19 - Presenting ‘impact’ the right way for fundamental proposals

Be realistic; highlight the many forms of scientific impact; outline impact under an explicit heading.

 

Reading time: 5 mins

 

Many researchers wrongly believe that real-world impact is necessary to obtain funding even in fundamental fields, and overplay the impact of their project. Unfortunately, this approach often dooms their proposal instead. Let's see how to present impact more effectively.

 

1) Don’t exaggerate the impact of your project – it's counterproductive

Funders know that most proposals are unlikely to have a significant real-world impact, be it societal, economic, or biomedical. They don’t expect you to cure cancer in 3 years with 300,000$.

In fact, despite all their claims of wanting novel research, most funders only reward incremental innovation, which is less risky. Thus, overstating the impact of your project is a fast track to rejection.

Consider for example a researcher I knew who had submitted a fundamental project on micro-organisms that were promising candidates for producing petroleum. He might have simply stated “My project will enhance our understanding of the metabolism of these promising organisms”. Instead, he went overboard by implying his project could actually improve petroleum production, which was factually untrue. It only took one reviewer to reject his application with the comment:

 

“The applicant claims that this fundamental project can improve petroleum production. This is not true.”

 

--> If you overplay the impact of your project, one reviewer will probably also shoot your application without considering its scientific merit...

 

As a side note: when you review proposals for fundamental schemes, please focus on the science – don’t act like a pit-bull like this reviewer did...

 

Don't worry, you can inject a bit of ‘sexy’ in your project, in general in objective #3, which helps secure funding if done well. But don’t overplay impact. In fact, as we’ll see next, it’s perfectly OK to present ‘only’ a scientific impact.

 

2) Understand that your project will deliver several types of scientific impact

Many funding schemes specify that you may present different types of impact: scientific, biomedical, societal, economic, etc. Even if that’s not required by your funder, I recommend you adopt this terminology and break down the different types of impact expected for your project.

If your project is purely fundamental, you should thus state explicitly that it will have a scientific impact. You can break this impact down as follows (the list is not exhaustive):

• Advancement of knowledge
• Development of model systems or testbeds;
• Development of techniques or methodologies;
• Development of candidate molecules, materials…;
• Capacity building (i.e. developing researchers and research infrastructure).

 

The first category, 'Advancement of knowledge’, is much broader than you might think. It encompasses collaborating with (or communicating your results to) researchers, clinicians, patients, consumers and community, health services, industry and not-for-profit organizations; as well as sharing data and materials. 

As you can see, there’s a lot of potential ‘purely scientific’ impact beyond merely publishing papers – well enough to please any reviewer. Indeed, almost every research project contributes several items to the category ‘Advancement of knowledge’ (e.g. collaborating with some researchers and sharing data, materials or code with others). 

Most research projects also involve the creation or refinement of some apparatus, testbed or model system, and of new approaches or methodologies.

As for ‘capacity building’, you are contributing if you train researchers, organize seminars, (even small ones) or communicate with software developers to suggest additions. For example, I recently contacted many developers requesting the inclusion of a specific viral database in their software, and the vast majority obliged. That’s ‘advocacy’, which is part of capacity building and does contribute to advancing research.

 

 

OK, once you have identified the various types of impact expected from your project, it is time to present them in your proposal.

 

3) Include an ‘Impact’ paragraph with a self-explanatory heading

I recommend to include a paragraph devoted to impact even if this is not explicitly requested by the application template. That’s because ‘Impact’ or an equivalent term is often present in reviewers’ scoring sheets. If reviewers cannot quickly locate the corresponding paragraph in your application, they cannot give it a good score...

To do it right, the ‘impact’ paragraph of your application should be endowed with a heading. This heading should:

- contain the actual term ‘impact’, so that reviewers can easily find it;

- explicitly outline your project’s impact, allowing reviewers to incorporate this description in their report and score you favorably. Here’s an example:

 

[Heading] A double impact, sociological and epistemological

Our project has a double impact: 

1. on the sociology of conflict [Short description]
2. on the epistemology of conflict studies [Short description]

 

Reviewers will then copy and paste your heading in their report! For example:

Impact score: 5/5

“This project has a double impact, sociological (on the sociology of conflict) and epistemological (on the epistemology of conflict studies).”

Bingo! You got the maximum score for impact :-)

 

Tip: I elaborate much more on designing applications that make it easy for reviewers to fund you in my book The speed-readable grant application.

 

And a final tip:

 

Keep it concise

Please be concise when writing about impact – don’t bash reviewers on the head with it. I once reviewed a grant application describing a method for better predicting interactions between proteins. I knew that the method would not have any direct biomedical application; if successful, it would save time and money for researchers designing experiments, which is worthy of funding in itself.

Yet the applicant waxed lyrical for two thirds of a page about how predicting protein interactions could ultimately lead to medical applications, not only in the abstract, but in three other sections. Not only they wasted precious space, but this annoyed me. Give credit to reviewers (you should treat them as ‘ignorant but infinitely intelligent’) – if you encapsulate the impact of your project within a devoted heading as recommended above, they will perfectly understand it.

 

I hope these tips ease your anxiety about presenting the dreaded ‘Impact’ section of your proposal (and prevent avoidable rejection for having overstated impact). 

Wishing you fruitful research :-).

David