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Writing Proposals
• Whether you want access to telescope time
(radio,optical, X-ray, whatever), money to travel,
money to build instruments, money to run
conferences, resources to build instruments, … in
fact in order to obtain most of the resources you
need to be a scientist, you will have to write
PROPOSALS!
• Your proposals will almost always be evaluated
alongside other proposals, which means your
success will not depend on how good those
proposals are, but how much better they are than
your competitors.
PS700: proposa; writing
generic strategy, generic tips,
generic proposal for an
experimental programme
How Proposals are Evaluated
• Proposals are almost inevitably reviewed by a committee
– and that committee is composed of people
– committees make every effort to be unbiased, objective,
perceptive, intelligent and diligent (the optimist
assumption)
– subject to all the same frailties as you and me (the
cynical assumption)
• In practice, you should assume your proposals will be read
– By people who have no background in your research
– who don’t care about your research
– who don’t have enough time to read your proposal
properly
– who are just looking for a reason to ignore it
– (this is probably the safe assumption)
Award or Allocation
• What counts? The Science or the Script? Novelty or the Novel?
• In any one round of proposals
– a few will stand out as being clearly the best, and a few will
stand out as being clearly the worst.
– Most fight it out in the middle.
• Proposals are graded by several people, grades are discussed,
then combined, ranked and resources are allocated.
– The final grade is an estimate, a “measurement” of the worth
of a proposal.
– It therefore has uncertainty (eg. rms ~ 0.3-0.5 / 5 is
common)
– Proposal grading is an imperfect estimation process.
– Small differences in the proposal (as opposed to the
science) can make all the difference.
– They can also make all the difference in whether your
brilliant science is understood.
First, formulate your experiment
• Before you even put pen to paper (or finger to key board),
you need to develop a clear idea of the problem you want
to attack
– “What question am I trying to answer?”
– “Is it interesting?”
– “Is it timely?”
• Then determine what finite set of observations are need
to answer that question.
– If the question, or the set of observations, becomes
too big, then break it down into a series of smaller
problems, and attack each of those in turn, with a
separate project for each.
• It is essential these things are clear to you, so that you
can clearly explain it to someone who does not have your
expert background in the field.
Writing
• The project itself must be
– A well defined experiment with clear positive and negative outcomes.
Ideally the experiment will be constructed such that either result is
interesting and worth publication. That way the Committee gets a
guaranteed publication.
– Finite - Committees hate to see the same proposal again and again.
– It has to be achievable in the requested time period.
• Use Figures
– They save words, and can be much, much clearer.
– Make sure your figures are well annotated.
• Notations on the figure are better than in the caption. Eg. use xfig,
Word, Powerpoint to add notes, arrows etc to GIF or Postscript
file.
The Proposal Itself
• “Form” Section
– Names, institution, address etc of proposers
– Abstract - spend time on this after you’ve written the Science
Case.
– Technical stuff
• Equipment, Instruments, lab space, consumables, dates,
positions, fluxes etc (Don’t make mistakes here)
– Results from previous awards, related publications, etc
• This is your chance to show that you are productive.
• “Text” Sections
– Scientific Justification - this is where you make the pitch for
your project
– Technical Justification - this is where you prove your
programme/observations are feasible.
A Suggested Science Case Outline
• The Scientific Background
– Why the proposed research is interesting and scientifically important.
If it is at all obscure, explain what it is.
– Explain all acronyms, classes of objects, symbols.
– What has been done to date … from which should follow
• The Outstanding Question(s) to be answered.
– That is, the questions you want to answer in this work.
• The Experiments/Observations proposed
– How they will answer your questions. Make sure you define your
positive and negative results - if both are significant your proposal will
be that much stronger
• Conclusion/Summary
– recap for those “skimming” the proposal. Which will be most readers!
• Abstract - yes, write this LAST!
The “worst case” Committee
• Someone will ask, “why do they need to study
24 molecules/stars/objects?”
• Someone will think all research in your area
is a waste of time
• Someone will only have read the abstract and
conclusions and looked at the pictures
– Good reason to make your figures explain
the proposal.
• Someone will ask “can’t they do this on
another (usually smaller) facility/telescope?
What NOT to do
• “These nanopigs are really cool, and we’d like to
learn more about them …”
• “We’d like to discover the first _______ .” (Insert
brown dwarf, z=8, black hole, …..
• Avoid a “blizzard of questions”
– it is better to concentrate on 1 or 2 things you will
answer than 4 or 5 things you might answer.
• Nothing reflects as poorly as stupid mistakes
• Like appplying in the wrong semester, with the
wrong faci;ity/instrument, or a no longer current
facility/detector.
• Or leaving out essential information (like how
sensitive/bright or how many tests/targets).
What NOT to do
• Don’t submit proposals which are badly written - if
English (or French or Spanish nor whatever) is not
your first language, get a colloborator who can proof
read/rewrite it for you.
• Don’t plough into an obscure discussion of a peculiar
class of materials/objects, without placing them in
context.
• Don’t present dense blocks of undifferentiated text
• Avoid programs aiming to obtain data and to then
perform a postiori determinations of what’s going on
– Make a hypothesis and test it.
– Don’t say we’ll work out what’s going on once we
have the data.
– This is one of the most common failings of lowly
ranked proposals.
Conclusion
• Remember you are a scientist.
– Your proposals should reflect a clear hypothesis and testing, with
clearly defined positive and negative results.
– Make sure these are clear to you before you start writing.
• Remember Committee members are people.
– They read lots of proposals, and will not make the effort to
understand a poorly explained concept, or a poorly written proposal.
• Try to make the logic of your proposal as clear and simple as possible.
– Try it out on a friend who doesn’t know the field. If they can’t follow
it, neither can the Committee.
• If you don’t get an award, find out why, fix it, and try again.
• When writing a proposal you are “marketing” your project.
– So try to en sure your marketing is better than your competitors!