It turns out that these applications are A LOT of work.\u00a0 The final version required:<\/p>\n
- \n
- 13,000 carefully chosen, fully-referenced, words, co-written with 5 other authors (=> 5 sets of corrections\/edits\/comments) on 2.5 continents (Iceland surely isn’t a whole continent).<\/li>\n
- Detailed spreadsheets with well-researched and up-to-date costs.<\/li>\n
- 2 days of sampling (last summer) and 80 hours of specific analysis (this spring) to get one preliminary dataset; another day including instrument time for another.<\/li>\n
- Letters of Support from heads of departments, lab managers, senior government agency scientists, research professors.\u00a0 The application is 23,000 words if you include Letters of Support and CVs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"48](\"http:\/\/all-geo.org\/volcan01010\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/proposal.jpg\")
47 sides of carefully thought-out science.\u00a0 Don’t underestimate how long it takes to put it together.<\/p><\/div>\n
I reckon that it took around 3 months of full-time equivalent work to prepare.\u00a0 This is time that I could have been analysing data or writing papers.\u00a0 You can also add in another fortnight of other post-docs’ time.\u00a0 Plus a few days of Professor\/Senior Scientist time.\u00a0 While working out the costs, I learned that employing a post-doc costs the tax-payer about \u00a3100,000 per year (of which about 1\/3 is salary).\u00a0 So we are talking about at least \u00a325,000 of effort being put into a grant application.\u00a0 Did I mention that only 1 in 5 get funded?<\/p>\n
If it isn’t funded, the time will not have been completely wasted.\u00a0 The data are useful, I’ve made new contacts and had an excuse to get right up-to-date with the latest published papers.\u00a0 I understand the importance of being able to find the best-thought out and most useful projects to give funding from a limited pot, but it should also be recognised that every extra section on the application form has a real cost in terms of scientists’ time.<\/p>\n
Grant application LaTeX template<\/h2>\n
LaTeX<\/a> is an open source document preparation system.\u00a0 Unlike a word processor, you only have to think about the text and it takes care of the formatting.\u00a0 No more adding a word and seeing all your pictures jump to different pages.\u00a0 If you have to write a complicated document with sections, subsections, references, tables and figures (such as a Masters or PhD thesis), then I highly recommend it.<\/p>\n
Click here to download a LaTeX template for grant applications<\/a>.\u00a0 It is based on the normal article class, using the following extra packages:<\/p>\n
- \n
- anysize<\/strong> to set 2cm margins<\/li>\n
- helvet<\/strong> for Arial-like font<\/li>\n
- natbib<\/strong> and multicol<\/strong> with a custom .bst file for a compact reference list (Note:<\/strong> since 2014 NERC applications require references in 11pt font.\u00a0 Comment out the \\tiny{}<\/em> before the bibliography to make the text full size.)<\/li>\n
- wrapfig<\/strong> to wrap text around images<\/li>\n
- pgfgantt<\/strong> to make a Gantt chart<\/li>\n
- titlesec<\/strong> and a number of other tweaks to make things compact<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The packages are fairly common and can be installed on Ubuntu-like Linux systems with a single command (sudo apt-get install texlive texlive-latex-extra texlive-humanities texlive-fonts-extra<\/em>).\u00a0 The content of the template comes from this blog post<\/a>, and the output looks something like this:<\/p>\n
![\"proposal_cover\"](\"http:\/\/all-geo.org\/volcan01010\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/proposal_cover.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This post is a taste of (not so) slackademia.\u00a0 It shows how much work is involved in preparing the funding application for a NERC Standard Grant.\u00a0 It also includes a LaTeX template for anyone writing their own.\u00a0 It can be … Continue reading
- helvet<\/strong> for Arial-like font<\/li>\n
- anysize<\/strong> to set 2cm margins<\/li>\n