Writing a grant proposal (Part 1):Making a research plan

Writing a grant proposal (Part 1):Making a research plan

 

Introduction

Making a research plan is a good way to start a research project. In this plan, you could address the following topics. Try matching each topic with its description.

• Research methodology: What methods or procedures will you use to carry out your research project?
• Stages of research: How will you progress towards answering your research question?
• Resources you'll need: People (or team), funding, equipment, software (eg, for data analysis)
• Research goal: What do you hope will be the outcome of the research?
• Publication goal: In what kind of journal do you hope to publish your paper based on the research?
• Contingencies: How will you deal with problems or challenges that come up?
•  

  Being SMART

   
  Have you heard of the acronym SMART? Each letter in SMART denotes an adjective that describes an important element of a goal.
  Do you know what these adjectives are? The first one is given as an example.
  
  SMART typically stands for the following:
  

  • S: specific
  • M: measurable
  • A: achievable
  • R: relevant
  • T: time-bound

  SMART is a really useful acronym to keep in mind as you document a research plan and think about the goal of your research.
   

  Research methodology

  In some fields of research, there are formalised study designs. An appropriate study design must be selected at the research planning stage. For example, in the health sciences, the following types of study design are common:
  
  

  • Randomised controlled trial (or RCT)
  • Cohort study
  • Case control study
  • Cross-sectional study
  • Ecological study

  
  Study design is a part of research methodology. These are big topics and we won't be covering them in this course. However, you may be able to find several online resources on study design or research methodology that are relevant to your field.
  When you do a literature review, pay attention to whether published papers in your field use any specific types of study design.
  
  

  Arranging resources

  What's the most important resource for a research project? People! That is, the research team.
  In addition, at least some of the following resources are typically needed for a research project:
  

  • academic databases
  • funding
  • equipment
  • software

  We looked at academic databases in an earlier lesson. Let's look at the other three quickly.
  

  Funding - an introduction

  If you need funding for your research project, you’ll have to find suitable grant opportunities and write grant proposals. These topics are covered in detail in later lessons.
  
  If you've not won a grant so far, it might be a good idea to try to first obtain a small grant, such as a travel grant. Travel grants are often offered by conference organisers and support programmes such as AuthorAID to enable developing country researchers to travel to and present at conferences.
  
  

  Equipment and software

  In addition to having the right people and the money to do research, you may also need some scientific equipment and software. 
  
  Scientific equipment can be expensive, which is often a problem for institutions in developing countries. Here are some tips to obtain the equipment you might need:
  
  

  • If your institution does not have the equipment you need, find out if any institutions nearby have it and if you can use it there.
  • If you're writing a grant proposal to request a substantial amount of money for doing a research project, try to include the costs of equipment in your proposal.
  • An organisation called Seeding Labs provides steeply discounted scientific equipment to universities in developing countries. Visit their website to learn more: http://seedinglabs.org/equipment/instrumental-access/
  •  

  Software for scientific work can also be expensive, but in many cases you can look to free and open source software (FOSS) that you can download and use at no cost. For example, the statistical environment "R" (http://www.r-project.org/) is an excellent application for data analysis. 
  
  A detailed list of FOSS applications, including those relevant to scientific research, is available on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open-source_software_packages
  
  

  Going about your research project

  As you start doing research, keep in mind the points covered in the lessons on ethics.
  

  • Obtain any ethical approvals that might be needed for your research project.
    
  • Never fabricate or falsify data. If you're ever in doubt about the results of an experiment, repeat it or redesign it. If you don't get the results you hoped for, you may still be able to publish a paper about the negative results. Even if you can't, it is never an ethical option to tweak or adjust the results to favourably answer the research question. Many researchers have got into trouble for doing unethical things in the process of doing or communicating research.
    
  • Refer to authorship guidelines and come to an agreement with your research colleagues about authorship: Who are the authors? What is the order in which their names will be listed?
    
    
  • Avoid plagiarism by carefully citing references and writing in your own words.
    
  • Avoid any bias due to conflicts of interest, and be prepared to disclose any conflicts of interest in your paper.
    
  • Be wary of predatory or questionable journals.

  Finally, carefully document your methods and experiments at every step of your research project. These notes will feed into the methods section of your paper.
  
  

  Start writing!

  "Writing the paper should be an integral part of research, not a separate activity", recommends Prof George Whitesides, who has published more than 1000 papers and is the most highly cited living chemist in the world.
  
  Do not wait to complete your research before you start writing your paper. Start writing the paper as soon as you have some promising results.
  
  

  Research can sometimes feel like a never-ending process! It may take a long time to answer the research question you have formulated, so you should consider presenting your ongoing work even if it's too early to publish it.
  
  If you've got some results from your research project, try to present them at a scientific conference. You may get useful feedback at the conference that you can use to improve your work. Presenting at a conference can give you valuable experience in communicating your research and even finding potential collaborators.
  
  At an informal level, you can write about your research on various platforms, for examples, on a personal blog, Facebook, Twitter, ResearchGate, and LinkedIn. This will give you some practice in writing about your research for a general audience, which is a very useful skill.
  
  

  Identifying target journals

   

  Question

  The heading above may seem out of place: identifying target journals? Shouldn't this be done after you write a paper?
  There are some advantages of identifying at least one target journal for your future paper at an early stage of your research. Try selecting them from the list below.
  

  Answers

  Option 1

  1. Learning about the scope of your target journal (that is, the research topics covered by the journal), and gearing your research work to fit the journal's expectations
  

  Option 2

  2. Reading papers already published in your target journal to get a sense of the scientific rigour of the studies reported, the length of papers, etc.
  

  Option 3

  3. Reading your target journal's instructions to authors to find out if the journal has any specific requirements that are related to the doing of research, such as obtaining approvals
  

  Option 4

  4. Getting motivated by imagining your future paper as a publication in your target journal
  
  

  All of the points above are valid!
  Later in this course, you'll learn how to identify appropriate target journals. For now, keep in mind that it's best to identify some target journals as early as possible.
  
  

  End matter

  This lesson has been developed by INASP, an international development charity in the UK, as an extension of the work carried out by the AuthorAID team. Visit inasp.info and authoraid.info to learn about our work. 
  
  This lesson was authored and developed by Ravi Murugesan, an INASP Associate. The content was reviewed by Dr Barbara Gastel, also an INASP Associate, and Dr Anne Riederer, an environmental health scientist and technical advisor to Blacksmith Institute. Parts of this lesson were based on material in AuthorAID workshops facilitated by Dr Gastel.
  
  We have used a free and open source e-learning authoring tool called eXeLearning (http://exelearning.net/?lang=en) to create this lesson.
  This lesson was last updated on 12 June 2015.
  
  Licensing
  This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.