Sea of Wisdom temple (Beijing) by Jonathan O’Donnell (on Flickr)

The previous post in this series addressed the issue of how I assess track-records on grant applications. It talked about a range of X-factors that I look for when assessing applications with (typically) excellent research CVs.

This post focuses on project feasibility and whether the project sounds like it’s going to work.

On one level, it’s a dead obvious question: Can the project be done?

It is, however, an aspect that depends entirely on the evidence presented in the application that:

1. The team (or individual) is good and experienced;
2. The budget’s credible and appropriately linked to a methodology that has integrity; and
3. The project itself has significant intellectual rigour and vigour.

One of the trickiest balancing acts that I find with grant applications is demonstrating innovation and creativity in your research without sacrificing feasibility.

This can sometimes boil down to a question of ‘do you have a Plan A and Plan B?’. If we’re talking about the honest face of research, we’d have to admit that things don’t always work. The project direction that’s so assiduously planned may go awry in the first six months when the research team implodes or the data doesn’t do what you’d like it to. Research is often exploratory, which introduces doubt about what its real final outcomes might be.

If you were being completely honest, you’d have to say that the project may not work.

What you have to do with a grant application, though, is assuage readers’ concerns on that front. You need to present a tight, smooth, exciting project. Not something that has the potential to derail your GANTT chart or timeline.

Below are the particulars of how I assess the feasibility of a grant application:

1. The people

Yes, it’s very much about the quality of the team. Presume everyone’s track-record is as good as it needs to be, and on top of that, the team needs to demonstrate:

• Project management experience,
• An ideal skill/experience combination, and
• Ideal institutional locations and access to project resources/equipment/samples.

If your team is really hot right now, the various researchers may already have grants and projects on their plates. Do they have the time to devote to this new one? Can they lead on three major projects at once?

Even though you’re telling me so in the application, I would be doubtful that you would be able to fit a lead role in a major project into one day a week with a small team, and definitely not if you’re a sole investigator.

Increasingly, assessors may drop by your institutional webpage or professional website so ensure these essential elements of your digital identity are up-to-date and accurate (if there’s a mismatch between your grant application CV and what you’re saying you’ve done on your webpage, it would give me pause).

2. The budget

Judging the feasibility of a budget is straightforward – have you accounted for all project costs appropriately? It needs to be closely and clearly aligned with the steps of your project methodology. Readers shouldn’t find costings for 100 interviews in the budget and wonder why they’re there. They should see it and connect it to Phase 3/Year 2 of the fieldwork (from which the data gets analysed in the next phase, generally, and presentations and publications to flow from there).

There’s a logic to budgets that readers expect to see. This is not where you get innovative! The budget is one of those things what won’t earn you X-factor points, but you can be sure it’ll lose you points if it’s not done well.

3. The project

I have to say that I usually make my decision about whether I want a project to be funded within the first five minutes with an application. The ‘feel’ of the document – momentum, clarity of framework and process, confidence with conveying the concepts and their relevance – comes through very quickly. A clumsy, waffly or arrogant style in the project description can kill an application.

One of my key triggers for wanting to nix an application is over-selling the team or project. For example: Leave the press’ name as a stand-alone. If it’s a classy publisher in academia, chances are that your assessor will know that. Don’t feel compelled to dress it up with a lead-in like “renowned international publisher”, “first-class” or “extremely prestigious”. I see those kinds of phrases and I’m annoyed because you’re either trying to sell me something that isn’t true, or you’re stating the obvious. It’s fine to give information about new or niche journals and presses that are doing interesting things, but leave the hyperbole out of it!

I automatically consider the outlined project plan AND timeline that’s allocated. Can you spend a weekend at the archives and come away with enough material for the mooted project? Can those in-depth interviews be done in 1.5 hours, back-to-back, in those separate cities with these timeframes? It’s not like I’m getting on the Internet to map the feasibility; instead, I’d be drawing on my own experiences with research and getting a feel for what looks right. You can probably glean from this that much of the grant application process is presenting the best face possible. Nowhere is this more evident than in the project timeline and budget, where the work must be neatly set out and smooth progression between stages is implied.

What to do when your timeline (or GANTT chart) misbehaves is another post altogether. For the purposes of this one: make sure there are no fuzzy or messy phases of research. You’re instilling confidence and persuading people to give you money, not inviting a critical discussion about what you intend to do.

Assessors will read your application critically, but they shouldn’t be coming away with major questions about how it will be carried out.

For me, feasibility is necessarily a fusion of all these elements. A stellar track-record and collaborative team effort will not overcome a weak and confused project outline. Similarly, an exciting and convincing project cannot win with a mediocre team with no history of working together, or a dodgy budget.

Remember, to quote Mark Bisby again, grant applications aren’t a test, they’re a contest.

At the ‘fund-able’ end of the scale, there are a pack of fantastic projects and teams. You’ve got an in if you can demonstrate excellence on all fronts. But I’m only one assessor, and others may prioritise different things and bring their own research biases to the process.

Have you assessed grant applications? Do you have make or break elements that you look for?

If you aren’t a creative type (artist, writer, poet, dramaturge, designer), you can probably stop reading now. If you are, please keep reading – I need your help.

What’s an artist to do?

Seeking completion by Tseen on Flickr

I work with the cool people at the university: artists, designers, architects, social scientists, humanities scholars and educators – all sorts of excellent people.

