects as a co-investigator can be helpful in this respect too.

Another really important indicator of your invest-ability as a research fellow is the extent to which you have a vision and a plan for your future development as an academic researcher. You will need to set out clearly what your ambitions and career aspirations are in this respect, and describe convincingly – and specifically – how the proposed fellowship would support these. To this end, you’ll need to put together a concrete training plan for the fellowship, in which you describe the package of learning and skills-development activities, opportunities and experiences that will equip you for your transition to research independence. This essentially involves a gap-analysis exercise, to determine:

• What skills, knowledge and expertise you already have
• What you will need in addition to these in order to complete your fellowship and subsequently succeed in your post-fellowship career
• What you can build into your fellowship plans to address these needs       

OK I’m sold – where can I find a funded research-fellowship opportunity?

There is quite a wide range of different research fellowships available in the UK from a number of different funders. Some accept applications in a broad range of disciplines or even any, while others are focused on a particular discipline or subject area. 

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the umbrella body for the UK’s government-funded Research Councils, is currently co-ordinating the Future Leaders Fellowships scheme, under which applications can be submitted in any discipline (or combination of disciplines). Most of the individual Research Councils run their own remit-focused fellowship schemes too. The Medical Research Council, for example, has several different schemes available for ECRs.

Several large research-funding charities also fund fellowships. The AXA Research Fund, for example, is a scientific-philanthropic organisation that supports fellowship projects in the broad areas of health, environment, new tech and socio-economics.  Many charities focus their research efforts in quite a specific area – the Wellcome Trust, for example, funds fellowships that serve their scientific remit of improving health, while others such as the British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK have an even more focused remit.

Researchers in the health and medical sciences (the area within which I work) would seem to be particularly well served for fellowship opportunities – other funders in this area or research include the National Institute for Health Research and Health and Care Research Wales. Researchers in the humanities and social sciences shouldn’t despair though – fellowships in these disciplines are offered by several different funders, including the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust.   

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog. 

Learning to love the 'impact' sections of research proposals

Most funders will expect you to describe the anticipated impact of your proposed research project. They often provide a dedicated section of the application form for doing this – for example an ‘impact summary’ section.

For the many research proposals, particularly in the life sciences, real-world impact is fundamental to justifying the very point of doing the project at all. In some cases – charities in particular but also government health-research funders such as NIHR and Health and Care Research Wales – it’s pretty much all the funder really cares about. It’s their way of understanding what they’re actually getting for their money in terms of real-world change for the better.

This is all pretty straightforward. So why do the ‘impact’ sections of proposals cause so much head-scratching, consternation and angst? I think there are probably two main reasons for this.

The first is around academics’ motivation to apply for research funding and carry out research projects, which is not always focused primarily around impact. The reality is that this motivation is multi-faceted, and key motivators might include the fact that the applicant just really loves doing the science; has a loyal team of researchers whose jobs depend on continued funding; needs to secure a certain amount of research funding to gain promotion; or wants to show Bob down the corridor that they too can score large grants from prestigious funders. All good and noble reasons for writing a research proposal, but of course none of them will cut any ice with the funder.

The second reason is that, in reality, any single research project tends just to be one small piece in a much larger jigsaw. A stepping stone towards an eventual real-world outcome. It’s fairly seldom that one isolated piece of research leads directly to clear-cut, real-world change on its own.

For these reasons, plus the fact that most academics clearly like writing about their science but seem to dislike writing about all the other stuff that funders ask them for, the impact sections of a proposal often get left until last. This approach however flies in the face of the oft-quoted advice to “start with impact” – not just by writing the impact section/s first but actually starting your project planning by thinking about what you aim to achieve in terms of contributing towards real-world change.

So what should you write about in an impact summary? What can you say that will be honest, proportionate, realistic and achievable, while also piquing the funder’s interest in a way that will hopefully get them reaching for their wallet?

Summarising impact – what to cover in an impact summary

Every project should have a primary aim – if yours doesn’t then your proposal is probably in a bit of trouble. The project aim should normally encapsulate a very succinct statement of the intended impact – the ‘what’ that underlies the rationale behind doing your project and the short answer to the “what’s the point?” question.

I discussed some of the ins and outs of describing project aims and objectives in my last blog post. To recycle an example from that post, a hypothetical project in the area of cancer detection might aim to: improve outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer by determining whether the presence of elevated levels of (a biomarker) in the blood provides a reliable means of early detection, thereby reducing late-stage diagnosis rates and improving survival outcomes. The intended impact summarised very succinctly here is clear – fewer people dying of ovarian cancer because they’re getting diagnosed earlier. But it doesn’t tell the full story. The ‘impact’ section of a proposal should map closely to the project’s stated aim and should expand on it, while also indicating clearly how this aim fits into the broader impact jigsaw.

     

A recommended approach to writing about impact in a research proposal is to do the following:

1. Identify who will benefit from your project, or from the eventual impact towards which it’s intended to build.
2. Describe how they’ll benefit.

It’s often simplest to split the impact section into two parts that deal respectively with each of these points beneath appropriate sub-headings.

Who will benefit?

A ‘stakeholder’ is a person or organisation with an interest or concern (i.e. a stake) in something. In addition to the research team and their institution, there will normally be a number of stakeholders (or stakeholder groups) in a proposed research project. When you’re describing who will benefit from your research, don’t just talk vaguely about ‘key stakeholders’ – spell out exactly who these stakeholders are. In a typical life-sciences project like the ovarian-cancer example above, they might include:

• A particular group of patients, or people at risk of becoming those patients
• Those patients’ families and/or carers
• Clinicians and other professionals responsible for providing care services to the patients
• The organisation/s that employ the clinicians – for example the NHS in the UK
• The parts of government responsible for setting policy, strategy and/or legislation and regulations that apply to the care services – including devolved government across the UK
• Specific businesses that could benefit by exploiting the project’s findings – these might be partnering on the current project, or they could be lined up to collaborate in the next stage of bringing the innovation to market
• Whole business sectors – part of ‘UK Plc’ which may stand to benefit from a particular new technology developed by the research
• The funder (they’re paying for the research, so they have a clear stake in the project and its outcomes)

When writing about beneficiary groups it’s generally sensible to deal with them more or less in order of importance. Patients would generally top a list like the one above, and even for proposals that aren’t directly focused on patient outcomes it’s often people that matter most in impact terms (think jobs, environmental quality, long-term health and general well-being). It’s why the hypothetical ovarian-cancer project’s title mentions patients but not oncologists or the NHS.

Notable by their absence from the above list are members of the academic community – other researchers in the same and related or otherwise-connected disciplines. Certainly, nearly every research project will have considerable benefits for the academic community by way of new knowledge, new models and new methodologies produced. But for most funders, ‘impact’ actually means real-world impact that benefits society (e.g. by improving health) and/or the economy (e.g. by saving the NHS money). For this reason, they commonly ask applicants to write about academic beneficiaries elsewhere in the proposal. So as a general rule, don’t mention academic beneficiaries in your impact summary, and if you must then do so briefly and then simply refer across to the part of the proposal where they’re dealt with in more detail.

There is however an important reason why you might want to refer briefly here to your academic beneficiaries, and it’s linked to the realities of the impact jigsaw described above. Taking the example of the hypothetical ovarian-cancer project, there won’t actually be tangible benefits for any of the above beneficiary groups at the end of the project. In the best-case scenario, there will be some new scientific knowledge about the ability of a biomarker to indicate the presence of a particular type of cancer. At this stage, that information is only really of any use to the research community, who may in due course take it forward and – perhaps in partnership with NHS clinicians and pharmaceutical companies – progress it through further research and development towards the eventual goal of real-world impact. So in this example, securing effective academic impact in the near term will be a key stepping stone towards achieving the longer-term impact goals, and it’s important to show a clear understanding of this and of the need to make provision for ‘next-steps’ activities.

How will stakeholders benefit?

Once you’ve identified the main stakeholder groups then it should be a fairly simple matter to explain how you anticipate they’ll benefit. It’s important to be as specific as possible here, but also proportionate and realistic.

For the primary beneficiary group in the above example (patients), the nature of the intended eventual impact is very clear – better outcomes, longer post-diagnosis survival and fewer deaths from cancer. Ideally, it’s always nice to be able to quantify the size and extent of impact. For example, how many patients with ovarian cancer are currently diagnosed at a late stage, how many die each year, and what sort of reduction in these numbers might a new biomarker-based early-detection technique realistically achieve? This last figure will of course have to be an approximate estimate, but if you make sure this is reasonable, realistic and informed by the available facts then the reviewer is likely to accept it – they won’t have a better figure of their own.

