Executive Summary:
The hinderance to early career scientists’ breakthrough in the academics is the difficulty to secure funding to conduct the research of interest, and translate research output from some of their data collection into publications. The Crossby Lab in conjunction with the A.P Leventis Ornithological Research Institute (APLORI), University of Jos, Nigeria executed a workshop. The workshop provided theoretical information and hands-on demonstrations in research grant proposal writing and article writing and publication of research output. Delegates attended the workshop comprising of research associates and PhD students with varied levels of familiarity (none familiar to familiar) regarding the workshop theme. Participants expressed the workshop met their expectation and with recommendation for more of this workshop to be organized in the future.
BACKGROUND
Researchers sometimes experience difficulties in their career especially with maintaining a stream of creative research ideas; securing funding to transform the ideas into reality; and publication of research output (Ecarnot, Seronde et al. 2015). These difficulties are pertinent to early career scientists running their research groups and/or working as research associates in the academic and research institutions. Therefore, these constitute sources of concern and breakthrough for many early career researchers globally, particularly in the developing countries of Africa.
Success with identifying researchable project areas is confronted with challenges of securing funds (small- to large-scale grants) for executing the projects. Winning grants from donors are not easy tasks because of specific donor’s requirement and the limited number of projects donors can fund at every given grant cycle. This makes it competitive, requiring grant seekers to master the acts of grant proposal writing based on international best practices, and to circumvent opportunities or factors that tend to lower their success. The act of writing good research grant proposal is not achieved in one day, it requires stable practice, focus and playing on the stage until more wins than losses for grants are achieved.
Moreover, whether funded or not funder, early career researchers often consider it a big task to achieve publication of research output from their data collection (Keen 2007). This is true, given the lack of dedicated and demonstrative mentorship, guidance and motivation especially for early career scientists. Effort put into data collection or research without publication is wasted (Guyatt and Brian 2006). The maxim prevailing in the academic arena is ‘either publish or perish’ suggesting that publication is the currency for ascending the cadre or basis for promotion; not only for the individual researcher within the scientific community, but also for research institutions that aspires to gain worldwide recognition. This prompts many attempts for publication yet rejection rates appear high for early career persons (Pierson 2004).
Therefore, stimulating proactive scientific engagements and building capacity for early career scientists in this area have become paramount. In the workshop we trained participants providing theoretical information and hands-on demonstrations in the following major areas a) research grant proposal writing with focus to describe: i) main approaches to seeking a funding source that match your research, ii) the process of obtaining a grant, iii) advice for preparing a grant proposal; and b) article writing and publication of research output with focus to describe i) the basic steps to follow in writing a scientific article, ii) highlight the main sections that an average article should contain; iii) and the elements that should appear in these sections, and iv) provide some pointers for making the overall result attractive and acceptable for publication in high impact journals.
WORKSHOP SESSSION, TALKS AND PRESENTATIONS
Sessional Highlights
Grant application process: covered areas on how to seek a good match for one’s research projects, including preparing to write the proposal, writing and submitting the proposal, awaiting the decision, follow-up and general advice.
Finding suitable funding sources: provided an overview of some sources of idea, online list of grant sources for researchers in developing countries, and how to take advantage of online to access available grant platformed.
Literature review in grant proposal writing: focused on the relevance of literature review in grant proposal writing including general suggestion, accessing relevant literature and examples of resources.
Preparing to - and writing the grant proposal: presented overview of aspect of preparation for writing grants include how to start early, analyse instructions, do the ground work, assemble collaborators, establishing timelines, gatherings budgetary information etc. Writing a grants component and advice.
Other important areas in grant proposal writing: discussed other important areas as required in granting proposal writing will be discussed such as curriculum vitae (hinting: some basics, examples, and tips), common problems (unrealistic ambitious plans, incomplete and unrealistic budget, failure to justify sufficiently budgetary items); effective writing (clear, concise, persuasive ad well formatted writing style) and; writing and follow-up on grant proposal (revising and submitting proposals, preparing progress report, resources and looking ahead).
