Money, money, money…

Money may or may not make the world go round, depending on your political persuasion and/or love of Cabaret. However, if you're a researcher it can be handy.

Not all research requires staff or consumables of course – but some does. In fact, one of the possible reasons for the reproducibility issues that have been discussed extensively over the last decade or so may be the (over) reliance on small behavioural studies in undergraduate student populations.  To recruit larger, more representative samples using the most robust methods is painstaking, time-consuming and expensive.

So some research can only be done with funding (e.g., functional MRI studies and other methodologies that require expensive facilities), and some research can be done better with funding (e.g., behavioural research at scale). And funding also allows us to grow our capacity for doing research – recruiting a researcher to collect data frees us up to focus on thinking, analysing, writing…

And obtaining funding helps our career progress. Rightly or wrongly, institutions value the ability of individuals to secure funding (sometimes called grant capture), particularly if the funding comes with overheads (e.g., from UKRI research councils such as the ESRC). Obtaining funding in and of itself doesn't advance knowledge – it's what we do with it that matters. But the ability to obtain it is a valuable skill.

Funders and funding schemes come in many shapes and sizes of course – from the different UKRI research councils (many of which have remits relevant to psychologists), through to major charitable funders such as Wellcome and smaller more focused funders such as Leverhulme and the British Academy. Schemes include standing project grants, larger (and longer) programme grants and personal fellowships, to name a few.

At the start of your career, the process of obtaining funding can be daunting. Long and unfamiliar forms with many sections, a slow process of submission, peer review and (if you're lucky) panel assessment, followed by (if you're even luckier) success! Olivia Maynard has written about how many attempts it took her before she was able to successfully obtain her first major grant [see below, and here].

But there are things you can do to improve your chances. Many universities offer grant writing training and support; some offer mock grant panels so you can better understand the process and how to write for both the specialist reviewers who will scrutinise your grant and the more generalist introducers who will discuss it if it makes it as far as the panel or board.

Some funders also provide schemes to demystify the process – the MRC, for example, runs a Board and Panel Associates Scheme where you can participate as an observer. And your PI or PhD supervisor may be able to offer you opportunities to help reviewing grants. Just as reviewing manuscripts helps hone our manuscript. writing skills, reviewing grants helps hone our grant writing skills.

And there are numerous (although perhaps a shrinking number of) small grant schemes, including internal mechanisms run within Departments or Faculties, that allow you to cut out teeth on a lighter touch process, and learn the basics of project and budget management. My first grant was for the princely sum of £5,000 (admittedly that was probably worth a bit more back then). Not much, but it got me started…

When it comes to writing your grant, give yourself plenty of time. The process will take much longer than you think. Don't leave critical elements – like the costing – until the last minute, and give people who will need to provide approvals at different stages plenty of warning, such as the costing specialist in finance and the Head of Department who may need to approve the bid.

Make sure you cost the grant appropriately. Value for money is a factor that funders take into account, but a grant that is under-costed can be poor value for money if it means that the risk of failure is high (e.g. if the study is under-powered and therefore unable to provide a definitive answer to the research question). If the grant is expensive given the knowledge it will generate, consider whether you need to re-think.

Remember that you're writing for two groups – the specialist reviewers and the generalist introducers. Your grant will make sense to yourself. Ensure that it makes sense to people reading it for the first time. Ask colleagues to give it a critical read. And make it easy to read, with plenty of white space to break up the text and careful use of emphasis to draw out key points. A reviewer will be grateful for an easy read.

And persist. You probably won't get your first grant. Or your second. Failure is an inherent part of academic life. If your grant isn't funded there were almost certainly excellent elements to it. If it is funded that doesn't mean it was perfect. Treat every cycle of preparation, submission and decision as an opportunity to learn and improve. Read Olivia's blog, and our article on failure.

And accept that there is an element of luck. Having been part of many funding panels across many funders, in the UK and beyond, I can say with confidence that whilst no human process is perfect, funders go to great lengths to make their processes as fair and robust as possible. Which is as it should be of course – the funding usually comes from public money or charitable donations. We all have a responsibility to spend it well.

Marcus Munafò is Professor of Biological Psychology and MRC Investigator, and Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor - Research Culture, at the University of Bristol. [email protected]

Two lessons learned through failure

From Olivia Maynard (University of Bristol), extracted with permission from Better Lives.

You need a killer idea and a killer team

I looked back at my first two fellowship applications, and they're all over the place. They're just a list of all the interesting (and unconnected) studies I wanted to run after finishing my PhD. Get thinking about what your idea is very early, talk it through with colleagues, present it at a lab meeting if you can. If other people aren't convinced, go back to the drawing board.

While the idea is obviously very important, the people you surround yourself with during the fellowship are also critical to success. Fellowships are about training and preparing yourself to become an independent researcher. You need to be thinking about working in different labs (if you can), making your research transdisciplinary (where appropriate) and creating opportunities for personal development and training.

You need to be resilient

By my fourth rejection, you can imagine I was starting to get a bit despondent. Imposter syndrome was kicking in and I started to wonder whether there was any point in submitting any more applications. I was advised to take a look at the stats on the success rates for the grants I was applying for, and I quickly found out that my failure rate was about the norm. The ESRC Future Research Leaders Fellowship had 11%, 20% and 14% success rates between 2015 and 2017 respectively. Only the grants scoring somewhere between 'excellent' and 'outstanding' were getting a look in.

Once you've accepted that the most likely outcome is failure, it's quite liberating. And when the failure does come, as it will do regularly throughout your academic career, you need to work out how to deal with it. One of my less effective strategies includes watching the music video for Taylor Swift's Shake it Off on repeat for hours while drinking wine. A better long-term strategy is to learn to become more resilient.

Obviously learning to become more resilient doesn't happen overnight, but there are some things you can do to increase your resilience. While resilience is seen by some as a trait (I've been described as 'wildly optimistic' by a colleague) it can also be learned. Resilience includes talking to your colleagues about your failures and successes (I really like the idea of negative CVs, which Aidan Horner has written about for The Psychologist) and getting yourself a good mentor. It means learning from your failures, having a realistic (not overly negative) view of your own abilities, realising that everyone suffers from imposter syndrome and yes, it means being optimistic. Resilience is also about keeping things in perspective and remembering that your PhD or job isn't everything and ultimately, taking care of yourself.