Strategy for NIH Funding
Ten Steps to a Winning R01 Application
For your R01 application to succeed, it must meld a highly significant and innovative topic with iron-clad feasibility. NIH calls that combination "impact"—which is reflected in an application's peer review results: its overall impact score.
When evaluating your application, your reviewers will ask: could the project move the field forward without being too risky? Could you accomplish it within the time and resources at your disposal?
The steps below give you a roadmap for designing a high-impact project that will stand out in peer review.
Note: We're updating the steps on this page based on a series of NIAID Funding Newsletter articles. As each article comes out, we'll update the corresponding section below.
Table of Contents
Ten Steps—Outlined
If you are a new investigator or entering a new field, start at the beginning. If you are continuing your research, begin with Step 3.
1. Conduct a self evaluation. Assess what field of research you best qualify for. To apply for an R01, you'll need significant experience and publications (first or last author) in your field—an area of science like AIDS or TB vaccines or a technology, such as imaging or bioinformatics.
To make sure your reviewers agree, evaluate your training, publications, and presentations at scientific meetings.
For more on this topic, read:
2. Find a niche. Now that your self evaluation is done, you're ready to identify your own niche in your field.
Your niche is the specialized area in your field (for example, understanding the immune evasion of TB) where you will conduct research and create new knowledge for the next several years. Get our take on finding your niche in:
3. Draft two to four (three is most common) Specific Aims you could accomplish in the four or five years of a grant.
In this step, you focus your niche down to a single project. Create an initial draft of the project's Specific Aims: goals you can accomplish within the timeframe of a grant and with resources you can access.
As you consider and prioritize various potential aims, keep impact in mind. Your Specific Aims need to be able to push the frontiers of knowledge ahead, starting from what's known, as our graphic illustrates.
Begin using our Iterative Approach to Application Planning described below.
To further gain more insight into these concepts, visit our Sample Applications and Summary Statements from outstanding funded PIs.
| PI |
Field |
Niches |
Project Title |
| Colin Parrish, Ph.D. |
Viral diseases of dogs and cats, concentrating on parvoviruses. |
Host range control, receptor binding, antibody binding to viral proteins and capsids, biology of cell entry, and viral evolution for parvoviruses and other viruses. |
"Structural controls of functional receptor and antibody binding to viral capsids." |
| Adam Ratner, M.D., M.P.H. |
Pathogenesis of infectious diseases, focused on bacterial diseases affecting children. |
Bacterial colonization and host range, evolution and function of bacterial toxins, infectious causes of preterm birth, and epidemiology of pediatric infectious diseases. |
"Gardnerella vaginalis: toxin production and pathogenesis." |
| Boris Striepen, Ph.D. |
Cell and molecular biology of protozoan parasites. |
Function and cell biology of the parasite chloroplast and novel targets for the treatment of cryptosporidiosis. |
"Biology of the apicomplexan plastid." |
| Carolina Wählby, Ph.D. |
Methods for high throughput image based screening. |
Screening of C.elegans, focusing on infectious diseases and fat metabolism. |
"Image analysis for high-throughput C. elegans infection and metabolism assays." |
See the following resources for details:
4. Identify an institute, review committee, and potential reviewers. Start by making sure NIH has an institute that would most likely be interested in funding the research you are considering. Then, look for a study section and potential reviewers who would appreciate your idea for a project.
Check out study section members and their interests, and keep looking until you find the most scientifically compatable group to target your application to.
Get more information in:
As you proceed after this point, make sure you remain satisfied with what you've done for steps 1 to 4. For example, check to see you're still excited about your proposed scientific focus and comfortable with the institute or study section you've identified. If you find yourself wavering, don’t hesitate to return to the beginning and make modifications.
5. Start sizing up your Specific Aims. At this point, you need to further assess the high-impact Specific Aims you drafted.
Can you justify these aims with preliminary data? Do they lend themselves to a testable hypothesis (or hypotheses)? Could you achieve your objectives with the time, funds, and resources available if the grant is funded? If not, choose other aims to achieve your goals.
