Volume 14, Number 7: January 9, 2008
FUNDING TIPS
Grant Application Writer’s Handbook Available Online
The Grant Application Writer's Handbook by Liane Reif-Lehrer is an excellent guide to the grant-proposal development process. The full text e-book is now available online through the Health Sciences Library.
In this era of tight budgets, it takes more than just a good idea to get a grant funded. In this book, Reif-Lehrer tells you how to optimize your chances for success. She shows you, step-by-step, how to plan and develop a good proposal, explains what reviewers look for in applications, and discusses changes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The advice in this book is useful for many types of grant applications, business plans, journal articles, and research reports.
The GrantSource Library's website has other proposal-writing resources, including where to get help at Carolina, online proposal-writing guides, NIH-specific resources, and a list of proposal-writing guidelines in the library's print collection. For more information contact the library at 962-3463.
Center for Innovative Clinical Trials Requests for Proposals
The Center for Innovative Clinical Trials, a School of Public Health Gillings Innovation Laboratory, is calling for short grant proposals to support statistical methodologic research in clinical trials. Proposals should not exceed five pages in length. Project aims should be clearly related to achievement of a high-impact gain in the development of statistical methodology that will lead to improvements in public health and promote the center's mission.
For a complete copy of the request for proposals, e-mail center director Joseph Ibrahim. Proposals should be submitted electronically no later than Tuesday, January 15 to Betsy Seagroves.
For more information about the Center click here.
Tagging and Sharing Your COS Funding Search Results
One of the newest features in the COS Workbench, tagging and sharing funding records, can also be one of the most useful—especially to anyone who searches for funding for others. When you find a good opportunity, simply track the record to your COS Workbench and tag it with labels that suit your needs. Then click to sort on a tag and click again to email all records with that tag to a group of researchers.
What makes tags different from other labels or keywords is that they are entirely up to the user—there are no preset lists you must choose from. So you can give a record tags that are meaningful to you. For example, if a funding opportunity is appropriate for the whole neuroscience department, offers a large amount of money, and involves unusually laborious application process, you might use such tags as "neuro," "big-money," and "ugh."
Remember these guidelines about tags:
- Tags are separated by spaces, so you cannot include a space in your tag
- Tags can include periods (.), underscores (_), and hyphens (-), so you can have multi-part tags by using these symbols. For example, a single tag would be "thompson_primary" but not "thompson primary".
If you haven't already tried tracking, tagging, and sharing funding records, we encourage you to check it out. Once you get used to assigning tags and develop your own personal system, we think you will find this an invaluable feature in managing your funding search results.
If you are a research administrator or support staff interesting in learning more about how to help your researchers identify funding sources, we invite you to attend this workshop on February 7, cosponsored by the Office of Sponsored Research.
Time to Review Your Email Funding Alerts
If you have set up COS or InfoEd SMARTS funding alerts to send you email notices of new funding opportunities, now may be a good time to review and update your funding alert profiles. If your research interests or funding needs have changed, refining your customized search profiles will make the alerts work more efficiently for you.
In COS, log onto your COS Workbench and take a look at the Your Saved Funding Searches section. Use the links to Run, Edit, or Delete a saved search—or even share it with a colleague. Be sure to update your keywords to reflect your new or changed research interests.
To update your InfoEd SMARTS funding alert, login to your SMARTS account and change your keywords, applicant types, award types, geographic restrictions, locations tenable, and position as necessary.
If you cannot remember your COS or InfoEd login information, email the GrantSource Library or telephone 962-3463, and we will look them up for you. If you need assistance in updating your funding search profiles, we would be happy to schedule an individual consultation for you with one of the GrantSource Librarians. For online instructions, click here.