Last week, during the Faculty of Medicine’s Graduate Student Research Day, I was fortunate being able to attend the special presentation "What it takes to become a successful scientist,” given by Dr. Roderick McInnes (Program of Developmental Biology, Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children; Departments of Pediatrics and Molecular and Medical Genetics, University of Toronto; Scientific Director, Institute of Genetics, CIHR), a Dalhousie alumnus. The McInnes room in the DSU building, where Rod gave this presentation, is actually named after his grandfather. I was fortunate in a dual sense; first, Rod’s talk was enjoyable and informative, and second, I had the topic for my blog. In his presentation, Rod focused a great deal on things to do to write a great grant or paper, two of the key ingredients to becoming (and remaining) a successful researcher. His take home message was that writing good scholarship/grant applications or papers is formulaic, and a learned skill. As he said “some people are naturally better at it, but you can learn to be just as good. It's not magic or inspiration at midnight.” Rod’s formula to writing a good grant or paper was simple. Start writing early, write daily, write well, write for your audience, and write efficiently. Obviously, as Rod admitted himself, one can successfully deviate from this formula, but “it is a formula that works - so it's a great beginning.”
The following are excerpts from the Guidebook for New Principal Investigators - Advice on Applying for a Grant, Writing Papers, Setting up a Research Team and Managing Your Time, written by Roderick McInnes, Brenda Andrews and Richard Rachubinski, which summarize the highlights of Rod’s presentation. These slightly modified and largely abbreviated passages are not Principal Investigator-specific and apply equally well to graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in all disciplines. Obviously, these tips aren’t universal rules. However, since they come from highly successful senior scientists who are extremely familiar with applying for grants, publishing high-impact papers, managing research teams, and running research laboratories, it would be foolish to ignore their suggestions. For those of you, who are interested in reading the guidebook in its entity (a truly worthwhile endeavor), you can do so on the CIHR Institute of Genetics website.
Things to Do to Write Great Grant or Scholarship Applications
Start Writing Early
Start the preparation for your scholarship/grant application well ahead (months!!!) before the deadline by writing the overall research goal and specific research aims. Why so early? Doing so focuses your reading and thinking, and allows you to plan, seek advice, and identify topics you need to read up on. You can't do many of these things well in the last weeks before the deadline – at that late point, you will be concentrating on the writing. It is very likely that your initial specific aims will change as you continue to write, and an early articulation of them forces you to focus and to think clearly.
Write Daily
In preparing a scholarship/grant application, it is a good idea to commit to writing part of the application every day. Researchers who write daily, even 30 minutes/day, are much more productive and successful than those who leave it all to a last-minute cataclysmic effort.
Finish the "Junk" in Month One (but not only the junk)
All the accompanying documents and forms - CV module, references, etc. - take a lot of time to obtain or complete, and generally much more time than you think. Get them done early. Put the references into EndNote® or Reference Manager® right from the start.
Tips for Good Grant/Scholarship Writing
Write an application that the reviewers will enjoy reading. Aim for nothing less. Remember, the reviewers are wading through tons of other grant/scholarship applications, so make yours clear, thoughtful and interesting. Good writing reflects clear and precise thinking. In fact, writing generally forces clear and precise thinking.
Unconsciously Imitate Great Style
Before writing a grant or scholarship application, read a couple of successful ones from friends or colleagues in your area (obviously they likely are really well written) to pick up the 'rhythm' of excellence and clarity.
Get it down! Don't be a sentence "caresser!"
Word processors encourage the endless reworking of a sentence, to get it 'perfect'. Don't do this. It is a time waster that creates the illusion of effective progress. To generate a well-written grant or scholarship application, follow the following four steps: 1. Get it down, even rough, ugly, too long and incomplete. 2. Get it right (factually correct, balanced). 3. Get it pretty. Now is the time to do some sentence caressing. 4. Get it out!