Along with the patients themselves, their families will also see obvious benefits. These will include economic benefits if the incapacity or loss of a breadwinner is prevented.

For each of the other beneficiary groups you’ve identified, describe the anticipated ultimate impact that they’ll see from your work. Sticking with the ovarian-cancer project, clinicians will have access to better and more effective treatments for their patients, while the NHS could stand to benefit financially if there are cost savings associated with fewer people needing treatment at later stages of the disease. If there’s a national strategy in place for dealing with cancer, then the intended impact outcomes will have positive implications for the parts of government responsible for that strategy. And if bringing the new diagnostic test to market will include subsequent collaboration with industry then there’s clear potential for the industry partner/s – perhaps specific named companies – to benefit financially. Finally, if the funder is a medical-research charity then they will have specific charitable aims, a mission and a vision. So they’ll benefit directly from projects that serve their agenda.

One more thing: if you also have to write a ‘pathways to impact’ statement, then don’t just go and repeat everything that you wrote in your impact summary. The pathways to impact statement is not about what impact you anticipate achieving, but rather what steps you can reasonably take to maximise the chances of that impact happening. Writing this will be the subject of a future blog post.

And that’s about it. If you can list some specific real-world beneficiary groups and describe convincingly how they’ll benefit from your project then you should have the makings of a sound impact summary. If you can’t, and you’re not a theoretical physicist or mathematician, then you might just have to re-think your project.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog. 

Aims and objectives – knowing the difference and understanding their relationship

The words ‘aim’ and ‘objective’ have quite similar meanings, and indeed in common parlance we often use them pretty much interchangeably. Other alternative words that we sometimes use in this context include ‘goal’, ‘intention’, ‘target’ and ‘ambition’. In a research proposal though, it’s essential to understand the important distinction between aims and objectives, and to appreciate how they sit alongside each other in your description of your putative research project.

Project aims

When it comes to a research project, the aim is normally a fairly broad and general statement of aspiration or intent. The earliest an aim is likely to be realised is at the end of the project, and it may well be the case that it has to be longer-term than the project’s duration. A statement of a project’s aim should encapsulate what you want to achieve in a way that people in the real world can understand and relate to; in other words, it should go a long way to answering the critical ‘what’s the point?’ question.

In my view, a project will often have two main aims, which can be ordered hierarchically. Firstly, the project’s overarching aim will relate directly to the problem that the research has been designed to address. This is certainly the case for any proposed project where the identified impact relates ultimately to a societal or economic problem (I use the term ‘problem’ in a broad sense – i.e. something that needs addressing, alleviating or sorting out in some way). So a research project’s overarching impact aim might be, say, to improve outcomes for people who have been diagnosed with a particular cancer.

This is great, and clearly very worthwhile, but in reality there is unlikely to be any actual amelioration of cancer outcomes on completion of the project or even fairly shortly afterwards. And it may be that cancer outcomes never actually improve as a direct result of the project in question. We have to be realistic here – while the overarching impact aim is typically a fairly long-term ambition, we must also be able to state a project aim that is somewhat shorter term and whose achievability is not too heavily tied up in factors that may be beyond our control. To give an indication of how the research will build towards the overarching goal, we generally need to state what the specific aim of the project is, against which the project’s success or failure could be judged. So a research project’s specific aim might, for example, be to validate the efficacy of a potential new early-detection test for a particular cancer that is normally diagnosed at a late stage, leading to poor clinical outcomes.

The specific aim will usually be closely linked to the project’s main research question or hypothesis. In the above example, the hypothesis might be that the presence of certain levels of a particular biomarker in a person’s blood is a reliable indicator of the early stages of a given type of cancer.

It’s often useful to state the overarching and specific aims of a project together, either as a compound aim statement or using adjacent sentences. Once again using the above example, this might take a form similar to one of the following:

This project aims to improve outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer by determining whether the presence of elevated levels of (a biomarker) in the blood provides a reliable means of early detection, thereby reducing late-stage diagnosis rates and improving survival outcomes.
 

