Background

1. Jumping on the Funded Research BandwagonPaul O’ReillyDublin Institute of TechnologyPresentation to Faculty of Commerce and Centre for Innovation and Structural Change, NUIG

2. Background • Food Marketing Research Group, The National Food Centre, Teagasc. • Framework 5 • Department of Agriculture and Food • Industry funded research • Faculty of Business • Institute of Technology-specific schemes • Department of Agriculture and Food

3. Outline • Benefits of involvement in funded research activities. • Getting involved with funded research for the first time. • Lessons learned from personal experience submitting funding proposals.

4. Why Get Involved in Funded Research Programmes?

5. Benefits of Funded Research • Profile for individual researcher and faculty. • Personal development. • Peer learning within research teams. • Involvement in a formal and disciplined project plan. • Research gets done! • Removes isolating aspect of research work.

6. Benefits of Funded Research • Networking opportunities • Interaction with partners, agencies and other stakeholders. • Budgets. • Opportunity to bring existing research activity to next stage of development (scale++, international++) • Conference papers and publications.

7. Getting Involved in Public Funded Research

8. Getting Started! • Be strategic. • Consider research ideas, objectives and potential long term research programme. • Consider scale of research project(s) required. • Identify appropriate funding schemes. • Seek advice and do own research. • Think laterally. • Research programme may be constructed upon layers of schemes.

9. Experiences Preparing Research Proposals: A Researcher’s Perspective

10. Before You Start • Successful proposals rarely put together days before deadline. • It takes time to generate high quality proposals (3-6 months). • Identify appropriate and alternative funding sources. • Check requirements and evaluation criteria of potential funding schemes. • Don’t prepare proposals in isolation. • Put together review committee before writing your proposal.

11. Communicate with Funding Agencies • Learn all you can about how funding scheme works and evaluation / review process. • Talk to responsible person (especially if you are new to the scheme). • Review successful projects. • Learn the system – seek evaluator role. • Understand the priorities and objectives of the scheme. • Tailor project to the amount of money available. • Follow-up and keep in touch. • Request feedback.

12. Typical Evaluation Criteria • Relevance of objectives to funding programme priorities. • Quality of research plan. • Potential impact. • Academic and industry gaps. • Quality / capacity of the research team. • Management of project. • Dissemination.

13. Pay Attention to Every Criteria and Information Request

14. Choosing Partners • Decision: Leader or follower. • Partners should complement each other. • Each brings something distinctive to the table. • Consider formalising relationships with stakeholders of research project • Advisory panel

15. Scope of Project • Do not try to do too much. • Think about what you plan to do and keep it within bounds. • Avoid unrealistic estimates. • Consider academic and industry contributions. • Keep the project focused. • Less is more – submit one project and not a patchwork of several projects.

16. Make Life Easy for Reviewers • Keep reviewer on your side – do not irritate them. • Proposals should be neat, well organised, and easy to read. • Label sections clearly • Keep it short and simple • Guide reviewers with graphics • Edit and proof

17. Balance Technical and Non-Technical • Many reviewers will only scan application. • Reviewers may not be familiar with field or methods. • Keep parts of the application most reviewers read non-technical (e.g. aims, justification, abstract) • Use technical detail only in methods section of proposal. • Test drive your proposal on a non-specialist.

18. Communicating Methodology • Crucial section in research proposal. • Show you will perform the research. • Think carefully about how to organise it. • Neat and simple work packages. • Indicate specific methodologies to be used. • Time and resources. • Helpful to create a graphical timetable showing responsibilities, milestones and outputs.

19. Be Persuasive • Capture reviewers’ attention by making the case for why your project should be funded: • Justify project investment with supporting evidence. • Explain why you are the person / team to do it. • Clearly illustrate gaps project will close. • Educate the reviewer – include enough background material to enable the intelligent reader to understand.

20. Sell Yourself • Reviewer will want to know whether you are capable of delivering. • Showcase knowledge and skills of key personnel. • Indicate relevant track record including publications (not standard CV). • Positions and honours • Selected peer-reviewed publications • Research support • Make sure there are no gaps in team. • Bring out the ‘heavy-hitters’

21. Budget Information • Budget and cost information should be clear and unambiguous. • Project should show good ‘value for money’. • Greed can kill! Cost of project must be realistic (+/-). • Project spend should reflect project activity. • Budget should show evidence of careful reflection and realistic project planning. • Request only enough money to do the work. • Review eligible and ineligible costs in scheme.

22. Be Innovative • Give reviewer everything they wanted and then give them something they didn’t expect. • May impact on overall assessment • What happens with research once completed? • But don’t overdo it!

23. Success is Not Guaranteed

24. Common Problems • Problem not important enough. • Study not likely to produce useful information. • Studies based on a shaky hypothesis or data. • Methods unsuited to objective. • Problem more complex than investigator appears to realise. • Too little detail in the research proposal to convince reviewers the investigator knows what he/she is doing

25. Common Problems • Over-ambitious research plan with an unrealistically large amount of work. • Proposal not academic enough. • Lack of original or new ideas. • Investigator too inexperienced with the proposed techniques. • Work packages too dependent on success of an initial proposed findings. • Lack of focus in hypotheses, aims, and or research plan.

26. Dealing with Rejection • Ask: Is it fixable? • Assess how serious problems are Options • Revise and resubmit after addressing fixable problems • Revise and resubmit to a different funding scheme • Create a new application

27. Questions???