Last week I posted that Jo VanEvery has a SSHRC Grant writing guide e-book available on her website.

On Friday, she posted “Embrace the research process” on her blog. The process of research requires a lot of thinking and while it may not seem like you are accomplishing much during the thinking exercise, you are.

So, just as thinking is important and essential to the current functional and long term strategic growth of your research, identifying ways to create fundable projects within your research is critical to the grant writing process. Some funders want to fund projects, while other want to fund programs – and being able to distinguish both within your “big ideas” will help you in the grant writing process.

The NSERC Discovery Program is specifically mandated to fund programs of research. The easiest way to think about it is to consider a project a discrete and short term task within the long term strategic program of research. NSERC’s program description says:

[The] Discovery Grants (DG) Program supports ongoing programs of research (with long-term goals) rather than a single short-term project or collection of projects.

So, in order to fit with NSERC’s requirements, there must be some coherence to your collection of research projects and these projects must lead to some ‘ultimate goal’. The guidelines suggest that you state your objectives early in the proposal. My rule of thumb for distinguishing between goals is that short-term goals are 3-5 year objectives and long-term goals are your career goals 10-15 year goals. Think about what you can reasonably accomplish (in terms of discovery) within the 5 year funding window to set clear and achievable short-term goals. As you move though your research career, your long-term goals will shift as you gain knowledge and experience to enable you to set the bar ever higher.

*Update Oct, 9, 2009* I found this in the revised peer review manual and it might help give more context:

Program versus Project – The Discovery Grants program aims to support a researcher’s ongoing research program, which can comprise a number of well defined projects. The issue of whether the request is for support of a program or a project can be examined in the context of the “Merit of Proposal” criterion when evaluating the “Clarity and Scope of Objectives” (e.g., longterm goals as well as short-term objectives), and the “Significance and Expected Contributions to Research.”