Conquer the budget, conquer the project

It pleases me no end to begin with this tweet:

“Budget is a proxy for project planning” says Aidan Byrne: inaccurate budgets indicate project not well thought through
— Dr Inger Mewburn (@thesiswhisperer)

Aidan Byrne is the Australian Research Council’s CEO, and @thesiswhisperer livetweeted his presentation from the ANU Acton campus. The talk brimmed with tasty morsels for the Research Whisperers to chew on and, having half-written this entry already, it seemed an opportune time to get it out there!

What spurred me to write this post?

Not the bottom line (Photo by Tseen Khoo)

The fact that just about everyone leaves the grant budget till last.

No matter how many times I bring it up with researchers and their teams, and encourage early tackling of the budget, the poor thing ends up being rushed through, thrown together, or created from the ether.

This isn’t good for it. It can get resentful and make your entire application ineligible if you don’t pay enough attention.

This year’s ARC DECRA (ECR award), for example, has a ceiling of $131,740 per year in funding – over $90K of which goes towards the awardee’s salary. This leaves up to $40K as project costs. That’s it. You can’t argue for more; that’s just what the scheme is. If your project doesn’t fit into this budget, then this scheme may not be for you, or you would need to scaffold the project funding with commitment from other sources.

Many view the budget as a poor cousin to the regal elements of ‘track-record’ and ‘project description’, but they do it a disservice. The humble budget, properly conceived and executed, can be the foundation and catalyst for project efficiency and team bonding.

Finding that hard to believe?

Read on, because here are five ways that conquering your budget can help you conquer the project (or your grant application, at least):

Will I get the grant?

“Dear research whisperer,

Before I start thinking about my next grant, I just wanted to get your gut feeling for what you think is going to happen with the application that I put in this year. Any thoughts?”

Dear applicant

‘After the Heist’ by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

That is the hardest question that I face in my job, and one that I always resist answering. It comes in many forms: researchers want to know whether they will win the grant; administrators want to know whether they will meet targets; and bosses want to put hard numbers into workplans.

I know that some other research whisperers like to predict who will be successful and who won’t, but I don’t play that game. I like your application. I think that it is really strong. However, as Mark Bisby (former VP Research for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research) puts it, “It’s not a test, it’s a contest” (we love that quote). It doesn’t matter how strong your application is if the opposition is stronger.  We have no control over the relative strength of the opposition.

More than that, I don’t believe that I have enough data to make a confident prediction. If I can’t make a confident prediction, then I am guessing.  Personally, I don’t believe that guessing is a valid planning tool.

I don’t have enough data because there are so many external factors influencing the competition that I can’t predict or influence.

You’ve applied for the ARC Linkage scheme. [This is an Australian research funding scheme that requires matching funds from external partners - Ed.] Here are some of the external factors that might influence that scheme this year. This should give you some idea why I don’t like to guess.

• Changes in the university landscape: The overall number of applications should continue to rise as universities put more pressure on academics to write more applications. More applications means more competition.
• Changes in the economy: The overall number of applications may be down because the economy is in a bad way and so partner organisations are less willing to ‘risk’ money on research projects.  In Australia’s case, however, we seem to have escaped the worst of the effects worldwide, so that may not apply here.
• Local political changes: The overall number of applications may be slightly down because Victoria and Queensland had a change of State governments just before the closing date, so anyone relying on those governments to be partners would have had a hard time getting signatures.
• Changes in the scheme itself: The overall number of applications may be slightly down because the Australian Research Council (ARC) introduced a new requirement that every external organisation needed a Partner Investigator as well, and some people may have had trouble signing up their partners. I don’t believe this, though. Our university was able to get all of our partners organised, so I don’t see why everybody else couldn’t, too.
• Changes within the funding body: The ARC may have ripped a bunch of money out of this particular scheme to fund the new Industrial Transformation Research Program (ITRP), or there could have been other internal pressures on the overall funding envelope.
• Changes within the funding landscape: The ARC doesn’t expect to get any new money into the system in the current funding climate. The head of the ARC said as much in November 2012. That means that, no matter how many excellent applications they receive, they cannot increase the funding envelope.
• National political events: There will be an election in Australia this year. This won’t change the overall chances of success, but it will almost certainly mean that the announcement of results will be delayed. The ARC cannot announce results until they are signed off by the Minister. The government doesn’t make any major decisions once an election is called. So, if the Minister hasn’t signed off before the election is called, the ARC are stuck in limbo until the election is finished and they have a Minister who can sign off.
• National political changes: There may be a change of government. This shouldn’t really effect things too much, except to add delay while the new government sorts out its ministry.  People are always a bit nervous that the new government might make sweeping changes and, even though I don’t think this will happen, it makes everybody a bit jittery. The minister does technically have the right to refuse to sign of on one or all of the grants put forward for funding.

If I were to make a prediction about your application, I wouldn’t know what I was talking about.  That wouldn’t be fair on you, or on me.