For more on this topic, read:
6. Outline your experiments. After this initial test of your draft Specific Aims, you're ready to start sketching out experiments, timelines, and anticipated outcomes.
As you work through the next steps, use our
Iterative Approach to Application Planning to assess and reassess the feasibility of your aims and research design as it develops.
Take a look at:
7. Define the characteristics of your research team. Make sure you have the necessary expertise to complete all aspects of the research.
If you need more expertise to complete the experiments, consider bringing in expert coinvestigators, consultants, or even another PI (using a multi-PI project approach).
Learn more in Design a Project and Team Science in Part 2. Pick and Design a Project.
8. Define the resources you can access and those you will need to secure. Reassess whether the project is still feasible with resources you have.
If you do not have access to equipment you require, explore other options such as sharing it with other investigators in your institution or requesting funds to buy it in your application.
For other facts and advice, go to Design a Project in Part 2. Pick and Design a Project.
9. Divide your research into projects that fit within your proposed budget. Continuing that thought, ask yourself whether you can get the work done with the funds you're requesting.
Go back and check that your plans are in sync with the budget you are planning. Keep in mind that, for most people, personnel costs are the biggest expense.
Get the full scoop in:
10. Write an application that will excite your reviewers. Now that you have designed a feasible project that will interest your reviewers, start writing.
Make a strong case to your reviewers—convince them that you understand the problem, can perform the research, and have access to necessary resources and expertise.
And write for both your reviewer audiences: those who are subject matter experts in your field and the others who are experts in related fields.
Follow our Strategy to Write the Research Plan in Part 3. Write Your Application.
Step 1: Conduct a Self Evaluation
When applying for an independent research grant, you'll need demonstrable expertise in a scientific field, an area of science like AIDS or TB vaccines or a technology, such as imaging or bioinformatics.
Your qualifications lay the foundation for your grant-seeking efforts: whatever you write in your application is immaterial unless your reviewers deem you able to complete the work you propose.
They will scrutinize your application for your credentials, publications, and presentations at scientific meetings, to determine whether you are a new investigator or an experienced one breaking into a new field as well as to gauge your technical expertise and grasp of the research area.
You may need outside collaborators to round out the technical expertise that your research demands, but you will still need to convince reviewers that you understand all aspects of your project.
Take Aim
When picking an area to study, most investigators stay in the field where they are already working or extend their interests to a highly-related field.
A proven track record in a specific field builds the confidence of your peer reviewers in your ability to conduct the research. For a more experienced investigator, reviewers consider past successes to be indicators of whether he or she can successfully compete in a new area of research.
To assess your qualifications to work in a certain area of research, we suggest following these steps.
- Evaluate your training, publications, and presentations at scientific meetings in the field.
- Be critical: look at yourself through the eyes of your future reviewers.
- Ask colleagues or advisors to make the same assessment of you.
To help you determine where your research might best fit at NIH, review mission statements of its institutes and centers (ICs) and be mindful that different NIH ICs can have overlapping research priorities. Find this information at NIH’s Institutes, Centers, and Offices.
Got the Creds?
To get nods from reviewers, you'll need significant experience and a publication record (first or last author) in respected peer-reviewed journals. Though a history of overseeing projects in your field can be helpful, keep in mind that nothing, including review articles, can substitute for high quality peer-reviewed research papers.
If you are trying for your first independent grant, your reviewers will also ask whether you will be able to lead a major research project in the proposed area.
Experienced investigators wishing to enter a new field may want to start with a small grant type such as an exploratory/developmental research grant (R21) or a small grant (R03) before trying for an R01. These smaller awards could permit you to generate key preliminary data (especially “proof of principle” data) for a later R01.
Anyone needing more experience or wanting to change fields should also consider getting more training in the new area before preparing a grant application, unless the grant program is specifically designed to attract investigators new to a particular field of research. Such training can come from formal courses offered by (or through) professional societies or hands-on training gained in the laboratory of an experienced colleague.
Also, if you're working in an area that's different from your previous one, it's worth taking the time to publish in this new area, possibly through a collaboration, before applying for a grant.
You may also want to look into our career development awards, which are especially helpful for postdocs.
For example, the NIAID Career Transition Award (K22) lets you gain experience with support. For other institutes, look into the NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00). NIAID makes very few of these awards, but some other institutes fund a good number of them.
We also support the mentored K awards below. Mentored awards allow new investigators to develop necessary credentials under the guidance of a more experienced scientist.
For more information, read our Advice on Mentored Career Development Awards.
Related Links
Search for publications
Search for funded projects, experts in your field, their publications and grants, and study sections that reviewed their applications. By doing so, you can get a good perspective on the depth and breadth of projects that previously excited reviewers as well as a sense of the extent to which cutting-edge technology and innovation play in the overall project design.
Look for training opportunities
New Investigator Guide to NIH Funding
Strategy for NIH Funding
Small and Exploratory/Developmental Research Grants SOP
Step 2: Find Your Niche
In this next step, we help prepare you to find a research niche in your field where you can make the greatest impact.
Your niche is a specialized corner of your field where you could conduct research for the next, let's say, 10 years.
Finding your own niche takes you on a quest:
- Locate the most promising research needs and opportunities in your field.
- Assess whether you have the skills to make an impact.
- Look at the other players and judge whether you can compete.
Two potential means of achieving these objectives are networking with people who are in the field and searching the literature online.
In the Related Links section below, we give you links to useful research tools.
Look Wide, Dig Deep
In your general field of science, you should strive to work in a unique area (for example, understanding the immune evasion of TB) where you can create important new knowledge and maximize your impact in the field.
To home in on one, learn all you can about your broader field (e.g., host defense against bacterial infection).
Network: talk to colleagues and meet new people at scientific meetings to get ideas for opportunities in your field. Listen to the buzz and brainstorm ideas you have with the experts.
Take notes as you gather information about the research interests of people in your field, keeping in mind some of them may end up as your reviewers.
As you interact, be sure to make an impression, so people will remember you. For example:
- Request something: advice, collaboration, a reagent.
- Inquire about the other person's work.
- Ask questions about the field.
- Follow up with an email.
You want to begin networking as early in your career as you can. That way, you can start matching your experience, interests, and abilities with opportunities in science.
After you have some ideas to follow, review the literature to check out your findings and glean ideas for hot topics in the field. See what research has been done and what remains to be done in your area of interest. Filling a previously unfilled knowledge gap is generally a good approach to designing a project, assuming the underlying question is an important one.
Along the way, allow yourself to benefit from serendipity: follow new scientific leads even if they take you in a surprising direction. Think about whether a paradigm-shifting discovery in a related field can be applied to your own area of research.
Assess Your Competitiveness
Just as you scrutinized your field in light of your qualifications, you'll do the same for your niche.
Ask yourself: do I have the skills to make an impact in this area? For the research needs and opportunities you uncover:
- Determine whether you have the knowledge and resources to pursue them.
- Get opinions on that judgment from people you respect.
- Make sure your strengths match up with potential projects that can move the field forward.
It's also important to carve out your own space, so explore opportunities in underdeveloped research areas.
While it's usually a good idea to bypass crowded areas where it's hard to compete with established investigators, make absolutely certain that the area is important to your field—some niches are untouched because they are not considered significant.
In making your decision, get help from colleagues, mentors, and an NIH program officer.
Also get feedback on your ideas by giving a talk about your work at scientific conferences or at other universities as a guest lecturer. This will help to develop your niche and get critical analysis of your ideas before you start your application.
Not only that, it will help expose you and your ideas to the broader scientific community, including colleagues who actively serve as reviewers on NIH grants. If these experienced reviewers have an opportunity to discuss your ideas with you, it may help you better understand how your application might be perceived in peer review.