The Inverted Pyramid Structure
Good expository writing has two predominant features. 1. Begin each paragraph with a great lead sentence. A strong lead sentence is interesting and says what the paragraph is about. It is worth spending time on, even in the first ugly draft, since it defines the rest of the paragraph. 2. The remainder of the paragraph should elaborate on the topic defined by the lead sentence. Thus, a good paragraph has an inverted pyramid structure. A very common error is to have a rousing concluding sentence that is often, when slightly reworked, a superb lead sentence.
Who is the audience?
Almost all review panels are generally very heterogeneous. Therefore, you are usually writing for intelligent researchers who are not expert in your area, except for maybe one or two who will know more. You have to write with simple clarity for the majority, but also convince the one or two experts that you really know your stuff. "Who is my audience?" is the number one issue in grant/scholarship writing, just as it is in giving a talk. Here, the bottom line is: give the big picture, don't drown the reviewer/audience in details, and state rationales.
Use illustrations
Use illustrations, figures and boxed texts to help the reader easily see the big picture. Nothing is more depressing to a reviewer than to see pages of dense text unalleviated by something visual. Illustrations help the reviewer grasp background information, be convinced of the strength of your preliminary data, and acquire a quick overview of your research plan.
Things to Do to Write Great Papers
Writing a good paper involves much of the same principles/techniques as writing a good scholarship/grant application.
Apply the Tips for Good Writing from above
Unconsciously Imitate Great Style
Before writing a paper, read a couple of papers that are really well written, in the journal to which you intend to submit your manuscript.
Write Every Day
When they have papers to be written, the most productive researchers write daily as an integral part of their research life, even if only for 30 minutes each day. Writing every day is not only a lot more fun and stress reducing (i.e., "Wow - I've actually started!"), it also produces a much better product. In addition, for those who do basic biomedical research, clinical research, quantitative research or qualitative research, if you begin to write months before you plan to submit your manuscript for peer review, you often identify problems or gaps in your data that should be addressed.
Order of Writing the Various Parts of a Paper
Overarching guideline: You are telling a single story. Everything you write should be built around that story line. For basic biomedical research, clinical research and empirical research, write the paper in the following sequence:
Figures, figure legends and tables
Always do these first. If well done, the figures and their legends will present the story almost without the rest of the text!
Results
The Results should be a written presentation of the information that is illustrated and documented in the figures and tables, and not a lot more. The text of the Results section should be able to stand by itself, even without the reader looking at the figures and tables. A common error here is to put Discussion in Results. This is to be done only rarely, and only if you are not going to discuss a relatively small point in the Discussion.
Discussion
In a first brief paragraph, it is often useful to summarize your major findings, but do so in language that is usefully different from the abstract of the paper. In the rest of the Discussion, discuss each of the Results, from two points of view. First, discuss the data itself - what does it mean, what does it allow you to conclude? Second, discuss each result in terms of the bigger picture of the field.
Introduction
In the first paragraph(s), introduce the big picture underlying your story. In subsequent paragraphs, introduce the specific issues that each of your major results addresses. Sometimes it is difficult to decide whether some background information should go in the Introduction or in the Discussion. In the Discussion, you will often want to provide more context on an issue than you were able to present in the Introduction or in the Results.
Abstract
To write a great abstract, it is very useful to read a few great ones from a current issue of the journal to which you are submitting the manuscript. That is all the guidance you need. Writing a good abstract takes at least one day. In the PubMed® era, your abstract may be the only thing that most people will read, so devote at least a day to it, look at it again a few days later, and have it vetted by a colleague who is not intimately familiar with the work in that manuscript.
Methods
It doesn't much matter when you write the Methods. Just don't pretend that you have accomplished much by getting them done. You haven't!!! Refer to previous papers for details, when possible.
Other Important Issues
- Never, ever submit a sloppily prepared manuscript. You will have lost the battle before you have even started.
- Submit to the correct journal. If it's a lovely paper for a lower-impact journal, don't send it to Nature or Science. However, aim high.
- It is foolish to submit a paper without having a colleague look at it first.
Extending Rod’s suggestions to thesis writing will surely avoid your thesis encountering a similar fate than that of Jill Samoskevich.
Over and out.
Dieter