Many of them are professionals in their chosen professions. That is, they are professional artists, designers, architects, poets, writers, etc. Their research is ‘practice-based’ research; they create stuff. The process of creation is an integral part of the research process. It meshes with their teaching, which is often studio-based, using workshops and mentoring rather than lectures and tutorials. These people fit very well into a university landscape.

Until it comes to funding.

Arts funding, like all funding, is built for the people who need it. It is organised around independent individuals (or small collaborations) or highly focused arts-based organisations (theatres, for example). These are the people who need the funds, so that is how the funds work.

Up until now, this has worked quite well. University lecturers who have been practicing artists have applied for funds as individuals, rather than as members of staff. They have been judged on their strength as practicing artists, and on the quality of the material they create.

Now, however, there is a much stronger emphasis on research funding. Funding is being used as a cross-discipline shorthand for quality. People want to be seen to be ‘research-active’, as well as getting on and doing what they do. Promotions often depend on it.

So, now, practice-based researchers want to channel their funds through the university.

The university as an auspicing agent?

Luckily, there is a way to do this. Not all people receiving arts funding want to be accountants and human resources managers. They just want to get on and do the work. So, arts funding can be channeled through an auspicing agent.

What the hell is “auspicing”, I hear you ask. Well, if you’ve read this far, you probably already know, but that’s what I said about a year ago when I first encountered it.

An auspicing agent handles all the bits of the project that a practicing artist may not want to deal with. They take care of the funding administration, providing accurate and timely information to the artist and the funding agency, as required. At the end of the project, they provide an audited set of accounts, as required for the final report. Auspicing agents can provide project management oversight and even communications between participants, if requested. They will do whatever you want, for a small fee.

This is where the university can step in. On the face of it, a university would make an excellent auspicing agent. It has professional accountants, a whole department devoted to human resources, and a legal team. It has professional photographers and videographers that might be able to document the work.

Once the funds are being channeled through the university, the project is covered by university’s insurance. It means that people like me can help with applications or contracts or finance, and the income is counted as research funding attracted to the university.

What can go wrong:

Having the university act as an auspicing agent seems to make a lot of sense. Everybody should be happy, right? Hopefully, this will be the case in the future. Unfortunately, at the moment, universities generally seem to make poor auspicing agents. It isn’t what the are built to do.

For a start, not all projects need auspicing. You don’t need a seperate organisation running your accounts if the project has one chief investigator and a three-line budget. In fact, having a university provide ‘advice’ about contracts, progress reports and payment processes can be a decided disadvantage.

This is particularly true if the project takes a new direction. This often happens when the research process is intentionally mercurial and agile. Suddenly, the chief investigator wants to spend the funds on something different from what was described in the budget. University finance departments, like all government departments, are generally not keen on those sorts of changes. They want it documented and authorised; they want it done by the book.

In particular, they might want to know why this staff member is going to get a payment above and beyond their normal wage. Artists’ fees are a well understood and well regarded part of arts funding. They are not even on the radar of most university finance departments. This can result in delays, makeshift arrangements and a sudden jump in taxable income. It isn’t always perfect.

In the end, universities will never make perfect auspicing agencies. However, it is my hope that we can get to the stage where the benefits of putting your arts grant through the university outweighs the disadvantages. That’s what I’m currently (slowly) working towards. If you have any advice, suggestions or war stories, I’d appreciate them! I need all the help that I can get.

“It’s all a lottery!”

“You need to game the system or you haven’t got a hope.”

“Only those who’ve had them before will get one.”

Sea of Wisdom temple (Beijing) by Jonathan O’Donnell (on Flickr)

The urban myths circulating about grant rounds are as tenacious as those about waking up in ice-filled bathtubs and realising you’ve had your kidney harvested.

No doubt, spending so much time and investing intellectual resources in a major application makes the lack of success bite that much deeper.

Having been around the traps as a supplicant, awardee, assessor, and now advisor, I’d have to say that most funding assessment processes do end up giving money to the strongest teams and most compelling projects. This isn’t to say that the processes or choices are always perfect, or that rogue results (in good and bad ways) don’t pop up. There’s always that story of the ARC Discovery that was written over a weekend and got up.

This post is about how I assess funding applications and, in particular, the track-record components. Over my academic career, I’ve:

• Been part of judging panels for niche academic association committees that gave out travel and small grants,
• Been invited onto a university’s fellowship selection panel, and
• Assessed for a bunch of international funding bodies (in Australia, Canada, and Hong Kong).

I’m not claiming that my process is necessarily best practice, but I thought it might be useful for you to gain insight into one assessor’s valuations (and, it has to be said, biases).

Each funding scheme’s selection criteria may differ in detail but the two basic elements of track-record and project idea are always there.

The role of the assessor, for me, is in gauging the quality and feasibility of the overall proposition. The fact that the ARC now gives ‘feasibility’ an overt weighting in the Discovery scheme gives rise to interesting conversation (but that’s for another post!).

What do I look for when assessing the track-records of researchers on grant applicants?

It’s naff to say this but I do look for that mythical ‘excellence’, which means different things to different people. It’s a factor that also differs from discipline to discipline. To me, excellence means a fabulous publication record (good quality productivity); strong and real networks of collaborators and community/industry links (if relevant); and research that demonstrates this person or team is doing good stuff (whether it’s creating momentum for a field, showing initiative, whatever – basically, making things happen).

