tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post6864835225606837288..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: Getting a grantNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-33217678917818100502015-03-14T15:03:20.412-07:002015-03-14T15:03:20.412-07:00NorbertMarch 14, 2015 at 2:57 PM
Funny, I thought...NorbertMarch 14, 2015 at 2:57 PM<br /><br />Funny, I thought that their main point is that there are very many already good and fundable grants that don't get funded. Your conclusion seems to be that we should make sure that there are more good fundable grants. How this will raise the rate at which good grants get funded is a bit obscure to me. <br /><br />Now maybe what you ate saying is that the things that don't get funded are indeed not that good in general and that the right way to solve this problem is to make the submissions better. But how will more good grants chasing the same few dollars make much of a difference? This is quite disanalogous to journal submissions, unless of course there is an upper bound on pages. Then maybe the overall quality will go up (perhaps a good thing) but many good papers won't get in. <br /><br />Is your point that having an extra step in the cycle would be advantageous because it would make grant application less of a time sink? If that is your point, I am skeptical. As you know, we do lots of betting of some grants in the dept at UMD. It probably results in better product, but from where I sit it sure seems to be very labor intensive.<br /><br />I am sure I missed your main point. if so, sorry.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-19765332538556255672015-03-14T14:57:56.426-07:002015-03-14T14:57:56.426-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-69755966250224879482015-03-14T13:46:45.573-07:002015-03-14T13:46:45.573-07:00The take-away recommendation from the article is i...The take-away recommendation from the article is interesting. It focuses on the need to direct efforts at funding applications that stand a better than minimal chance of success. There are certainly lots of promising applications that aren't successful. But there are also lots of things that get submitted that are either not ready, or poorly prepared, or not suitable to the funding program. Some of these may reflect insufficient effort, but probably many reflect a lot of not terribly fruitful effort. I wonder if a lot of time could be saved by giving proposers more guidance at an earlier stage, before they have invested in creating a full proposal. Some grant programs formally institute this, but the current paper suggests that departments also do some of this internally. These multi-step processes can be a bit of a pain, but they probably save time and improve quality in the end. Similarly, for a journal special section that I'm currently editing (with Matt Wagers and Claudia Felser) the journal requires a two-step submission process, where authors have to submit a paper proposal before they're invited to submit the full paper. I think it's saving a lot of author and reviewer time, as wholly inappropriate submissions are stopped before the author goes to the trouble of preparing the whole paper. The full papers that we see seem to be better as a result.Colin Phillipshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09724709677503698323noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-79309179982613740252015-03-12T16:38:01.639-07:002015-03-12T16:38:01.639-07:00Bob Dixon used to say that he always wrote his gra...Bob Dixon used to say that he always wrote his grants very quickly (and always got the money, back in the day, don't know how he's doing now).AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.com