14 - Avoid these 'sexy' words in grant applications (new, interdisciplinary...)

Replace 'New' with your project's added value and 'Interdisciplinary' with the actual approaches that you will combine

 

Here’s the title of funding application, full of sexy terms. Would you be excited by it if you were a reviewer?

     Creating a uniquely innovative, ambitious tool using an interdisciplinary approach.

You probably wouldn’t be excited by this title, right? It’s vague. It sounds grandiose. And you’ve probably already seen dozens of titles like this one – in short, it’s boring.

This, in a nutshell, is the problem with using buzz words. At first, they seem sexy, but in fact they’re dull and uninformative. Worse, they do not make you stand out, since most researchers use them. (And helping you stand out from other research proposals is one of the goals of this website; I'm preparing a book on the topic).

But what words should you use instead? Here are two tips valid for both articles and grant applications.

1. Drop ‘new’, ‘innovative’, ‘unique’… and focus instead on your project’s added value.
2.  Drop ‘interdisciplinary’ and instead explain what approaches you will combine.

 These tips could be summarized in even fewer words: show, don’t tell. For example, convey how your approach is innovative, instead of stating it. Now let’s see tip #1.

    

1) Drop 'new', 'innovative', 'unique'... and focus instead on your project's added value

In a previous post, we’ve seen that to clarify any document, you could use Maeda's simplification algorithm:

1. Remove the obvious
2. Remove the meaningless
3. Replace them with the meaningful

This procedure applies very well to the terms ‘new’, ‘innovative’, ‘unique’, which are often either obvious or meaningless. Let’s see why and with which meaningful terms we can replace them.

 

Sometimes 'new' is obvious and can be omitted

Sometimes using ‘new’ is obvious, as in:

     We will create a new platform

‘Create’ already implies novelty. So you should remove ‘new’ and simply say ‘We will create a platform’.

 

'New' is meaningless by itself

Contrary to what you might think, the fact that your project is new or unique is not that meaningful for reviewers. Sure, funders expect some degree of novelty in your approach (and even then, most expect incremental novelty, not revolutionary stuff).

But put yourself in the shoes of a reviewer for a moment. The fact that you use a novel approach is not at all scientifically interesting in itself – you could very well be using a new tool on a poor model system, or with a misguided aim...

 

 

So, what’s meaningful instead for reviewers? Your project’s added value – which we will cover in the next section.

 

What's meaningful is your project's added value, not its novelty

The notion of added value is already covered in depth in my short, free guide Being clear without dumbing down, which I encourage you to read. Therefore, I’ll only cover it briefly here.

[NB: if you already subscribed to my newsletter, downloading the guide will change nothing to your subscription].

As you will see in the following examples, researchers often make the mistake of not stating explicitly how their research project is an advancement, either because it’s obvious for them or because they’re too focused on claiming uniqueness. As a result, non-expert members of funding panels (who make the final decision) typically do not understand the added value brought by the applicants’ project and do not fund it.

To get funded, you should instead explicitly clarify the added value of two elements of your project:

1. its expected outcome; and
2. its methodology.

 

Clarify how your project’s outcome will bring added value

Here’s an example in which the added value of your expected outcome is obscured by the use of ‘new’:

     Creating materials with new macroscopic properties

Replacing ‘new’ by the actual added value of the materials makes it much clearer:

     Creating materials with on-demand macroscopic properties

 

Clarify the added value of your project’s methodological approach

Here’s what many grant applications state:

     We will rely on an original approach

Clarifying the added value of the approach instead of stating that it’s ‘original’ enables reviewers to instantly understand the geist of your project:

     We will rely on an real-world data instead of simulated ones

      

“Won’t reviewers miss the novelty of my project if I don’t write ‘new’ in the title and abstract?”

On the contrary, for two reasons:

• Every researcher and their mother write ‘innovative’ in the title or abstract, so reviewers simply skip it (after a big yawn). Reading precise, meaningful elements instead for once will spark their interest.
• Give reviewers some credit – you should treat them as ‘ignorant but infinitely intelligent’. If you explicitly present the added value of your project, you don’t need to state that it’s innovative. Likewise, if you explicitly mention the disciplines A and B that you will combine, you don’t need to state your project is interdisciplinary. And that's the topic of tip #2 below.

 

2) Drop the 'Interdisciplinary' and instead state which approaches you will combine

Boasting that your project is interdisciplinary is like boasting that it is new: this is meaningless in itself. This can even be counterproductive, for example for high-risk funding schemes such as ERC fellowships. In these schemes, some degree of interdisciplinarity is generally expected, so advertising the fact that your project is interdisciplinary makes it look like you’re not a member of the club (i.e. that being interdisciplinary is not usual for you).

Instead, mention the approaches that you will combine: I will apply physical statistics approaches to behavioral sciences. Reviewers not only immediately see that your project is interdisciplinary, they much better understand your approach than if you just stated this. Again, ‘show, don’t tell’.

If you remember one thing from this post, maybe it should be that you should treat reviewers as ‘ignorant but infinitely intelligent’ (yep, I know I wrote this above already). Don’t bash them on the head with novelty, uniqueness, interdisciplinarity… or ‘impact’ (we’ll see this in a following post). Simply state what you will do and how. 

 

For any question, don't hesitate to write at david _at_moretime4research.com.Have a nice day and fruitful research.David

 

PS: If this post is useful, consider linking it to your website, and letting me know. Thanks.