The VR panels' best advice for a strong application

In preparation for VR's annual calls, the Research Support and Collaboration Office has organised kickoff webinars. At each meeting, interested researchers have been able to ask questions to experts from the VR review panels.

– Although there are some differences between the various subject areas, much of the work of writing an application is the same, regardless of the area, says Erika Sörensson, one of the research coordinators from the Research Support and Collaboration Office.

Some of this recurring advice are gathered here.

Get straight to the point

It is important that a new reader immediately understands what the project is about. Not least to increase the chances of the application actually reaching the appropriate experts in the review panel.

– As chair of a panel, you must distribute the applications. I can't read the whole thing before I allocate it, so it's important that you give the right signals right away so that the application gets to the right panel member, said Kirk Sullivan.

Write for someone who is not an expert

– We have different expertise in the panel, so it's important to familiarize the reader with the different analyses and how they are performed. When you write in a specific field and publish in that field's journals, you don't have to explain everything, but in this case you need to, Ann-Britt Enochsson pointed out.

Everything that is needed to understand the project must be present in the text. Competition for funding is fierce and reviewers are looking for reasons to reject applications – which means an incomprehensible application is in trouble.

The experts suggested testing your text by letting someone else read it, preferably early in the writing process, and see what the test reader understands after 30 minutes.

Describe why your project is innovative and needed

The reviewers often see that it is not sufficiently clear how the projects move the research area a step forward.

– There is a lot we don't know, so why should this be prioritized? Not from a "save the world" perspective, but in your field. What knowledge gap would your project fill in your particular research area? said Anna Linusson.

Prove that the project can succeed

The next step is to show that the necessary resources are available. This may sound basic. Yet the reviewers say that there is often a lack of information about who will do what in the project, why that person is best suited, the order in which the tasks should be done, what can be done in parallel and what is interdependent. Sometimes well thought-out risk analyses can also be absent.

– The review panels are looking for highly novel work. The danger with innovative work is that it can fail. You need to show that you are the best person to do it, for example with preliminary results. This is important, but it should not take up too much space, said Eric Libby.

Focus on strength, not quantity

Eric Libby also took the opportunity to dispel a myth that sometimes circulates:

– Some people have heard that you need several aims to get funding. Think carefully. If you have two that are great, spend more time on them and develop them. It can undermine the whole thing if you have a third aim that doesn't really belong there, or is just something that is currently trending. It is more important that you show that you are a careful researcher.

Different disciplines have different traditions of using "aims", "research questions", "sub-studies" and so on, but the point is the same: thoughtful is better than big.