Personal experience of grant proposal writing, applications and successes: was an interactive session on sharing personal experience of the resources person(s) and facilitators(s) with grant proposal writing, application and successes achieved.
llustration and examples: based on critical thinking and application of knowledge acquired from the morning session for tackling some design scenario of grant application.
Groups work and exercise: this engaged the participants with task to apply the knowledge gained from the workshop to address a problem. A mission (see Appendix 1) was given to be tackled for the rest of the day, and then to be submitted for evaluation.
The basic steps to follow in writing a scientific article: was centered on the basic step of writing and submitting the manuscript, to a suitable journal including Imbibing the right mindset to be a research author; research and publishing ethics; and defining the focus and contribution of your paper.
Main sections in an average article and their content: was focused to provide details of the main section of a research paper such as the introduction, method, result, discussion, abstract, title, and refence sections.
Article submission and the review process: presented aspect of manuscript submission process, formatting style following the journal’s guidelines/ requirement for submission and the review process including handling rejection and reviewers’ comments.
Other important areas on writing paper and publishing research output: covered areas plagiarism, ethics and predatory journals and writing paper as project that needs a time plan from conceptualization to publication.
Personal experience of writing paper for publication and successes: presents personal experience of the resource person (s) writing paper for publication and the successes achieved as well as failures, and how these failures were tackled.
Illustration and examples: base on critical thinking and application of knowledge acquired from the morning session to tackle a design scenario for writing a paper for application.
Groups work and exercise: participants were shared into groups with responsibility to apply the knowledge gained from the workshop to address a problem. A mission (see Appendix 1I) was given to tackle for the rest of the day, to submitted for evaluation.
WORKSHOP OUTCOME
Candidates (research associates, PhD candidates and research associate/PhD candidate) registered and attended the workshop. Some participants have no previous experience of research grants application in their area of interest (Fig 1A). The level of familiarity with grant proposal writing ranges from very familiar, familiar to not familiar at all (Fig 1B). Most participants have published article in their area of interest; some were preparing manuscript for submission during the period of the workshop and the few others have no article published in their area of interest (Fig 1C). Nearly all participant had data to publish and yet have no full understanding and/or are doubt of how the peer review system works (Fig 1D).
Figure 1. Pre-training/ registration survey and assessment of needs and requirement for the workshops from participants (n=12). A) experience with grant application, B) familiarity with grant proposal writing, C) whether have published articles previously and D) understand of peer-review process.
In general, most candidates strongly agree the information given during the workshop was interesting and presented the right amount of information. The workshop also provided sufficient time for discussion, and met the expectations in respect to the aim. There was doubt whether the right length of time was apportioned to the workshop, some participants did not agree the right length time for the workshop (Fig 2). Importantly, participants expressed interest in attending future workshops of similar nature now have confidence that you can apply for and win grants. As well as can write a good manuscript that can be accepted for publication by any journal of your choice.
Figure 2. Post-workshop training survey and assessment of the length of time for the workshop from
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Conclusively, this workshop met the objective of stimulating a proactive scientific engagement and building capacity of early career scientists in area of research grant proposal and article writing and publication of research output. This was support by participants consenting to the workshop meeting their expectation. The recommendations arising from feedbacks include that future workshop include:
How to collaborate on big research projects and interdisciplinary, inter-organizational and international collaborations.
More time should be allocated to subsequent training, and a session should be a session for only the participants to discuss.
Other presenters outside of the APLORI community, as I believe they will come with different experiences.
Should be annually executed for research associate to continue learning and share some experiences of their improvement in their grant application and paper publication
Should periodically checked for efforts put into their grant application and probably a panel to review application before submission.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the A.P Leventis Ornithological Research Institute, University of Jos for logistic support. Many thanks to Dr Adam (Director APLORI); Dr Talatu Tende (Rsearch Drector APLORI), Dr Yahkat Barshep (Resources person 1), Dr Grace Pam (resources person 2), and Thanks to all all patrons for advise and supports; also to all the participants.
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