This project’s overarching aim is to improve outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer by increasing early-diagnosis rates. Specifically, it will address this goal by testing whether the presence of elevated levels of (a biomarker) in the blood may be used as a basis for reliable early detection.

So how many aims should you state for your project? One may be sufficient, perhaps a composite of a ‘big-picture’ overarching aim and a more ‘drilled-down’ specific aim. Or it may be the case that it’s appropriate to articulate one or two subsidiary aims, related to but separate from your primary aim. There’s no official limit on the number of aims, but include too many and your project risks starting to look unfocused and/or over-ambitious. Alarm bells should probably ring if you have more than three aims.
    

Project objectives

Project aims represent an excellent means for a reviewer to determine quickly whether the focus of your proposed research seems to be important and worthwhile. But on their own, they can be a bit ‘motherhood and apple pie’. Sure we want to improve cancer outcomes – who doesn’t? And if there might be a way of developing a new test for earlier detection of a particular type of cancer then why not explore its potential? On their own, though, the aims give no indication as to the credibility of a project in terms of its feasibility, appropriateness and chances of success. Funders want to back research that addresses important problems, but they want to pick the projects that seem most likely to succeed.

Objectives are different from aims in a research proposal. Where the aim states what you want to achieve, the objectives set out the main steps that you’ve identified you’ll need to take in order to achieve it. In other words, they summarise the how. All objectives should map clearly to your aim/s, and an evaluator who reads your proposal should reasonably conclude that if you succeed in meeting all of the project’s objectives then there’s a decent chance you’ll achieve your aim/s.

It’s often stated that every project objective should be SMART:

• Specific – state precisely what you’re going to do
• Measureable – if you can’t measure it, how will you know when you’ve achieved it?
• Achievable – you’ll need to be able to accomplish all of your objectives; ambition is good, but over-ambitiousness raises a red flag
• Relevant* – does it relate directly to and support delivery of the project’s aim?
• Time constrained – objectives are shorter term than aims; can you achieve the objective within the lifetime of your project and according to the project schedule you’ve set, taking into account the possibility of delays?

* the ‘R’ in SMART is sometimes defined as ‘Realistic’ – but I think that overlaps too much with ‘Achievable’ 

Leaving aside the charge that someone has focused more here on coming up with a pithy acronym than on setting out a definitive list of the five most important characteristics of a project objective, the SMART approach will certainly help you to define a set of appropriate objectives for your project and its aim/s. It’s always a worthwhile exercise to test each of your project objectives against the SMART criteria to make sure they hit the mark. Aside from anything else, an evaluator may well do this too.

Because I’m not a biomedical scientist (nor indeed any sort of academic researcher) I won’t make a fool of myself by attempting to dream up some suitable objectives to match the aim of my hypothetical cancer-biomarker project above. But I do know a tiny bit about feasibility studies – small-scale versions of a larger clinical trial that are designed to establish whether it’s actually practicable to carry out the full-scale trial. In a hypothetical example of such a study, the aim might look something like this:

To evaluate the feasibility of trialling hyperbaric oxygen therapy alongside conventional treatment for patients with idiopathic osteonecrosis of the femoral head, as a means of reducing pain and improving mobility.

A (non-definitive) list of research objectives designed to address this project aim might reasonably include the following:

• Determine the infrastructure needed for a full-scale clinical trial
• Test the proposed trial design
• Evaluate and qualitatively explore practical considerations and compliance of clinicians in using the therapy
• Assess appropriateness of the training manual and consistency of training provided to participating clinicians
• Quantify the number of patients required for a full definitive trial
• Assess the efficacy of processes for patient recruitment and consent – and determine common reasons for non-participation
• Assess the quantity and potential patterns of missing data
• Test the feasibility of collecting the proposed outcome measures for a full trial
• Decide whether a fully-powered trial is appropriate

You’ll note that the above example objectives begin with an ‘action’ word, for example ‘determine’, ‘quantify’, ‘evaluate’. Each one is a concise statement of intent.

Be careful not to mix up research objectives with project objectives. It may be that you will need to complete face-to-face interviews with 20 patients and five clinicians, but that’s very much a project objective and it doesn’t really capture a meaningful research goal. Cover project objectives and milestones in the sections dealing with project management and timelines.

