Interlude: Grant Season, Specific Aims, and AI Images

It's grant season.

At least that's what I call the few weeks before an NIH R01 due date. These few weeks can be a bit hectic as researchers put the final touches on their grants before submission.

At least, I hope they are just making the final touches. But that's not always the case.

I've met many researchers who scramble to put together a grant in the few weeks before a due date. But to write a stellar grant proposal, you need more than just a few weeks. A lot more.

How much time do you need to write a grant?

The amount of time you need to write a grant depends on a lot of factors: your process for writing the grant, the number of coauthors (and their preferred process for writing), the type of grant, how well fleshed out the project is, how much time you have to write, and many other factors.

But if you want a number, one study found that the average federal proposal takes 171 hours to write: 116 hours from principal investigators and 55 hours from co-investigators.

So if you have 20 hours each week that you can dedicate to writing, you will need 8 to 9 weeks to write a federal proposal. That's like working a part-time job for at least 2 months. It's a lot to take on, especially if you already have a packed schedule.

If you're not sure how much time you spend writing a grant (or a manuscript, for that matter), I recommend that you track the time you spend on your next grant. I like to use Clockify to track my time, but you might also check out Harvest or Toggl, which both have free trials.

Tracking your time might be tedious at first. But you will learn valuable insight to help you create a strategy and timeline for writing your next grant.

Now onto this week's round-up...

💌 Round-up

💻 From My Desk

How to Draft Your Specific Aims Page​
The specific aims page is the most important part of your proposal—and often the most difficult part to write. In only one page, you need to describe the background, goals, objectives, rationale, outcomes, and significance of the studies you propose. And you need to explain those details in a way that persuades reviewers to fund your project.

👓 Reading

Should researchers use AI to write papers? Group aims for community-driven standards​
"Known as CANGARU, the initiative is a partnership between researchers and publishers including Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley; representatives from journals eLife, Cell, and The BMJ; as well as industry body the Committee on Publication Ethics. The group hopes to release a final set of guidelines by August, which will be updated every year because of the “fast evolving nature of this technology,”. . . The guidelines will include a list of ways authors should not use the large language models (LLMs) that power chatbots and how they should disclose other uses.”

​ChatGPT’s ability to generate realistic experimental images poses a new challenge to academic integrity​
"Although the current ability of ChatGPT to generate experimental images is limited, our simple tests have demonstrated the significant risks of misuse in generating images. Combined with existing research findings, ChatGPT theoretically has the potential to generate entire academic papers from scratch, including text, raw data, and experiment result images. While images generated by ChatGPT currently are not as realistic as those generated by GANs, the low barrier to use and rapid technical improvements mean the generated images will likely be more realistic in future.“

💬 Quote

“I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.” – Mark Twain

✅ Action

Next week, track how much time you spend writing. Then calculate how many weeks you would need to write a grant proposal based on the 171-hour estimate. Were you surprised by the result? Hit reply and let me know.

Thank you so much for reading.

Warmly,

Crystal