Sorry that I couldn’t be of assistance this time.

Research Whisperer

Research on a shoe-string

Dr Emily Kothe is a lecturer in psychology at Deakin University.

Emily conducted her PhD at the University of Sydney on promoting fruit and vegetable consumption to Australian young adults. She graduated in 2012.

Her honours, masters and PhD projects had a combined budget of less than $400.

Emily is in the process of writing her first set of internal grant applications as an academic staff member, and is interested in the process of developing projects in the context of conducting research on a shoe-string.

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I’ve been going through my paperwork from my student days recently. In the process, I found my funding requests for my PhD research. Not including conference travel, my research expenses for my PhD were $375.95.

That included a 1-month subscription to Thinkstock to allow me to buy high quality images for use in an online intervention to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, and the purchase of the domain name that I used for the intervention website. My Honours and Masters projects, and the research I’ve been running for the year since completing my PhD, have all been conducted at zero cost (except for my time).

Save money – by shopping (Photo by Toban Black – http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobanblack)

This means that in the last 6 years I’ve spent an average of $62.60 a year on research costs.

At research institutions, developing, submitting, and ultimately receiving, competitive grants is a key indicator of productivity and performance for academic staff. This means that obtaining a Category 1 grant (e.g. ARC Discovery or NHMRC Project Grant) is central to my career development.

Assuming that I want to progress in my career (spoiler alert: I do!) then I would be expected to apply for a faculty-level internal grant ($$), a university-level seed grant ($$$), then a Category 1 Grant ($$$$$$).

As a freshly minted academic staff member, I’m starting small with the preparation of a faculty-level grant (the maximum budget is $18,000, with all funds to be spent in a year). In the process of preparing this grant, I’ve had to think about spending about 47 times more on research than I have ever before. Obviously, I don’t need to ask for the whole amount, but spending months putting together a request for $62.60 in funding would be colossal waste of time for everyone involved!

Get me a project manager, stat!

Keystone (Photo by Jonathan O’Donnell)

A while back, one of our Twitter followers asked whether The Research Whisperer had any posts about project management.

At the time, I could only think of @jod999’s megastar post about what a Gantt chart is, and mine on whether you can fix a broken Gantt chart.

While Jonathan’s post was about planning and putting in place a feasible and ideal timeline, mine talked about the common mistakes and remedies for timelines that don’t behave.

Research projects are very much about project management, and that tweet nudged me in the direction of this post.

Project management skills are elements that many sectors require, and this means that there is a weighty bunch of pixels already dedicated to the topic. For a great recent post on research project management, read @evalantsoght’s “Smart way to manage a large research project” at the Next Scientist blog.

Rather than rehearse what many others have already said (better than I could), I want to focus on someone  you should consider requesting as part of a major research grant:

Get yourself a project officer or a project manager. 

Long-term grants

Dr Ben Kraal is a Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia. He works with the People and Systems Lab on various projects.

In the broadest sense, what he does can be described as Design Research. Ben’s background is in what people call “IT”, though he has spent most of his time thinking about how people use technology in their work and life.

His PhD was about the lived experience of people who use large vocabulary speech recognition systems in the workplace.

Ben tweets from @bjkraal and blogs at Not Easily Obvious. 

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Chalk trains (Photo by Ben Kraal)

Recent ideas for “fixing” research grants have proposed long-term grants as a potential solution.

Nobel Prize-winning astronomer, Brian Schmidt (ANU), proposed the idea and it showed up in a Minister’s speech too.

As a post-doc on soft money, long-term grants only seem to solve the problems of established professors whose problem isn’t getting grants, but keeping their lab or group liquid for the medium to long-term.

I fear that long-term grants will turn the early career researcher’s (ECR) problem of getting a grant into the problem of getting a job. But with fewer, bigger projects about, that could get harder, not easier.

Culling Grant Applications: Heartless Killing or Act of Mercy?

Dr Ksenia Sawczak is the Director of the Research Services Office at the University of Canberra. She has extensive government and higher education sector experience, having held positions in academia, research policy development and implementation, and research management. This includes positions at the Australian Research Council and various universities in Australia and overseas.

This article builds on a presentation that she gave at the ARC/NHMRC Research Administrators’ Seminar in November 2013.

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There is nothing like the Grants Season to bring out the eternal optimist in each of us. Could this be my year? Will I finally get my hands on the holy grail of the Australian funding world – an ARC Discovery Project grant? Will my brilliant idea be accepted at long last? And so begins a period of tremendous hope and stress for the researcher who, against a backdrop of the looming commencement of teaching responsibilities, struggles through the arduous task of preparing their grant application, often without a clue as to whether it will be worth the effort.

