How was your grant season? Even if it didn’t go exactly how you’d expected it to go, remember, there is no perfect grant proposal, and a great grant application is a submitted application!
I know that once Oct 3rd hit, I felt like I was emerging to see the sunlight for the first time in months!
At the same time, with grant season in full force, September was a wealth of great articles and Twitter threads on various aspects of writing.
Without further ado, here are some great ones to check out:
1. The bestselling author Cormac McCarthy provided his tips for writing scientific articles that people will want to read. I love that he focuses on simplicity and discusses several strategies for condensing your writing and making it less formal.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02918-5
2. @ERC_Research shared and added to a thread on tips for writing a good ERC grant. I like that so many previous applicants submitted advice about first being rejected and what they did to turn around their application the next year. You can find that thread here:
📢Calling all ERC grant winners – do you have any tips you'd like to share on how to make a good research proposal?
Feel free to contribute any way you like: quick impressions, links to material you found useful, or even go for it with a thread! Let's start with this advice: https://t.co/fGTkV2aWVQ
— European Research Council (ERC) (@ERC_Research) September 6, 2019
3. @eblissmoreau also shared a nice thread on tips for grant writing. I love that she highlights a predominant fallacy that good science will shine through. Spoiler – it won’t! Make sure your grant is written such that it helps and doesn’t hurt your chances of funding. You can find this thread here:
I’m in the middle of reviewing grants and seeing a lot of the same issues in them.
A thread of 1/dunno how many.
Of note: When I review a grant, I start from the premise “I want to fund this; convince me I’m not wrong” (the alternative being “convince me I should find this”).
— Dr. Eliza Bliss-Moreau (@eblissmoreau) September 2, 2019
4. Anna Clemens wrote a post about several ways to get unstuck when you are writing. My go-to is the mind-dump technique. What do you use? What do you want to try next time you are stuck? Find her other techniques here:
http://bit.ly/2F8tw4o
5. Finally, if you’ve recently written a paper but don’t know where to submit it or who to recommend as a reviewer, check out http://jane.biosemantics.org/index.php. When inputting the title of my last paper, I came up as a suggested reviewer…cool!
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Those were my favorite posts from September – what were yours? What interesting science communication stuff did I miss?