Do also make sure that none of your objectives simply re-states your aim, perhaps in similar or even near-identical terms. Remember – the aim is the ‘what’ of your project, the objectives are the high-level ‘how’, so they really shouldn’t ever be the same.

So how many objectives should you have? To some extent this should answer itself, depending on what you want to achieve and the methodology you’ve selected to achieve it. If you’re going to split your project into work packages, every work package should deliver at least one objective, and every objective must be addressed by a work package. You might list as few as three to five research objectives, or it could sometimes be necessary to list as many as ten. Much more than this though and you might want to take a reality check – have you perhaps included some project objectives, or possibly just tried to break things down too far?

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog. 

Capital punishment?

This month’s blog post is not specifically about bid writing. It focuses on a particular aspect of writing in general, and reflects my strongly-held conviction that the words on the page must never impede the transfer of information between writer and reader. Put another way, if as a reader I have to devote my time and brain-power to deciphering your long, rambling sentences – or if my attention is constantly distracted by your irritating little quirks of writing style or lack of writing-style consistency – then I’m less likely to take on board whatever message it is that you want to convey to me. And I may even end up wanting to smite you…

Capital crimes
One such irritating quirk is the apparently-random (or at least injudicious and inappropriate) use of capital letters. OK, so this post is turning into a bit of a rant, but please bear with me. Like many aspects of grammar, capital letters have a purpose and defined rules of use that reflect that purpose. Stick to these rules and they will not stand in the way of meaning and understanding. Your readers won’t even notice them. But contravene the rules and you run the risk of upsetting your readers. A long Sentence peppered with Unnecessary Capitals will annoy and even confuse. This is never a desirable outcome, particularly where the reader will play a key role in deciding the fate of your research-funding application.

few hundred years ago, it was commonplace to capitalise most or even all nouns in English (often with the capitals stylishly decorated). From about the eighteenth century onwards though this began to change, with writers and printers increasingly saving capitalisation for those nouns that they deemed to be important. Eventually, consensus alighted on the rule we still use today – that the important nouns needing capitalisation are the proper nouns we use to give names to individual people and things. Sure, the march of modernity has found new uses for capitals, such as letting other internet users know when we’re SHOUTING. But the proper-noun rule still holds.

So what’s getting me so hot under the collar as to have prompted this blog post (complete with shouting)?

In the course of my work I frequently come across draft text that’s full of ‘important’ nouns. These might be biological terms, for example, or specialist scientific methods and techniques. So important do these nouns seem to the writer that they often revert to mid-eighteenth-century rules and give them all capitals. Now that’s all well and good, but wholesale reversion to the rules and mores of the eighteenth century would also see small children sent up chimneys and people locked up in debtors’ prisons for missing a couple of credit-card repayments. All of which would offend our enlightened twenty-first-century sensitivities.

Perhaps then the best use for the remaining half of this post/rant would be to summarise a few fundamental principles relating to capitalisation. A plea for capital-letter sanity, if you will. Some of these principles are just the rules of sound grammar, while others are interpretive and are simply suggestions for good writing style that promotes readability.

Proper or common?
First off, always be clear about whether a noun is a common noun or a proper noun. Common nouns often refer to ‘classes’ of things, meaning that there can be lots of them. The word ‘cat’, for example, encompasses all of the cats in the world. Proper nouns, on the other hand, are specific instances of a class of things. Tigger, for example, is a specific instance of the cat class, and there’s only one Tigger (well OK, there may be more than one, but I’m talking here about my Tigger).

So far so simple, but what about words that can be both common nouns and proper nouns? Take the word ‘government’, for example. There are many governments around the world, so clearly it’s a class of things and thus a common noun. But there’s only one British Government, in which the word ‘government’ becomes a proper noun. Professors are similar – there are many professors out there, but only one Professor Jones in the Department of Whatever at the University of Wherever. And that’s fine, so long as we’re not tricked into thinking that words like ‘government’ and ‘professor’ must always take a capital whenever we write them. Governments (and professors!) are important of course, but not so important that they’re exempt from the rules of grammar. In Wales we have a number of health boards (common noun, lower case) procuring and delivering public healthcare services, while in the city of Swansea we have Abertawe Bro Morgannwg Health Board (proper noun, capitalised). Swansea University, of course, takes capitals. A university education does not. But when ‘the University’ is used as a short form of Swansea University then keep the capital ‘U’. You shouldn’t normally capitalise master’s degrees, but do so when referring to a specific degree course like a Master’s in Health Informatics. And so on.

