Jumping on the Funded Research Bandwagon Paul O’Reilly Dublin Institute of Technology Presentation to Faculty of Commerce and Centre for Innovation and Structural Change, NUIG

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

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.

Why Get Involved in Funded Research Programmes?

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.

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.

Getting Involved in Public Funded Research

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.

Experiences Preparing Research Proposals: A Researcher’s Perspective

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.

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.

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.

Pay Attention to Every Criteria and Information Request

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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’

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.

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!

Success is Not Guaranteed

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

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.

Dealing with Rejection Ask: Is it fixable? –Assess how serious problems are Options 1.Revise and resubmit after addressing fixable problems 2.Revise and resubmit to a different funding scheme 3.Create a new application

Questions???