The competitiveness of many funding rounds means that excellent track-records become an expectation. As Mark Bisby, former VP Research for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, has said: “It’s not a test, it’s a contest.” (Thanks, Jo VanEvery, for the quote and its provenance!)

What else is there that will set this person or team apart? The X-factor elements are what make an application stand out.

Some of the things that make me take notice are:

• Excellent, existing relationships with relevant parties. For example, it’s one thing to say that you “have great networks in the social justice and community welfare sector”, and quite another to present evidence that you’ve already collaborated with the Sacred Heart Mission on other (smaller) grants or projects, regularly included them in your outreach activities and consultations, and already have them (and their personnel/resources, formally or informally) on board for this current proposal. Basically, have you had community/industry partners, grown your relationship, and kept them happy?
• Getting your research findings out there. These kinds of things can sometimes be included under ‘impact’ factors, which are increasingly becoming an expected element in funding applications. I’m not talking here only of going back to community/industry to share findings (though that is part of it), it’s how you’ve been innovative or diligent in ensuring that the funding you had before was extremely well spent because the research has longevity and resonance long after it took place. Where did your previous research go? More to the point, where did you take it? Did it become a bigger concern, scaled up and involving more collaborators, other industries or countries? Did a policy paper or inquiry develop because of the work you did on an issue? Who was it relevant to, and did it gain traction? If it was a conceptual endeavour, did anyone pick it up and use it? Yes, this could be as simple as a glorious citation count, but it’s more about shifting a field (or a part of a field). Has your previous work made a difference to the area? You don’t only publish like a fiend, but that work forges new intellectual paths.
• Very shiny recognition by others. This factor helps more in assessing an individual researcher’s ‘star’ quality, but it can also demonstrate the across-the-board international regard for the proposed team. As much as we might kvetch about the contested terrain of what constitutes prestige in our fields (and academia in general), the elements are there. Particularly for gauging international profile and regard, I look for whether the researcher has been an invited keynote or speaker and what kind of event they were fronting. If it’s the peak annual conference of a humongous association internationally, it probably counts for a bit more than a seminar in front of a home-town crowd (even if it’s not their home institution). I also look for visiting fellowship or scholar appointments. These can sometimes be more about networking and luck than recognition per se. What I mean is that if you happen to have made a connection or a buddy at Oxford University, they can often agitate to bring you in (e.g. put you forward as scholar to be invited, line up units within the institution who can chip in for your expenses and improve your level of institutional engagement via more seminars/ workshops). To me, seeing visiting fellowships or invited speaker roles indicates that you’re good enough to score these because of your profile and moving+shaking status AND people you know are willing to go in to bat for funding for you.

On a grant application, the research team isn’t the only thing assessed, but it’s usually a significant portion of the assessment weighting and, if the personnel don’t convince me of the quality outcomes they can produce from the work, it wouldn’t score well.

As a last (possibly long) point, there are expectations that I have of the lead investigator on grants, and these expectations hold for sole investigators, too:

• What are the lead’s project planning skills like?
• Where’s their experience in leading research, or teams, or projects in general?
• Do they profile well as good people managers (e.g. institutional and people networks they maintain, collaborators with whom they stay close, mentoring relationships and initiatives)?

When I’m looking at these aspects, I’m not expecting a list of successfully completed ARCs or other major grants (though, it must be said, this never hurts). These kinds of project leadership skills can be demonstrated through other channels: editing journals and books, convening conferences or symposiums, chairing research-oriented committees, or taking on executive roles and responsibilities in professional associations. To me, investing your time in growing your field and giving back to the profession through your ability to make things happen? That’s leadership.

Short version: It’s demonstrating that you’re willing to take responsibility, that you have initiative, and that your previous ideas and activities had successful outcomes.

For example, in the spirit of demonstrating (potential) leadership, don’t just talk about guest-editing a special issue journal. Talk about how that special issue journal is the first time Australian academics have collaborated with that particular peak US publication, and present evidence about how the project pushed your field ahead, put it on the world stage, or changed the way work is now done in the area.

All grant applications are a leap of faith, and major ones especially so. You have limited control over who your assessors will be and how your application will be ushered through the expert committees.

As someone who wants to be in the game, though, keep your track-record as competitive as possible (and this doesn’t mean only ‘excellent’) and be assured that just about everyone – academic superstars included – gets rejected for funding.

Don’t read it as failure (instead, work out what to do next).

Think of it as part of the broader grant-application cycle that spurs you to develop it further, so you can land the funding next time!

I love cloud land by Jonathan O'Donnell on Flickr

One of the most difficult requests I get is for conference travel funding.

Many researchers think rustling up these funds will be easy because it is only “a few thousand dollars”. Unfortunately, a small amount of money can be almost as hard to secure as a large amount of money. In addition, people are usually hunting this money fewer than six months before the conference actually happens, and most funding works on a 12-month cycle.

Don’t get me wrong – I think that conferences are fantastic! They give you an opportunity to look up from your day-to-day work and get a glimpse of what everybody else is doing. They help to recharge your intellectual batteries and find your feet within your research network. Tseen and I like conferences so much that we have written about them several times before: why you should run a conference; how to be a great participant; and how to cope with question time.

But there’s a catch. Most of the time, the interesting conferences always seem to happen ‘over there’ – somewhere else in the world, somewhere that it costs money to get to.

This post provides five ideas for funding your conference travel. Not all of them will suit your circumstances and most of them involve a long lead time, so they may not be the solution that you are looking for.

With a bit of luck, though, them might give you some ideas for how to get where you want to go.