Why are grants so important? What would possibly drive time-poor researchers to spend huge chunks of their time, year after year, to seek funding from agencies which are often out of their league? In most institutions, researchers operate in stressful and confusing environments where they are strongly pressured to apply for research funding – sometimes regardless of whether they actually need money to do their research – and to seek out funding sources (that are often out of their reach) for reasons such as prestige, the need to demonstrate research endeavour, and performance review where grants applied for are one measure by which activity is evaluated.

But given the effort required to prepare a grant application, this doesn’t answer the question of what would possess researchers to seek a source of funding, unless there were some possibility of success. Chances are they do not know that they are out of their league or, more likely, that there are alternative sources of funding that may be more suitable for them at this point in their careers. Either way, there needs to be a shift in research management whereby academics are better informed of their likely competitiveness and universities are better positioned to lift their success rates through a strategic approach to grant submissions.

Sharing your grant application

Prime rib (Photo by Tseen Khoo)

Back in December 2012, Liana Silva (@literarychica) asked after examples of postdoctoral fellowship applications that might be stored online.

I responded that many institutions, and sometimes researchers, guarded their applications warily. Many are loathe to make them publicly available, or for the use of others outside their own institution (or faculty, or school…).

There are a few reasons for this. Some are valid, and some not so much.

One of the main fears appears to be that other scholars will read your application (or your institution’s applications) and steal your ideas, or straight up plagiarise your text. 

Someone plagiarising your grant application is as bad as someone plagiarising your article. There’s no doubt it’s wrong.

The mitigating factor here, though, is that I’m assuming any fellowship or grant application worth reading is a successful one. You want to see what kind of document wins the prize.

Speedy grants

Dr Ben Kraal is a Research Fellow at QUT in Brisbane, Australia. He works with the People and Systems Lab on various projects.

In the broadest sense, what he does can be described as Design Research. Ben’s background is in what people call “IT”, though he has spent most of his time thinking about how people use technology in their work and life.

His PhD was about the lived experience of people who use large vocabulary speech recognition systems in the workplace.

Ben tweets from @bjkraal and blogs at Not Easily Obvious. 

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The conditions for getting grants these days are dire.

“I wanna go fast!” (Photo by Tseen Khoo; title from Talledega Nights)

Discovery grant success rates are below 20% for many institutions. As a new(ish) academic, it seems like the only way to get a grant is to be an old academic who has already received quite a few grants. The closest I’ve come to a good review from the Australian Research Council (ARC) has been one that was mildly complimentary about the concept of the project and was not at all enthusiastic about my lack of experience in managing a sizeable project.

It’s kind of dispiriting.

The steep climb to get enough experience to be eligible for a grant would be easier if the review process seemed more reliable. I’ve known more than a few people who just missed out on a grant, only to resubmit the same project and be excoriated by the reviewers the next year.

I’m far from the first to recognise the problem that not having enough experience to get into the grant system means that you can’t get the experience you need to be in the grant system.

I’ve accepted that I can’t change the fact of my limited experience. Instead, I decided to find a grant where limited experience isn’t a deal-breaker.

Picking up the pieces

Gingerbreak man (Photo by Tseen Khoo)

So, you’ve lost out on the major grant rounds for last year. It only took about eight months to find out, right?

Often, you’ve waited with all of your career possibilities riding on the outcome.

And you got nothing.

As the congratulatory emails, posts, and drinkies ramped up, it was easy to get a little bitter and twisted about the whole thing. Of course, you’re happy for your diligent and savvy colleagues who were given recognition but…what about you?

I can say that I truly understand how you feel. I threw my hat in the major grants and fellowship rings many times; very few times was I successful.

I’m writing this post for you to read after you’ve had a few weeks to get over the angst and disappointment of not scoring a grant, hopefully had a break, and been able to take a step back.

If you’re going to persist in the academic caper, it’s very useful to find a constructively destructive way to channel that post-grant-announcement frustration and anger, that feeling that you’ve been cheated. I would suggest gardening or metal-smithing; anything that allows you to wield tools or make loud noises.

There are no guarantees about winning the grants race, but you can do your best to ensure you make it through the heats.

Top 5 things to pick up the pieces, post-grant-unsuccess:

What do the headings mean?

Complex writing by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr.

Each funding body uses their own language, but they are all aiming to compare projects to find the best ones. Because of this, they often use relatively similar headings.

Here is what I think some of the more common headings on funding application forms are asking for.

Title: This is the first thing anybody will see. It should be a concise, memorable summary of your project. Don’t be too clever. If your title has a colon in it, that generally means that one half of your title is superfluous. Clever, but superfluous.

Research design: The funders want to be able to get a quick sense of what sort of research you are doing. Is it a clinical trial with 4,000 double-blind randomly selected men between the ages of 42 – 46? Is it a sociological inquiry into the epistemology of depression as expressed through the works of Goya? Provide one or two sentences that describe both the methodological field and the scope, preferably in numbers.

Project synopsis: This will be the blurb that the funding bodies put into the media release when they announce all the grants. It should build on the title to give a clear picture of what you are trying to achieve. Think like a copy-editor for this one.