Time to rework the funding cycle?

Finding the time to sit down and write a grant application is one of the big challenges researchers face in today’s workplace.

A recent survey of Australian researchers confirms that the grant writing process is time-consuming, stressful and impacts their work and personal lives.

A large amount of time is invested in applying for grants in the Australian system.

Researchers spent an estimated 550 years preparing 3727 proposals in 2012 for National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) funding - 21% of which were funded. This was at an estimated annual salary cost of $66 million, although these figures do not include administrative or technical support, peer review and the personal costs involved.

Coupled with declining success rates - the number of proposals submitted to the NHMRC is rising steadily and the success rates steadily declining (17% of grants were funded in 2013) - it’s not surprising the process is having a negative impact on peoples’ lives.

This qualitative study of 215 Australian researchers looked at the impact of the grant writing process on applicants and found that the process of preparing grant proposals for a single annual deadline was stressful, time-consuming and conflicted with personal responsibilities.

Almost all researchers surveyed agreed that preparing grant proposals took priority over other work (97%) and personal (87%) commitments, caused them stress (93%) and restricted their holidays during the period of writing (88%).

Almost all those surveyed supported that the current processes to submit proposals (95%) and peer review (90%) needed to change.

Moves to reduce the burden on applicants and the peer-reviewed system, such as the 2012 McKeon review’s recommendation to streamline the grant proposal process, are a clear acknowledgement that the extra work involved in applying for research funding needs to change.

The authors suggest that having more than a single annual deadline for grants, like some international schemes that have multiple rounds per year, would distribute the funding opportunities across the year and shift the timing of the funding cycle to minimise applicant burden. This, in turn, would give Australian researchers more time to work on actual research and their personal lives.

This study was recently published in BMJ Open