Before anything else, it is important to understand that most research funding is for projects and project work rarely gets done at a conference. Networking – absolutely. Learning – certainly. Dissemination of results – if you are presenting. But project work – rarely, if ever.

So you need to package the conference attendance as part of a larger project. I’m not talking about telling lies or fraud. I’m just saying that you should flip your thinking around. Aim to work with a colleague overseas, and integrate your conference travel as part of that larger research program. After all, if you are travelling half way around the world, you should make the most of the opportunity while you are there. Stay a bit longer, get some work done, and attend the conference as a bonus.

1. Take a sabbatical

First of all, will your university provide support? Many universities have sabbaticals or study leave (at my university it is called “Research Leave”) built into their staff development budget. Know how this works and how you can access it. If it is competitive, fight for it. It is your right and you should take advantage of it where you can.

It will generally provide you with three to six months leave, a little bit of travel funding and perhaps some money towards project costs. It almost certainly won’t cover the full costs of an extended overseas trip. However, it will allow you to approach your overseas colleague and see if they can find some matching funding from their organisation.

2. Do some work, give a lecture or two

Do you work with someone in the same city / region / continent as the conference? If so, extend your stay and doing some research with them while you are there. Then you are applying for project funding to work with your colleague. Attending the conference is a side trip. This is a much more attractive proposition to a granting body than “I want to go to a conference”. However, because grant programs generally work on six- or twelve-month cycles, this requires considerable forward-planning.

A concentrated period of work, perhaps combined with a workshop and one or two guest lectures, can be very attractive to a colleague. They may be able to access partial funding from their university or an industry partner to help cover the costs of your visit. For example, they may be able to reimburse the cost of your airfare or cover your accommodation while you are there.

3. The grand tour

There are specific sorts of funds, such as the Churchill Fellowship for Australians, that are designed to give you exposure to other research activities around the world. Generally, these funds provide potential leaders in their field a chance to gain overseas experience and build up an international network.

These funds will sometimes provide funding to visit key people in a specific country or region, or cover the cost of a study tour to multiple sites. A conference can be included in your itinerary, or added on to the end, before you return home.

4. Put it in the budget

When you are applying for funding, think about dissemination as part of the project costs. Funding bodies, whether they be government, industry or philanthropic, want research with impact. That means that you can’t just do the work, you need to get out there and tell the world what you have done.

Conferences should be an important part of that dissemination strategy. Think about and plan for it as an integral part of your research project, rather than looking around at the end of it all. Major conferences often map out their dates and location two or three years in advance so that people know when and where they will be. You can put that detail into your budget justification, or simply indicate the names of conferences where you will submit papers.

5. Fund it yourself

Last, but certainly not least, you can always pay your own way and claim it back on your tax. I say “certainly not least” because so much research work actually happens this way. Lots of people are either self-funding the whole of their conference travel, or are using this method to account for a shortfall in other funding. There is a dearth of funding in this area, so not everybody can be funded to travel.

I’m not an accountant (and even if I was, I wouldn’t be giving you individual advice), so talk to your accountant early about what is deductible and what isn’t. It would be a shame to come back from a wonderful conference and find that you hadn’t kept some vital bit of paper that the Tax Office requires.

This method provides you with the most flexibility before you travel. Just keep in mind that taxation, like most grant rounds, works on an annual basis, so there will be a long lag until you get your refund.

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For most people I talk to, all of these suggests are somewhat unpalatable, for various reasons. So I need your help. What other methods are there to get to that conference that you really need to go to? What have I missed?

BRENDA MASSEY

Brenda Massey (Unitec, NZ)

Name & Twitter handle: Brenda Massey / @FundingChickie

Position title: Grants and Funding Advisor

University: Unitec Institute of Technology

Location: Auckland, New Zealand

Highest qualification?  Bachelor of Arts

How did you get into this role, and how long have you been a research administrator/developer? I’ve been at Unitec since March 2010. I don’t have a background in research or academia, but I do have experience running funding schemes and part of my role at Unitec is to manage our internal research funding round and our postgraduate scholarships scheme.

We’re a small research office so even though my job title is ‘grants and funding’, I pitch in to help our ethics, research and postgraduate committees, as required. I’ve organised a number of events such as book launches, professorial addresses and our 2011 Research Symposium and inaugural 3 Minute Thesis Competition.

The Dean of Research was looking for someone willing to get stuck in and create their own niche within the office and the institution and that’s just the type of challenge I was after.

What other kinds of jobs have you had?  Prior to joining Unitec I ran a local government community grants scheme, so I have a background in community development and support. I developed funding guidelines and processes, assessed funding applications and made recommendations for grants to senior management and local government politicians. That experience has definitely helped me put myself in funders’ shoes now that I’m assisting Unitec staff to apply for external grants. I’ve also had roles in pensions administration, accident compensation claims entitlement and legal aid case management.

What’s the most satisfying part of your job?  It’s such a buzz when a grant application that I’ve assisted to prepare has been successful, irrespective of whether it’s a small amount of money or a large amount of money that’s been granted. It’s validation, not just that the proposal has been pitched correctly, but that an organisation external to your institution agrees that the project is important enough to resource.

What’s the thing you’d most like to change about your job?  I love working with staff and students to develop their grant applications, but once they have their funding my contact with them can become fairly sporadic, and might be via email or phone rather than face-to-face. I would relish the chance to be involved in some of the projects that are funded as a team member, rather than as a facilitator.