All a bit abstract?
Sometimes the class/instance distinction is a bit less clear-cut. A scientific term like ‘photosynthesis’, for example, is hardly a class of things. There aren’t lots of cute little instances of photosynthesis running around, each with its own particular name. Moreover, specialist terms like photosynthesis will often be ‘important’ nouns in a research-funding proposal, fundamental to what the narrative is about. This may tempt us to give them capitals. However, they are not proper nouns and generally shouldn’t take a capital. (Photosynthesis is in fact an abstract noun, meaning it’s a non-material thing that can’t be held or touched.) This raises a fundamental point of good writing style; a presumption of lower case, reflecting the fact that capitals used excessively will distract and annoy. To quote the University of Oxford writing-style guide (including their own bold emphasis):

“Do not use a capital letter unless it is absolutely required.”

If you’re in any doubt about the proper/common noun distinction then err on the side of caution and use lower case. You’ll most likely be right.

Just So You Know (JSYK)
One special category of capital-letter abuse involves the full spelling out of abbreviated terms (more on which here). When we abbreviate a multi-word term, we use capitals to indicate to the reader that the abbreviation isn’t just an ordinary word. The ‘PET’ in ‘PET scan’, for example, refers not to the super-class of animals that includes cats and dogs but to positron emission tomography. There are no proper nouns in positron emission tomography, so even though it may be really important to your proposal and even though convention says we capitalise the abbreviation, there’s no need for any capitals in the full spelling. Of course, if the abbreviation is a shortened proper name (such as HCRW – Health and Care Research Wales) then do use capitals when you spell it out. It’s worth noting that some abbreviations which are readily pronounced as words (i.e. acronyms) have become so widely used and understood that, by convention, we tend to use lower case for them. The word radar, for example, is actually an abbreviation of ‘radio detection and ranging’, but who even knows that?

Title Case or Sentence case?
Titles can cause some soul searching when it comes to use of capital letters. Your proposal document might well include titles and sub-titles to demarcate different sections, and it might also refer to the titles of publications such as papers, journals and reports. The term ‘title case’ refers to the use of capitals for every word in a title/sub-title except for words that are prepositions, articles or conjunctions (on, the, but, etc). However, when it comes to writing titles in your text, I suggest the following approach:
1. stick to sentence case for your on-page titles and sub-titles (for example ‘Methodology and management structure’)

2. either use title case for paper and journal titles etc if they have six words or fewer (for example Journal of Applied Psychology), and use sentence case where they have more than six words (for example A mixed-methods evaluation of televised health-promotion advertisements targeted at older adults);

or always use sentence case (retaining capitals for any proper nouns), regardless of length
You will almost certainly distinguish on-page titles and sub-titles from ordinary text by using bold font. For paper/journal titles etc, consider using italic font to distinguish them. It may be that you just can’t bear to see the titles of papers, journals and reports written in sentence case; if so then by all means use title case for all of them. Importantly, whatever approach you decide on, do apply it consistently throughout your document.

Other notes and observations
PLEASE DON’T USE CAPITALS FOR LARGE CHUNKS OF TEXT, AS IT MAKES THEM DIFFICULT TO READ. Bold and/or italic font is almost always a more effective way of emphasising particularly-important words or short phrases – or even, occasionally, whole sentences – in your text.

Finally, an observation that has no foundation in grammatical correctness or good writing style, but which you might nevertheless want to heed. A prospective research funder will themselves often appear to have firm views about the importance of certain words, and these may be manifested through their use of capitalisation. If, for example, the application form and guidance notes for a fellowship scheme consistently capitalise ‘Fellowship’ and ‘Fellow’ even where these are used outside formal titles (such as ‘Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship’ or ‘Fellow of the Royal Society’), you might want to consider abandoning your sense of rectitude and reflecting this usage back at the funder. After all, you wouldn’t want them to think you don’t share their views and priorities.

