George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis
Center for Mental Health Services Research

GRANT WRITING RESOURCES

Burroughs Wellcome Fund & HHMI - http://www.hhmi.org/grants/pdf/labmgmt/book.pdf

Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty was developed from presentations and discussions that took place in a course for new investigators by Burroughs Wellcome and HHMI.  You may download this book, as a PDF file.  See Chapter 9:  “Getting Funded.”

 

NIH-NIAID:  “How to Write a Grant” - http://www.niaid.nih.gov/ncn/grants/write/index.htm

This new (June 2003), very comprehensive, 60-page document can be downloaded as a PDF or Word file.   It makes extensive use of hyperlinks to primary and secondary sources that are especially helpful.  It provides advice and opinions from NIH staff and successful PI’s, in addition to explaining NIH forms, requirements, and processing in a highly readable, non-bureaucratic style. The checklists are great:  http://www.niaid.nih.gov/ncn/grants/charts/checklists.htm#gabst

 

NIH-CSR:  “Grant Writing Tips Sheets” - http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/grant_tips.htm

A compendium of various NIH institute guides and tip sheets, including one titled “Tips for New NIH Grant Applicants” and “A Straightforward Description of What Happens to your Research Project Grant Application After it is Received for Peer Review”

 

Science Magazine – Next Wave:  “How Not to Kill a Grant Application”

http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/1999/09/20/2

This six-part series targets new investigators and offers good hands-on suggestions for writing grants in general and on each section of the grant in particular.  It is written with a sense of humor and enlivened by sometimes pithy quotes.

 

Science Magazine – Next Wave:  “Toolkit:  How to Get an R01 Grant”

http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2001/09/27/1

This provides a good, short overview of grant writing and processing with links to useful NIH Web sites.  For beginners, this is a good place to start, but even for those with a little more experience, this article contains very useful information.

 

NIH-CSR (Center for Scientific Review) – Study Section Rosters

http://www.csr.nih.gov/Roster_proto/sectionI.asp

Here you can view:

1.             Description of the kinds of research appropriate to each study section

2.             Name and contact information of the Scientific Review Administrator (SRA) who has overall responsibility for the peer review process

3.             Roster of reviewers for upcoming cycles

Use this site to find the names of study sections in your area of research.  This information is key to your NIH application cover letter.  NIH encourages applicants to contact Scientific Review Administrators to discuss planned submissions and to be certain that the proposal is directed to the appropriate review group. 

 

Mimi Zeiger, Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers, 2nd edition.  New York:  McGraw-Hill, 2000. 

This is an outstanding how-to book that includes sections about sentence structure, paragraph structure, and each of the components of biomedical research papers (including the introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, abstract, and title). 

 

Stedman’s Online Medical Dictionary - http://www.stedmans.com

If you are not sure about the correct spelling or nomenclature for biomedical terms, you may find this a useful resource.

 

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Updated 07/14/2005

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