Favourite hobby-horse?  I’m still passionate about community development. I was recently pleased to be part of a team that put together a successful proposal for funding that will see Unitec staff provide academic guidance on a research project conducted by a local community group. Unitec’s involvement will increase the group’s capacity, and the capacity of other groups that they will go on to work with.

Dream job?  I would love to be on a panel that makes decisions on funding applications!

Best advice to researchers?  I’m a big advocate of the importance of ‘critical friends’ in the grant writing process. 

Unitec’s Professor Linton Winder recently advised his staff as follows:

“Try and persuade colleagues outside your area, preferably with panel expertise, to read and seriously critique your grant [application]. Many will not want to offend and will tell you the application is “wonderful”. This may make you feel better in the short-term, but if they pick out a flaw that the panel would have, that will make you feel better in the long-term”.

Alex Burns 

He is currently Research Facilitator in the Research Facilitation Unit of Victoria University‘s Faculty of Business and Law, and is writing n a PhD at Monash University about strategic culture in counter-terrorism studies. 

Formerly, Alex was a senior quality and planning officer for Swinburne University, and a senior researcher with Smart Internet Technology CRC for three years.

Alex also blogs at www.alexburns.net.

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In a recent Home Cooked Theory post ‘In Praise of Strategic Complacency’, Melissa Gregg offers incisive, critical advice to Early Career Researchers (ECRs) about navigating universities in their first five years after PhD completion.

For the past three years, I’ve encountered similar issues for ECRs while in the Research Facilitation Unit at Victoria University’s Faculty of Business and Law.

This post engages with Gregg’s ideas, and offers personal advice on two key points:

1. Handling productivity.

Gregg critiques a ‘post-Fordist’ ‘neoliberal workplace’ that values “flexibility and productivity” over the “accumulation and duration of service.” This position leads Gregg to advise a counter-strategy of “strategic complacency.” I’m sympathetic to many of the issues and problems that Gregg raises about organisational ‘routinisation’, and to Gramscian and Foucauldian “counter-hegemonic” critique. But I differ in the solutions.

The workplace transformation that Gregg describes has occurred outside universities for over two decades. It is central to the management philosophies guiding the staffing cuts recently announced at several universities, which can be traced to GE’s WorkOut process under Jack Welch (firing the bottom 10% in annual performance reviews), time-based competition, international research metrics, and the human capital strategies of asset management and private equity firms.

These changes are not going away anytime soon.

"A young man is at the top of a small ladder attached to his motorcycle." (Photographer: George Jackman; photograph belongs to the State Library of Queensland).

The reality also is that Associate Deans of Research, Research Office administrators, and professors already make private judgments about the research programs, publishing, and grant track-records of ECRs and other academics – usually through incentives, reward and recognition programs, and targeted interventions. The Minimum Standards for Academic Levels in human resources contracts are only a guide to cultivating ‘tacit’ organisational knowledge. Senior university administrators value intrinsically motivated researchers who know why they are distinctive, can articulate an evolving research program, and are making visible progress towards building a competitive track-record.

This changes the academic-administrator relationship from enmity to ‘win-win-win’ outcomes. It builds space, sets limits on what will not be pursued, and shapes the academic’s ranked order preferences and priorities for the research program. A ‘success to the successful’ dynamic usually emerges alongside a mentor/patronage system (hence, “unevenly distributed . . . privileges”).

Gregg describes problems – “a chronic low level of internalized suspicion of incompetence” and feeling “overworked” – that partly result from when this initial work remains undone. “Strategic complacency” may have its place in establishing important self-limits and priorities, but I also fear it results in a form of self-sabotage that shows up years later in university research metrics and contract non-renewals.

A better solution may be to read the Chinese 36 Strategies, and learn behavioural game theory and organisational dynamics instead (see, for example, Barry Oshry’s Seeing Systems; Chris Argyris and Donald Schon’s Organisational Learning II; Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organisation, and Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff’s The Art of Strategy are good starting points).

ECRs without this institutional capital will risk getting caught up in administrative systems and the perverse incentives of workload models. In contrast, the successful professors with whom I have worked at two dual-sector universities understand these ‘unwritten rules’ and can frame their research outputs for maximum impact. They can tame, rather than game, the administrative systems.

2. Discovering your inner research administrator.

A senior research administrator recently described universities to me as a caste-like system embedded in the enterprise bargaining agreements and human resources contracts. University administrators inhabit and must work in the ‘neoliberal’ and ‘post-Fordist’ university that Gregg invokes (and that still has the qualities of Fordist workplaces like Hollywood’s classic studio system). University administrators are usually degree-qualified (and increasingly in possession of Masters and doctorates) and can range from the ‘sabermetrics’ statisticians of Moneyball (calculating research metrics) to George Clooney’s ‘fixer’ in Michael Clayton (seeing the impacts of university research policies from multiple perspectives and timeframes, and doing last-minute rescue edits of research grants).

ECRs should cultivate university administrators as potential allies who can help you to understand the institution’s unwritten rules. In addition, university administrators see and often review hundreds of curriculum vitae, grant applications and rejoinders, and publishing track-records. They’ve already developed the rapid cognition and intuitive judgment about what is needed to increase the quality of the document and its probability of success. They don’t need to be experts in your specific field or discipline.

A good university administrator will combine their own studies, professional practice, and deep institutional knowledge with an awareness of the creative process and effective practices of successful academics.

