Sharpening Your Focus: Making Impactful Statements About Your Research Impact

Regardless of sponsor or program, research impact plays a critical role in the grant world. Grant proposals should not only demonstrate brilliant ideas and peer-acknowledged methodologies, but present as highly aligned with targeted sponsor’s mission. Often, how to effectively present your research impact and convince funders that they should support your projects is not given deliberate attention. There are elements of the proposal that deserve that extra look.

What you have done (retrospective): Reviewers expect to see you have made an advancement in your field, evidenced by track record (e.g., publications, awards, membership and/or leadership in professional societies, etc.). The Biosketch is the key document to reflect these achievements. For example, when applying to the NIH, Section C. Contributions to Science is the place to showcase your career’s highlights. Use metrics that make sense for each contribution, such as citation count, H-index, Relative Citation Ratio, journal impact factor, or mentions by news and social media.

What you will do (prospective): In addition to clearly laying out your compelling research hypothesis and well-planned experiments, do stress the anticipated significant impact in your field and on general human health, but perhaps more importantly the alignment of the proposed work to what the sponsor has specifically indicated they hope to fund.

Ideally, for both the retrospective and prospective narratives, in-depth elaboration is presented in the research plan (e.g., NIH Research Strategy). Taking NIH applications as an example, below is a summary of some key points.

 

	Retrospective	Prospective
Why	To demonstrate track record To justify significance ·To validate feasibility	To align with sponsor’s funding mission To advance/gain knowledge in the field To benefit human health
How	Biosketch Contributions to Science – use metrics wisely Research Strategy Significance – describe scientific premise based on your work (as well as others’) Approach – employ established techniques that are published and/or patented	Specific Aims Impact statement – anticipated accomplishments should be in line with the sponsor’s mission Research Strategy Significance – explain how the proposed project will advance your field Innovation – show novelty and expected paradigm-shifting outcomes

References:

• NIH General Application Guide for NIH and Other PHS Agencies, SF424 (R&R), Forms Version E (see Biosketch, Specific Aims, and Research Strategy)
• Research Impact Assessment
• NIH iCite
• Biosketch Format Pages, Instructions and Samples
• Research metrics by Scopus