Successfully Crafting Research Grant Applications: peer review

1. Successfully Crafting Research Grant Applications: peer review Professor Stephen Wilkinson Research Institute for Social Sciences Keele University

2. Overview • Writing for peer reviewers • Pre-submission review: informal &/or internal • ‘Right to Reply’ / ‘PI Response’ • Questions and Comments

3. Disciplinary Differences • Some points more generalisable than others • AHRC, Wellcome Trust (Biomedical Ethics & Medical Humanities), some ESRC, various internally

4. Who are the your reviewers? • Find out what you can about them • May not be specialists in your sub-field • Busy and short of time • Faults stand out more than virtues, especially to sceptical readers

5. Writing for Peer Reviewers 1 • Make the content: (a) (in part) accessible to non-specialists, (b) clearly laid out, (c) plain language at least for summaries • “Easy writing makes hard reading” • Sometimes “less is more” • The importance of x may be obvious to people working on x but not to anyone else – so spell it out

6. Writing for Peer Reviewers 2 • Answer the question, follow the instructions (e.g. on forms). • For example, make sure that your research questions are research questions and that lay summaries are lay summaries

7. Writing for Peer Reviewers 3 • Remain focussed, minimise loose ends and things that could antagonise (e.g. spelling mistakes, excessive repetition, inconsistency) • Remember that your aim is to answer a set of questions not (e.g.) to write a book • Give specific examples of and evidence for your own excellence rather than baldly asserting it

8. Pre-submission review • Internal peer review (formal, informal) &/or trusted contacts outside Keele • Vitally important for improving quality and hence your chances of success • Encourage people to be critical • Easier to take advantage of for schemes with no deadline (or multiple deadlines)

9. Right to Reply / PI Response 1 • Allow yourself a ‘cooling off’ period • Produce a list of criticisms, consolidate similar points from different reviewers • Respond to each in turn, in order of importance (refer to specific points in the reviews)

10. Right to Reply / PI Response 2 • If up against a word limit don’t be afraid to ignore minor criticisms that aren’t ‘deal breakers’ • “Less is more” again – make sure it’s readable • Don’t waste time restating virtues and be cautious about playing one reviewer off against another (although a bit of this is OK).

11. Right to Reply / PI Response 3 • Keep the tone calm and matter of fact; sounding outraged may reduce your credibility and annoy (or amuse!) panellists • Be cautious about direct attacks on reviewers (“C obviously knows nothing about X”) • More subtle attacks may work: e.g. suggesting that someone has overlooked part of the application, or of the relevant literature

12. Any Questions or Comments?