For instance, Gregg states that “you will rarely be told that you are publishing too much.” However, I have had very candid conversations about over-publishing on several occasions with ECRs, grant team applications, senior professors, and during confidential exit interviews around their research programs. Over-publishing can mean prioritising volume over quality and opportunistic articles over making a substantive contribution to a coherent, long-term research program. My friend and colleague Roy Christopher suggests that tenure pressures and promotions committees can negatively influence this decision. He makes “an important distinction between writing to be read and writing to have written.” Academia can wrongly emphasise the latter, Christopher believes, to the academic’s detriment.

New ECRs face a complex and sometimes contradictory university work environment.

On the one hand, ECR status is embryonic as new academics develop their research career, skills, and track record. On the other, universities are under budget, competitive and resource allocative pressures to increase quality research outputs. This creates selection pressures on ECRs and potentially a ‘winner-takes-all’ outcome over the life of an academic career.

It is crucial to successfully navigate the institution’s “unwritten rules” whilst having ECR status. University research administrators have the “institutional nous” that Gregg suggests ECRs cultivate and can learn from.

Star Trek Business Cards by The Rocketeer on Flickr

I know a bloke who works for a bank. Let’s call him David.

David is senior enough that he authorises his own business cards. As he was filling out the form, he realised two things:

1. The people who care about his business card are never going to see the form, and
2. The people who see the form don’t care what goes on his business card.

So, in the box labelled ‘Position’, he carefully wrote “Dilettante”.

Sure enough, when his business cards arrived, David found that the bank was paying him to be a dilettante.

I’ve just run out of business cards, so I’m thinking about what I should put on the form. It seems to me that my business card and my e-addressbook (where I keep everybody else’s business cards) are a bit behind the times.

When I put someone’s business card into my e-addressbook, this is what I usually add:

• Name
• Position and company
• Mobile number
• E-mail address
• How and when I met them, in the comments

All well and good – there are places for all those things. However, I often want to add the following:

• Twitter handle (jod999)
• Skype name (jod987)
• LinkedIn profile (jod999)
• Instant messenger (IM) identifier, such as Gtalk, Yahoo! chat or good old ICQ
• Academia.edu profile (maybe – has anyone worked out what Academia.edu is useful for yet?)

For some people, I might want to add a Facebook page or a Google Plus profile.

Unfortunately, there are no smart little boxes for those things in my e-addressbook. I could create custom fields, but they won’t connect to the right programs directly from my e-addressbook. Also, I know from experience that they won’t export to any other e-addressbook software either.

Heaven forbid that I would want my e-addressbook to connect to my University’s Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server, so that it could automagically update people’s details or anything clever like that…

Rather, my e-addressbook is stuck in the 1980s. It thinks that I want to send people facsimiles and page them. When did I last do that?

Here is a quick test: Compare your business card to your e-mail signature. Is it different? In my case, almost none of the information in my sig is on my business card.

On my business card, I want to be able to display the things that I would like to see about other people. I want to be able to list my Twitter handle, my IM and Skype names, and my LinkedIn profile.

I network on Twitter, and it is a brilliant way to keep a conversation going after you have met someone. For academics who use Twitter, the following pattern seems fairly common: meet; exchange business cards; chat for a while; ask for Twitter handle; write Twitter handle on back of business card. How broken is that?

Most days, I have my instant messenger client running in the background so that colleagues who use IM can quickly ping me when they have a question. It is easier than a phone call for quick, simple questions and you have a written record of the answer, just like e-mail.

I use Skype to talk to colleagues overseas. While I don’t have it running in the background all the time, I want them to be able to find my Skype name quickly, without having to e-mail or IM me.

LinkedIn is great for keeping long-term connections going, particularly with people who have left your organisation. If they update their LinkedIn profile, you can find out where they are now. This is invaluable when I am chatting to someone about their research and say, “You should contact…”. LinkedIn is the best way of quickly finding out where they have gone, and what they are doing now.

I don’t want to list my Facebook page because I don’t use it professionally. But I know people who do, and who would love to put it there.

Given that I want to record these details about other people, it seems to make sense that I put them on my business card and give them out the people I am meeting.

However, my university seems blind to services outside of the ‘walls’. So, I’m not hopeful that I’ll get external services like Skype, LinkedIn and Twitter on my card. But who knows? Maybe the people who care about the card won’t see the form.

Found zen (Photo by Tseen Khoo)

For the first years of my academic life, I only ever published as a sole author. I worked on projects as a sole chief investigator and, for the most part, started projects by myself. Coming from the humanities of the time, this was not that unusual.

In my later years as an academic, almost everything I wrote or worked on was not as a lone researcher. I co-wrote, co-edited, was part of project teams and event committees.

In academia these days, the collaboration factor is huge. Perhaps even de rigueur. Track-records with no history of working with others are viewed with a suspicion. Heads of Schools and grant assessors may well wonder: is it because you don’t work with others, or because you can’t work with others?

While some ‘collaborations’ can be nightmares that you try to get over and done with as quickly as possible (therefore, aren’t collaborations in the holistic sense…), research collaborations can be the absolute best things in your academic life.

And, because you’re not an Emperor penguin, you don’t have to ‘mate for life’ with one collaborator. You can work with various groups and individuals off and on throughout your career, finding more along the way. Train that creative sensibility to find ways to work with people you respect and like; it will make your working life a happy place.

