'Grantwriter's Agony'
19/02/10 11:37 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Fri, 02/19/2010 - 15:37.
The most depressing fact about the current grant funding system, be it at the US NIH, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research or most other granting agencies, is that it is a very unproductive process over all. Having reviewed grant applications for over 26 agencies and sitting on grant panels for 8 of these over the last 20 years, it is clear to me that a great deal of volunteer effort is expended in the review process. However, I am very uncomfortable about how many grants are not really reviewed in these panels by experts in the field of the proposed projects, and how few are actually reviewed by external referees. The triage process is evoked simply because only a few grants in a competition will actually be funded. Panels wish to spend more time on discussing the grant applications that appeal the most to the two or three members that actually read the proposals. Typically, only about 15% of submitted grant applications are funded nowadays. This is an average number, so individual success rates can be much worse. Bearing in mind that the same grant application may be submitted to multiple agencies, I still suspect that over 80% of the time, most researchers are engaged in a relatively futile exercise when they write and submit grants. The type of grants that receive funding are usually not discovery-based, despite the amazing technologies that are available to support such investigations. Safe, hypothesis-driven grant applications fare a lot better. Much of the proposed projects have usually been completed by the time a grant application actually gets reviewed and the applicant starts to receive funding. It seems ludicrous that applicants have to propose research plans 3 to 5 years in advance of their full implementation. If one is performing cutting edge research, how is this actually possible? At least for established investigators, more emphasis should be placed on what the applicant has achieved in the previous five years than what they are proposing to do, which is in many cases "science fiction." 'Good grantsmanship" does not necessarily equate with actual productivity. The available funding should be spread over many more applicants in smaller grants. For projects that require more resources, these should be fostered by more collaboration rather than competition amongst applicants. It is such a tragedy that so many talented and productive scientists, despite their passion and commitment, are unable to continue to contribute to the growth of biomedical knowledge due to the failure of the current system. In my own case, over the last 5 years my last 10 grant applications have been uniformly unsuccessful. I am now personally supporting my research through Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation, which is a service-based proteomics company that I founded. Although I have published more than 200 peer-reviewed original scientific research articles, I feel that my most significant research contributions are coming now. Unfortunately, such an option is available for only a few investigators.
Link to the original blog post
The most depressing fact about the current grant funding system, be it at the US NIH, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research or most other granting agencies, is that it is a very unproductive process over all. Having reviewed grant applications for over 26 agencies and sitting on grant panels for 8 of these over the last 20 years, it is clear to me that a great deal of volunteer effort is expended in the review process. However, I am very uncomfortable about how many grants are not really reviewed in these panels by experts in the field of the proposed projects, and how few are actually reviewed by external referees. The triage process is evoked simply because only a few grants in a competition will actually be funded. Panels wish to spend more time on discussing the grant applications that appeal the most to the two or three members that actually read the proposals. Typically, only about 15% of submitted grant applications are funded nowadays. This is an average number, so individual success rates can be much worse. Bearing in mind that the same grant application may be submitted to multiple agencies, I still suspect that over 80% of the time, most researchers are engaged in a relatively futile exercise when they write and submit grants. The type of grants that receive funding are usually not discovery-based, despite the amazing technologies that are available to support such investigations. Safe, hypothesis-driven grant applications fare a lot better. Much of the proposed projects have usually been completed by the time a grant application actually gets reviewed and the applicant starts to receive funding. It seems ludicrous that applicants have to propose research plans 3 to 5 years in advance of their full implementation. If one is performing cutting edge research, how is this actually possible? At least for established investigators, more emphasis should be placed on what the applicant has achieved in the previous five years than what they are proposing to do, which is in many cases "science fiction." 'Good grantsmanship" does not necessarily equate with actual productivity. The available funding should be spread over many more applicants in smaller grants. For projects that require more resources, these should be fostered by more collaboration rather than competition amongst applicants. It is such a tragedy that so many talented and productive scientists, despite their passion and commitment, are unable to continue to contribute to the growth of biomedical knowledge due to the failure of the current system. In my own case, over the last 5 years my last 10 grant applications have been uniformly unsuccessful. I am now personally supporting my research through Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation, which is a service-based proteomics company that I founded. Although I have published more than 200 peer-reviewed original scientific research articles, I feel that my most significant research contributions are coming now. Unfortunately, such an option is available for only a few investigators.
Link to the original blog post