Talking about grants

Summary:

A few questions with respect to talking about grants in application materials.

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Talking about grants

Fedelmid (guest) 18 Aug 2014 02:38

Where do people think you should talk about grants/funding agencies that you plan to apply to? Put it in the research statement or put it in the cover letter?
My initial thought is the cover letter and leave the research statement to, well… research.
AND… the bigger question of the night, how do you approach talking about grants for R's compared to SLACs?
On that note, what are grant writing expectations like at SLACs?

Anon (guest) 18 Aug 2014 03:07

If you have a grant written and ready to be submitted, you may put it on your CV. No one cares if you "plan" to submit grants. If you don't have a draft ready to go, it is much like putting bunch of in prep papers on your CV.

Re: Talking about grants

DocJ 18 Aug 2014 03:31

I'm in agreement with the previous comment.

When it comes to a cover letter, research statement, or CV, the only things that should show-up there in a substantial way are those things that are well in progress. This means that grants listed or mentioned should be submitted or in the process of being submitted. Any manuscripts listed even as "in preparation" should be very near completion. The basic rule of thumb my mentors provided me with such things is that if you list it or mention it, you should be able to instantly show a significant amount of work completed to anyone who asks for more information. If it's some future "will do" or even something in progress but barely started, leave it off except perhaps a very, very brief mention in perhaps a cover letter.

Never pad your application materials. This will bite you.

finkstinger (guest) 18 Aug 2014 11:16

Agreed. In-Prep or plan to submit materials should be left out of your application. Although, it is a bit amusing when you get to review an application with 1-2 published papers and 20+ things that are in-prep.

anon (guest) 18 Aug 2014 12:41

I'm at a SLAC and they do strongly push for grants. All of the junior faculty should be applying for external grants, though private foundation grants are fine (we don't HAVE to land NSF or NIH grants for tenure). So, there's a pressure in SLAC-land too.

anony (guest) 20 Aug 2014 14:53

I am on the market this year and was instructed to leave all grants off my CV unless they have been funded. Similarly, I've also left off all "in prep" or "under review" manuscripts. I'm at a R1 school and my advisor mentioned that the in prep/under review stuff won't help, but could hurt my chances because some faculty look down on that practice.

Guest (guest) 20 Aug 2014 16:17

I agree with leaving off grants unless they have been funded, and leaving off manuscripts in preparation. I'm on the fence about manuscripts under review, though. Obviously the risk is that a ms under review might never be accepted (or that it might take quite some time to be accepted), but on the other hand manuscripts under review do help to tell the story of a research program. For example, I use methods from multiple areas (e.g., neuro, cognitive), and work on several related but distinct topics. One way to demonstrate that I'm progressing with all of these topics/methods is to show continued progress toward publishing in them. Thoughts?

asstpro (guest) 20 Aug 2014 16:37

I agree to guest that under review could be favorable. It shows that the candidates have pipe-lines in that their publications would not "dry out" at least for the next year. leave them on!

Re: Talking about grants

DocJ 20 Aug 2014 16:56

I concur. There's no good reason to omit manuscripts under review from a CV. This articulates that one is currently active in publishing and helps to show one's current research interests. The main debate about manuscripts under review is whether to include the journal name. I'm personally against this, as many people try to submit to a high-end journal only to be rejected and have the article end-up in a lower tier journal. It seems wise, to me, to only include the journal name once an article is at "revise and resubmit" stage or is accepted. Others will have different perspectives, though.

anon2 (guest) 20 Aug 2014 16:59

I also agree with you Guest. I don't have "in prep" articles on there, because what that means is just so vague (is the paper actually in draft, or is there just some data on a server, or is the data even still being collected…). However, for similar reasons, I also include articles that are under review. It shows the areas where you have active research, and can further help give people a feel for your productivity. Yes, you may end up losing a paper that is never accepted, but that would take a while, and I think the risk is minimal.

As for grants, if it is something that has been submitted, or will be by the time the application is looked at, I keep it on there. I have a grants section called "Grants Under Review" and list the date that the particular grant was submitted. For example, I'm aiming to have an NIH grant in for the early October submission. For any sort of application that is due later than that date, the grant will be listed with the date of submission and the planned time of review. I don't however list grants that I've applied for that weren't funded.

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