Tools for Researchers

 

While intended for undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and early career faculty, Demystifying the Academic Research Enterprise is also relevant to mid-career and senior faculty and research administrators.

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General Guidance

Proposal Writing Resources are available online for researchers looking for additional guidance.

A Proposal Writing Short Course, provided by The Foundation Center, provides a class on how to write a standard proposal to Foundation sponsors.

Guide for Writing a Funding Proposal (for Social Sciences)–By S. Joseph Levine, Ph.D., Michigan State University

Funding Agency Guides

The following guidance is available from several federal sponsors to assist you in grant writing and other information.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – The EPA provides tips on Writing a competitive Grant Proposal and Preparing the budget.

NIH Grant Writing Tip Sheets (NIH) – This section is prepared by various agencies to assist in writing and preparing a grant.

NIH presents a tutorial on how to write a successful application

CSR Peer Review Videos | NIH Center for Scientific Review (full video)

NIH Common Mistakes – This will walk you through common mistakes in writing your grant application

NIH presents a VIDEO “Inside NIH Study Sections and common mistakes seen on Applications”

NSF presents a guide for Grant writing

Resources for Junior Faculty

Search for existing awards

To begin a search for funding, it is helpful to check whether the topic has already been studied by others. This can be done by searching online for projects that have been awarded to see what other projects with a topic similar to yours has been funded.

• NSF has an Award Search database where you can locate abstracts or projects funded by NSF. You can search by PI name, scientific keywords and grant types.
• NIH uses a system called Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool (RePORT) that has extensive information about awards they have made. This database combines NIH funding records, PubMed abstracts, full-text articles from PubMed Central. Users are able to locate descriptions and funding details on NIH-funded projects along with research results.

Fellowship Opportunities

NIH provides access to many individual fellowship applications, which provide institutional research training opportunities to trainees at the undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral levels.

NSF has a Graduate Research Fellowship Program. All details, including current opportunities, are available on this site.

Additional opportunities can be found in the private organization arena. Foundation Center and Proposal Central are two websites that can provide additional opportunities for Fellowship awards.

Fellowship Resources

Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty