Making the most of a grant

After six (disrupted) years, I have finally come to the end of my Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award. It has been an incredible privilege to spend this time intensively researching. I think – I hope – I have done that privilege justice. You can see my grant outputs at ageworks.info.

But what isn’t often talked about is how hard it can be work to work on a large grant alone for so many years. The camaraderie of teaching is gone, and there are no grounds to complain when things get tough – being on a grant is a privilege, after all! Suck it up, sunshine.

Intensively researching is tough. You are dependent on the research being successful, the outputs coming to fruition, the grant being a success. You promised to move heaven and earth if you got the grant – now you have to actually do it. And, for something like a DECRA, it is like doing ANOTHER PhD. That was hard the first time around. Why did we want to do that again, exactly?

Having come out the other side, I wanted to offer some reflections, of how to make the grant itself a success. For those lucky enough to get a substantial grant, how can you maximise the opportunities it offers?

These reflections build on a conversation we had with Kate Seear, another former DECRA holder (from 2016-2019), and now a Future Fellowship holder, at the start of 2020. A global pandemic has intervened since; my overall recommendation, frankly, is to not have your grant disrupted by a global pandemic…

• When you get the grant, congratulations! Now the real work begins. Start by looking at what you promised in your proposal. Did you get all the money you asked for? No? Well, that gives you scope to reshape the project. What is possible, now, with less funding? What isn’t possible? For Australian Research Council (ARC) grants, your institution is meant to help you work this out.
• It is not uncommon to have other research projects that linger into the start of your grant. It takes most of us time to get started – I was advised, when I started the DECRA, that the first six months would be spent finishing other things! This, then, pushes out the timeline of the grant project itself; and can leave you scrambling to finish long after the grant has finished. Some grants can be extended. So, if you need more time, approach the grant funder. But be mindful, too, that a grant will come to an end all too quickly. Get stuck into the work as soon as you can.
• The project is going to shift and change over the grant period. That is inevitable, especially if the project is disrupted by, say, a global pandemic, illness, or parental leave. You will have to make tough decisions about how the research can or should go on, within this new context, and in a way that is substantially in accordance with what was proposed. If you have to make a major change to the nature of the research or project outputs, that should be approved by the funding body. But relatively minor changes to the nature of the project, within the broad aims and spirit of the proposal, seem to be within your own discretion. Talk to the university research office if in doubt.
• Changes to the project may also lead to changes to the budget. The ARC, for example, can approve shifting funds between categories (i.e. from fieldwork to research assistance), but not to entirely new categories. So there is scope – with approval – to move money around a bit. And, did you know that ARC grant moneys are indexed? So you may have more money in your budget than you expect.
• A grant mentor can be key to guiding you through the research process. But, remember, different grants have different rules, and funders change their rules over time. So advice about budgets, open access and specific grant rules should be directed to a research office or funder directly.
• Grant funders often want a level of open access for grant outputs. And fair enough, if your research is funded with public money. The ARC’s Open Access Policy puts significant responsibilities on researchers to at least try to negotiate open access (here, that outputs be made available within 12 months on a university repository, and that metadata be upload immediately upon publication). As you publish, check the publisher’s author self-archiving policy. Some allow you to share the accepted manuscript pretty much immediately upon acceptance. I have written more about open access – and negotiating open access – in another post.
• Grants come with reporting requirements. For the ARC, the report template is available about a year before the grant ends through RMS. So check out what you need to report on: have you done what you said you would do?
• Like when doing a PhD, it is tempting to get distracted. There are new, shiny research projects that arise; and the world has changed since you put the proposal together. Stay focused. Keep your original proposal nearby, and refer back to it often.
• And good luck!