You’ll note that I have managed to subjugate the completist in me and resist the urge to even mention capital letters at the start of sentences. If however you share my slightly obsessive completist inclinations and you want to find out more about correct/recommended use of capitalisation, then you might start by looking at what the University of Oxford Style Guide has to say on the matter.

When it comes to winning research-funding bids then, every little surely helps. Being careful not to annoy the reviewer with questionable grammar must certainly count in that respect – perhaps helping you to avoid capital punishment (with apologies for the dodgy wordplay).

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog. 

Getting started on your proposal – are you ready to put pen to paper?

Much of what I have to say about bid-writing best practice is focused on clarity. If a proposal is unclear then it’s very difficult – sometimes impossible – to understand it. And if it can’t be understood then it can’t be evaluated. Spoiler alert: this is unlikely to result in a positive outcome. This month’s post looks at an elementary but alarmingly-common flaw in many people’s approach to proposal development that almost always severely compromises clarity.

Putting pen to paper – but are you ready to start writing?
For anyone who intends to submit a research proposal, the blank application form can loom large. The sooner you stop decorating your ‘to-do’ list and get something written down, the less intimidating that form will seem. So it’s surely best to start writing sooner rather than later? Well, up to a point. But the key question here is not “how soon should I start writing?” but rather “when am I ready to start writing?” Fortunately this isn’t a very difficult question to answer.


Consider the task of producing a marketing brochure for a newly-launched car. It must set out the details, present all the hard facts and specifications, and capture the spirit of the car’s form, elegance and panache. Much like a research proposal, the brochure’s purpose is to inform and to sell. Now consider the job of designing that car. This is clearly a very different task, and one that’s completely separate from writing about the car (and probably a good bit more complex too). Finally, imagine trying to write the brochure before the car has been designed…



It doesn’t take any great leap of imagination to swap ‘nascent research project’ for ‘newly-launched car’ in the paragraph above. And as in the motor industry, surely no sane person would attempt to write a marketing document (i.e. a proposal) for a research project they hadn’t yet designed and planned. Would they?

Don’t try to describe something that doesn’t exist yet!
There’s an anecdote about an exchange between the late Richard Feynman, renowned not just as a great theoretical physicist but also as a first-rate teacher of physics, and his colleague David Goodstein, professor of physics at CalTech. Goodstein asked Feynman to explain, in an easy-to-understand way, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics (nope, me neither). After a pause for consideration, Feynman promised he’d prepare a freshman lecture on it, his way of breaking down a complex subject and re-presenting it in relatively clear and simple terms. But after a few days he confessed that he couldn't do it, that he’d been unable to reduce the subject to freshman level. In his own words, “that means we don't really understand it”. So even Richard Feynman couldn’t clearly describe something he didn’t yet fully understand. And just like Feynman, if you don’t yet know and understand all the details of your proposed research project, then you can’t possibly describe and explain the project clearly to someone else – someone like, say, an evaluator.


I think that as with launching a new car, it’s designing, planning and pulling together all the exhaustive details of a research project that’s the harder job. Once that’s all done – and I mean really done, with pretty much every last detail thrashed out – then it’s actually not so difficult to write about it. You’ll be writing about something tangible that really exists (at least on paper), something that you can properly visualise and understand. The alternative is to try to combine the two tasks and attempt to design the project as you write about it (or write about it as you design it – whatever). This is a bit like trying to photograph a moving object – it’s difficult to get a clear picture. And yet it’s a surprisingly common approach, often because insufficient time has been set aside for completing the two key strands of the bid-development process consecutively. I guess the mind-set is something like: “I don’t yet know exactly what I’m going to do or how I’m going to do it, but I’m sure it’ll all become clear once I start writing…” I sympathise with this approach, but I don't condone it. In fact, I contend that it's a major contributory factor to many unsuccessful bids. 

Getting the details sorted first
At the most basic level, you’ll need to finalise exactly what you’re setting out to discover; decide on the methodology you’ll use to discover it; determine who needs to be involved to carry out the project activities; and work out everything you’ll need by way of resources. Putting more flesh on these bones, you’ll need to plan the timescale for carrying out each separate activity and sub-activity; consider how the activities will be managed and co-ordinated; and work out the costs associated with all project activities. There will be other specific details to address too, like how data and IP will be managed and what you’ll do to maximise impact. Of course, there’s a bit of wiggle room for some of these details to change a bit as the bid develops. A would-be collaborator might pull out unexpectedly, for example, or a new paper might be published whose findings you just can’t ignore. But the important thing is always to have a concrete and comprehensive plan in place – and if necessary a solid plan B – that you can describe in your proposal.