As with many things in life, the best way for these things to happen is organically. A forced research relationship makes the baby sloths cry.

With this in mind, then, what’s the best way to find a collaborator? First, remind yourself about what academic networking can mean.

Then, check out my top strategies for finding good collaborators:

1. The key is to be open to opportunity.

I can guarantee that you won’t find collaborators if you don’t get out and about in your field. This doesn’t mean having to hold bake-sales so you can attend the peak international conferences every year, not in this day and age. Being out and about encompasses the traditional academic circuits of presenting at conferences and seminars, contributing to professional associations and reading groups, and being on institutional committees. It could also mean cultivating a focused blog, Twitter stream, and Facebook page: a triumvirate of online academic identity that has worked extremely well for me (academically for my research network, as well as for this professional blog). It doesn’t have to be this particular combination of social media, of course. When done well, this virtual research identity and online conversation can surmount the tyranny of distance (I’m based in Australia, remember) and lead to tangible working connections and fresh opportunities.

That said, I’m also a big champion of getting out of your office and doing the fun work of cultivating research-potential among your connections. That would be going out for coffee (or similar) regularly. There may be no immediate collaborative project that you’d be working on, but chatting with smart and interesting people is an automatic win, no? One of the most successful coffee chats I’ve ever had resulted in a book contract with a good university publisher (for my re-jigged PhD), the possibility of being co-editor for a book series, and the cementing of a collaborative relationship that was very fruitful and good fun.

2. Cold-calling is… cold.

Never approach someone out of the blue and ask to work with them, or present a project that you’ve already nutted out and ask if they want in. Some people advocate this approach; I don’t. Don’t just browse university directories and approach other researchers purely to snag their CVs (not as rare an instance as you’d like to think).

First, what’s wrong with you? Do you even know what this person is like to work with? There’s knowing and admiring their work, and there’s working with them on projects and publications and countless edits for journal articles.

My rule for collaborators is that they have to be people I can face the first thing in the morning at ridiculously early breakfast meetings snatched in the midst of a conference you all planned to attend so you could have a meeting about the other stuff you’re working on together.

If I can throw in a dating analogy: don’t commit to dinner, always start with drinks. Approach a potential collaborator with a low-level social investment. After all, if you decide it’s not going to work, or the dynamic just isn’t there, it’s not too hard to walk away. If you’ve jumped straight in and persuaded someone to work with you, then discover they are micro-managers who render you homicidal… well, it could get awkward.

Second, this potential collaborator may not know who the blazes you are, or only know you obliquely. Why would they want to share intellectual space with you without any convincing preamble or reassurances that you’re not a nut-job?

3. The pyramids all started with one block.

The best way I’ve found to ease into a collaboration is to work together on a smaller concern first. Hold off on the three-year, seven-figure, multi-team project. Begin with a conference paper, maybe an event, perhaps a sub-committee project. The only way you’ll get to know whether you can really work with someone is to road-test them. They could be someone you’ve really enjoyed working with, but the “I’ll call yous” and “Let’s do it again sometimes” may not lead to anything substantial. It’s better to have a small-scale fizzle that you have grit your teeth through than something you may have to carry on your CV for a few long years (e.g. funding for a project that doesn’t seem to have produced outcomes – assessors will wonder whether you are an effective researcher if your funded projects don’t appear productive). Through an initial smaller project, you can iron out your work habits with the other person (or people). Do you trust them to follow through when they say they will? Have they got your back if you’re caught up in a crisis? Do you feel they bring equal value to the relationship?

Successfully completing projects with others usually results in a natural high. There have been a number of events I’ve convened where the committee bonded through the trials of late keynote withdrawals, diva antics and bad catering. Some of the best times have been working with colleagues on papers, with the dynamic to-ing and fro-ing of ideas and drafts.

Academic work does entail phases of solo endeavour, but it can be fruitfully balanced with collaborative relationships that feed your intellectual and social soul.

What are your strategies for finding good collaborators?

Today’s RO  Peep is Phil Ward, who writes the Research Fundermentals blog. If you’re in the UK or Europe and interested in following the intricacies of the UK/EU funding circuit, make sure you follow Phil’s blog.

PHIL WARD

Name & Twitter handle: Phil Ward (@frootle)

Position title: Research Funding Manager

University: University of Kent

Location: Canterbury, UK

Highest qualification? MA

How did you get into this role, and how long have you been a research administrator/developer?
Like many in the sector, I fell into research administration. I was made redundant from Waterstones Online, a bookseller in the UK, and a job came up at the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC). I applied not knowing anything about the sector, and loved it. I’ve been on a steep learning curve ever since.

Now I’ve moved from grant giving to grant getting: it’s tougher, but more rewarding.

What other kinds of jobs have you had?
After university I had a whole range, from charity worker in Sweden, farm worker in Norway, care worker for children with learning difficulties, teaching assistant, book seller and literature sub editor.

What’s the most satisfying part of your job? Getting the grants! If only it happened more often…

What’s the thing you’d most like to change about your job? Funder success rates!

Favourite hobby-horse?
This is pretty much the same as ‘best advice to researchers’: think about the person who’s going to read your proposal, and make it easy for them to understand the basics of your project: What’s your research question? Why’s it important? How are you going to answer it? How are you going to disseminate the findings?

Dream job? Cartoonist

Best advice to researchers? Don’t give up!

How did this happen to me?