After settling on a research niche to develop, you'll be well served by a plan that focuses on a broad goal you'd like to accomplish during the next five to ten years.
Then you can divide those different goals into discrete projects you can accomplish within the four or five years of a grant. Those objectives will become your Specific Aims, which we cover in the next step.
Related Links
Strategy for NIH Funding
Find publications
Find funded projects, experts in your field, their publications and grants, and study sections that reviewed their applications
Step 3: Draft Specific Aims
Thinking high level, ask yourself what objectives you could achieve within the timeframe of a grant.
After you make up your mind on what area of research to pursue, you are ready to start designing a high-impact project for an application that you can complete within the four to five years of an R01 grant.
Your project will tackle important research within your niche: it must be able to move your field forward without being too risky.
At the Drawing Board
You'll start to hone your ideas by drafting objectives, known in NIH lingo as Specific Aims.
Thinking high level, ask yourself what objectives you could achieve within the timeframe of a grant.
Your goal is to create aims that are achievable in that period and have clear endpoints your reviewers can readily assess.
Iterative Approach to Application Planning
- Staying in your niche, propose a project that:
- Addresses a highly significant problem.
- Is innovative—can create new knowledge.
- Outline draft Specific Aims and one or more hypotheses.
- Identify a potential funding institute and a study section that would likely embrace your research.
- Outline experiments.
- Assess feasibility.
- See whether you have access to all needed resources and expertise.
- Make sure the project is not growing too big for your targeted time and budget.
- If you hit a roadblock, go back to the failure point and revise your plans.
While you could design a project around two to four Specific Aims, most people create three.
Limiting your application to few Specific Aims keeps you clear of the very common mistake of being overly ambitious. It's much better to think small and propose less than to do the opposite.
Like your topic, your Specific Aims should build on your previous experience.
Form a Gestalt
Although it may seem an early stage to think about experiments and resources, these variables go hand-in-hand with picking a project.
You can't plan experiments with expertise, resources or funds you won't have, so you must take into account all aspects of your research.
Because you have a lot of items to juggle, we recommend using the iterative process shown in the box.
Your goal is to make sure at the planning stage that your aims will excite potential reviewers and be feasible within the time and resources you are planning to request.
If the project is untenable, you will need to rethink your experiments or even your Specific Aims.
Hypothetically Speaking . . .
Why do you need a hypothesis (or multiple hypotheses)? Because that's what reviewers expect!
Some people write their Specific Aims first and then develop a hypothesis; others do the reverse—use the approach that works best for you.
A strong hypothesis should be well-focused and testable by the Specific Aims and experiments.
After you create your hypothesis, go back and take stock again of your prospective reviewers in light of your draft aims and hypothesis to gauge whether you think they will applaud your ideas.
Your reviewers must believe that your hypothesis is sound and important, the basis for research that can make a high impact on its field.
Related Links
Strategy for NIH Funding
Sample Applications and Summary Statements
Step 4: Identify a Study Section
Whereas the first three steps view your funding quest from the vantage point of your qualifications and resources, this step looks at how your idea dovetails with the NIH peer review system.
Then it peers even further, into the minds of your reviewers.
Propose research that both you and your prospective reviewers will care or, even better, be excited about.
Tell It to the Judge
Not only are your reviewers the main audience for your application, they are its judge and jury too.
At the end of the day, the primary basis for our funding decision—your percentile rank for an R01—is the result of their deliberations.
Since only a small percentage of applications succeed, you'll want yours to stand out.
When submitting an investigator-initiated application (i.e., not through a request for applications), you will lay the groundwork for success by proposing research that both you and your prospective reviewers will care or, even better, be excited about.
Try to adopt their perspective to figure out what they would regard as new and important, so they’ll sit up and take notice. That approach will put you on that path of creating an application that appeals to the people who, more than anyone, will determine its fate.
