The NSERC Discovery Grant Program guidelines state that you can include one page of literature references in your application package (in addition to the five page proposal). Do not refer readers to websites for additional information on your proposal or include hyperlinks in your list of references.

Depending on your field, you can either go with numerical [1] reference annotation or include in-text citations (Author, Year). My personal preference is to draft with (Au, Year) inline and then convert to numerical to save space in the final version. (You can certainly start with numerical references too.) Use what you are most comfortable with, but just make sure that you are consistent and be willing to shift to numerical for space considerations. (You might be surprised by how much space you sacrifice to in-text citations.)

A few things to watch out for:

1. Self-referencing – check the proportion of papers that are attributed to you, your collaborators and former supervisors. If you are near or over 50%, you need to include a more diverse view of the literature.

2. Dropped references – cross check your reference list with the inline citations to ensure that they match.
3. Cluster referencing – Similar to self-referencing, it is valuable to examine your references to see if there is a reliance on any particular research group and ensure that all major players in your area are referenced to degree that is relevant to their impact.
4. Reference errors – while it may seem time consuming to check to ensure that your references do not include errors, fact checking your reference citations as you insert them into your reference management software will save you many headaches throughout your research career.

This checklist for reference housecleaning can not only be used for grant applications, but for journal submissions as well.

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.”

If you have any questions on the NSERC Discovery Grant program or process, please feel free to drop me an email or a comment to any of the posts. I will do my best to respond to any and all queries in a timely manner (and you may help guide my posting schedule for next week).

Thanks! Diane

I was a bit of a featherweight in my posting schedule last week. Sorry about that. As we move into October my posts might get increasingly erratic – I think I have a deadline every week for the next few months.

As I mentioned last week, I am trying to get clarification on the binning process and have been sent reams of information by NSERC that I need to wade through. I think that I am starting to understand things a bit better, but unfortunately it also raises more questions and concerns about the process. Hopefully, I can collect my thoughts on this topic so that I can post them later this week.

For anyone that is visiting the blog for the first time and would like to see post summaries, use the drop down box on the left sidebar to search for the category “recap” or click this link and you will find posts that summarize the blog topics over the past few weeks.

Here is a recap of last week’s posts:

Grantsmanship = positioning for success covered some basic grantsmanship principles such as following the rules, taking ownership and avoiding ego creep.

DG2010 – Hurdling writing reluctance focuses on another element of grantsmanship, which is getting something on paper. Procrastination can kill a grant application before it starts, as inadequate preparation generally shines through.

While not directly related to the NSERC Discovery competition, the post SSHRC tips and tricks includes some handy links similar to my much earlier post Discovery 2010 – Important Links (which someone told me they made their homepage).

Speaking of feeling loved, thanks to Rob Annan of Researcher Forum for the kind word on the DG2010 post series and linking to my blog. If you ever have the time or interest to learn more about Canadian research policy and relevant news, this blog is definitely worth a read. Rob always has well thought out insights into the news of the day and also hosts and writes CanadaResearchFunding.org that contains many resources for Canadian health researchers.

Often, one of the toughest parts of grant writing is getting that first draft of the research proposal down on paper. Last year I wrote a post on “Springing out of the writing block” and the advice there is still pertinent today.

The best tip for getting past the inertia of being overwhelmed is to break down the tasks. This post includes a list of all the tasks for getting a Discovery grant proposal together. Look through the list and identify some tasks that you can accomplish. Small steps, even ones that seem trivial, are still steps toward the goal of a completed application.

Another advantage of taking the time to plan out the steps in your calendar is that you will have fewer “Ack, I still have to do xxx!” moments in the minutes/hours/days before the deadline. Taking care of these tasks earlier in the timeline will help make the grant application process a little easier to fit into your already overloaded schedule. It is worth noting that many of the required tasks take less time when you not stressed and early birds avoid the frustrations of the pre-deadline NSERC online system.

If you don’t already have a draft of your proposal in hand, take a few moments to write out the heading pieces and start outlining your grant proposal. (See this post for the required headings.) Even this small step will make the future ones a little less daunting.