Demotivating! by Jonathan O'Donnell on Flickr

You might be reading this because part of your role is described as research assistant (as opposed to ‘marking assistant’, ‘lecturing assistant’, ‘attend meetings I don’t want to go to assistant’).

Or perhaps you were chatting to another academic who is working on a topic you are interested in and you said, innocently enough, “That sounds great – if you need any help…”

Maybe they sought you out and asked for your help because your PhD is related to the topic.

Looking back, you may not be able to identify the exact moment when you agreed to write the grant application, or the sequence of events that led up to it. However, the moment that you first stare at a blank form and a confusing set of instructions – that moment will be absolutely clear.

Don’t panic! Fear is the mind-killer. There is a way through this, and it isn’t as scary as it seems. After all, you probably know professors who can’t find their coffee cup but can still get grants. If they can do it, how hard can it be?

How the hell does this grant-thing work, anyway?

First up, it is important to be clear about your role. You should be writing a draft that your collaborators will review and revise. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It doesn’t need to be polished. As a first draft, it just needs to be technically complete. You are trying to sketch out the idea and get feedback on it as soon as possible. So don’t sweat the small stuff. Just hammer through the bulk of the application as quickly as possible, knowing that there will be a lot of polishing that happens later on.

Secondly, understand that the funding agency is not actually a demon or monster. They are a group of people, often other researchers, who have set out a standard way for people to provide information about their research. Even though it may not be clear to you at the moment, there is a method to their madness. A published method that you can download and read, no less.

For any given grant application, there will be two or three documents that you must have:

• The application form (there’s always a form – even if it is an on-line form).
• The rules or guidelines. Sometimes these are one document, sometimes two or three.

If you don’t have these already, download them from the funding organisation’s Web site and read them. All the way through. Boring, but necessary. If you only take one thing from this article, it should be this: read the guidelines.

Don’t rely on last year’s version that someone has passed on to you. Don’t work from vague descriptions that people talk about over coffee. Work from the rules and guidelines that the funding agency has written. That is why they write them.

Another fantastic resource would be a successful past example. Ask your collaborator if they have an example. If not, ask your local research office.

Your university research office can be enormously useful to you (and we aren’t just saying that because we work there). Here are some of the services that they can provide:

• Provide updated information from the funding agency (if they update their FAQ, for example).
• Provide examples of past successful grants.
• Help with calculating salaries and other items in the budget.
• Explain arcane aspects of the guidelines.
• Review draft versions of the document.

So drop them a line as soon as possible. Let them know that you are drafting this application, and who you are working with. Explain that this is the first time that you have done this, and would appreciate any assistance that they can provide.

There are other people who can help, too. Four online resource that provide good advice are:

• The Research Whisperer (that’s us) in Australia.
• Social Science Research Funding (Cash for Questions) by Adam Golberg in England.
• Jo VanEvery in Canada.
• The Professor Is In by Karen L. Kelsky in the United States of America.

Two of the hardest parts of writing your first application are the budget and the timeline. You should tackle these after you have drafted the project description. From the project description, you should have enough detail to work out what the major stages of the project will be, and how much time your team will spend on each stage. If you don’t know that, then your methodology doesn’t have enough detail in it and you should seek advice from your collaborators. If it does have that level of detail, then sketch it out in a simple Gantt chart.

The guidelines will provide clear advice for what can and cannot be included in the budget. The tricky bit is finding rough estimates of the cost of everything. In some organisations, the research office can provide estimates if you list all the details of the budget. Otherwise, work your way through travel and airline Web sites for airfares and accommodation, supplier’s Web sites for equipment and maintenance, and your organisation’s pay scales for salaries. You are not looking for the cheapest quote – you are looking for a reasonable quote that demonstrates that you have carefully planned this project.

After you have roughed out the project description, the budget and the timeline, the rest of the application will mostly be a paper-chase for details: updated curriculum vitaes for each research leader, statistical information and research codes, reporting information on past grants and other time-consuming, annoying but necessary details. Give yourself enough time to do all this work. It takes time. If the application needs to be submitted via an on-line form, give yourself enough time to work though that, too. Because if you don’t, you may not get your application in on time. That would be a shame after all your hard work.

Once you have a complete draft, hand it out to your collaborators, your research office and anyone else who will give you feedback without stealing your ideas. Make it clear that this is just a first draft, and that you need their feedback to improve it. It might be a good idea to organise a meeting with your collaborators so that they focus on it and give it the attention that it deserves.

As they provide feedback, incorporate what you can into the draft, given the time that you have available. Do the quick things first, so that you always have a complete application that you can fall back on. Computers crash, kids get sick, the vice-chancellor calls and requires your undivided attention – all of these things can get in the way. If you have a complete draft, you can hand it off to someone else in the team to revise, or consider submitting it as it is.

If you receive contradictory feedback, keep in mind who it has provided it. Research office staff will be best at compliance issues and weakest on methodology. Your colleagues will provide the strongest advice on methodology and direction, but may not be up to date with the guidelines.

Why would I possibly want to do that?

Drafting a grant application is a lot of work. However, if you want to be an academic, you should jump at the chance if you get it. All academics are expected to do research and writing applications is a core skill for a successful researcher, team leader, centre director… Dream big!

Also, if you are drafting the application, you can put yourself into it. You can put your ideas forward, you can include a salary for yourself in the budget and you can put yourself on the research stage, for everybody to see.

As an early career researcher, you should consider including draft grant applications in the publications list on your curriculum vitae. Who knows – one way or another, this application might get you your next job.