So – are you ready to write?

Clearly then, the answer to the question “am I ready to start writing?” should be pretty straightforward. Do you have a fully-planned-out research project to write about? If you were to sit down with an evaluator, could you describe that project to them succinctly and convincingly, answering all their questions satisfactorily without drawing attention to any ‘tbc’ gaps in the details?

If it’s ‘yes’, ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ to the above, then you’re probably good to go – and your chances of success should be that much higher as a result. But if the answer to any of these questions is 'no' then I'll leave you with the words of another great physicist, none other than Albert Einstein: 

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog. 

Writing great lay summaries (that lay readers can actually understand)

A lay summary – sometimes referred to as a plain-English or plain-language summary – is pitched at a general, non-academic audience. Its primary purpose is to tell members of the public, who pay for your research through their taxes or charitable donations, what they’re getting for their money and why it matters. 

Lay summary readership
The reader will often not have a scientific or research background and typically won’t have any specialist knowledge of your particular subject area. They will be looking for a brief overview of the context of your research, what it involves, its aims and objectives, and its potential real-world benefits. However, do be aware that your lay readers will come from diverse backgrounds. Some may be clinicians, for example, while others could be trustees of the charity that’s funding your research or patients who could benefit from it. And there’s a twist. Some of your readers – including a few who really matter – may actually be experts. A lay summary can be a useful quick-start entry point for an evaluator when they first pick up your proposal. So it’s important not to over-simplify to the point where the reader may feel patronised.

Using plain language
Fortunately, writing good plain language and not patronising the reader are fully compatible. As the Psychological Bulletin advises paper authors in their guidelines for submission, the first step towards clarity is writing simply. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) takes a very clear stance on the matter: 

“Plain language is grammatically correct language that includes complete sentence structure and accurate word usage. Plain language is not unprofessional writing or a method of ‘dumbing down’ or ‘talking down’ to the reader.”

There’s lots of information on the web about the principles of writing in plain language, but if you stick to the following basics then you won’t go far wrong:

• Structure the content logically. You’re telling a ‘story’ about a problem, your plans for tackling that problem, and the impact you hope to have on it.
• Focus on your key messages and avoid getting bogged down in the detail.
• Cut out all jargon. Jargon excludes the uninitiated, but you want to include. So make sure all your terminology is accessible.
• The same goes for obscure and made-up abbreviations and acronyms. ‘NHS’ is fine, ‘BBD’ (blood-borne disease) much less so. 
• Technical terms aren’t necessarily jargon, but they can be difficult for non-specialists to understand. If there’s no realistic alternative to using them, include a short explainer.
• Avoid overly-formal language. Don’t say ‘utilise’ when ‘use’ would do.
• Use short paragraphs (one thought per paragraph), short sentences (say 10-15 words on average), and consider using subheadings and bullet points where appropriate.
• Try to break things up on the page with some nice white space.
• Avoid language that de-personalises – ‘patients’ or just ‘people’ is generally preferable to ‘service users’ in the context of health-services and medical research.
• Cut down on use of the passive voice. ‘We will interview at least 20 participants’ works better than ‘At least 20 participants will be interviewed’ in this context – write as if you’re talking to someone.
• Go easy on adjectives and hype – let the reader decide whether your idea is ‘truly ground-breaking’.

Check the funder’s specific guidance, and be sure to cover all the points they want covered in the lay summary. Importantly, a lay summary should never be the same as a scientific summary or similar. If the funder has asked you for both then they want two different things – so if you’re thinking of copying and pasting anything then please think again!


Resources
The INVOLVE national advisory group, funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), runs the ‘Make it Clear’ campaign and provides excellent advice and resources for writing a good lay summary on their website.


The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine alone and are in no way endorsed by my employer. Factual information and guidance are provided on a 'best-endeavour' basis and may become out of date over time. No responsibility can be taken for any action or inaction taken or not in respect of the content of this blog.