You've Got Homework
Rethink the project if reviewers would be unlikely to appreciate the significance of your field and project or share your scientific perspective.
NIH's Center for Scientific Review (CSR) manages more than two hundred review committees.
They cover the gamut of scientific pursuits from basic to clinical and behavioral research, technology-based studies, and applied research for all human diseases and a plethora of scientific disciplines.
If you are submitting an investigator-initiated application, you'll be well served by taking the time to learn about the committees most relevant to you so you have that critical knowledge at all steps of application planning.
You'll need to assess and reassess your potential reviewers when you:
- Choose a project
- Evaluate your choice of project
- Write the application
To find committees and people, review CSR's Integrated Review Groups. Find roster links at the top of the study section pages.
After homing in on a few study sections, assess whether the members would appreciate the significance of your field and project and whether they would likely share your scientific perspective. If not, rethink the project.
Identify the three to five people who would most likely be your assigned reviewers. For each one, answer this question: would this person be enthusiastic about my project?
Then conduct some research of the committee members—visit their Web sites and read their publications so you can choose the study section that's right for you.
While you can't know for certain who your reviewers will be, you can identify people who would either serve as your assigned reviewers (primary and secondary reviewers and readers) or who have similar expertise.
For multidisciplinary work and highly innovative work, it can be very hard to find a study section that combines expertise from many disciplines.
Play It Safe
Nothing about this process is assured.
But having your application reviewed by people who will appreciate your research is so critical that we strongly advise you to do the analysis we've described.
Make sure the needed expertise will be there.
- Request the required expertise (not named people) in your cover letter.
- After you apply, check the final roster online. It's posted around 30 days after the receipt date—you may want to add this important event to your calendar.
For multidisciplinary work and highly innovative work, it can be very hard to find a study section that combines expertise from many disciplines, and you can't count on the addition of ad hoc reviewers.
(If you go that route, you’ll need to spend more thought and time explaining areas that might be unfamiliar to most of the reviewers in your application.)
If you don't think NIH has an appropriate study section for the research you are contemplating, rethink the project.
Related Links
CSR
Strategy for NIH Funding
Sample Applications and Summary Statements—find examples of outstanding funded applications
NLM Databases and Electronic Resources—find publications
NIH RePORTER—find funded projects, experts in your field, their publications and grants, and study sections that reviewed their applications
Step 5: Size Up Your Specific Aims
Here we show you how to put to the test your draft objectives—Specific Aims—you have planned for your project.
Though we are following the steps shown in Iterative Approach to Application Planning above, this step provides an extra check of your aims in light of the study section you identified.
Take Aim
Start assessing your Specific Aims by taking a hard look at the significance and innovation of your planned research.
Ask yourself:
- Would my reviewers see my proposed project as tackling an important problem in a significant field?
- Would they view my Specific Aims as capable of opening up new discoveries in my field?
- Would my reviewers regard the work as new and unique?
You'll want to get outside opinions for a fresh perspective. Don't assume others, including your reviewers, will consider a research area to have the same priority that you do.
Target those who are in your field and those who are not. It’s highly likely that at least one of your assigned reviewers will not be in the field.
Also discuss your draft aims with colleagues who also aren’t in your field. If they can understand your project and get excited about it, you have a better chance your reviewers will as well.
At this point, you may want to go back to Step 3: Draft Specific Aims, so you can be as certain as possible that the committee will appreciate your research plans.
Be Innovative but Stay Mainstream
Although innovation is one of the five peer review criteria, many experienced investigators report that it's difficult to succeed in review with highly innovative research.
Heed these words from an investigator who is a PI of an NIH New Innovator Award.
"It's always more difficult to convince people against commonly held beliefs (even though they may not be based on experimental data). Moreover, due to the higher risk of our work, we may also have a higher failure rate," says Sanjay K. Jain, M.D., of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health.
As you scrutinize your Specific Aims, make sure your reviewers will view them to be within the scientific mainstream.
You can think of your research as a fish in the river of scientific knowledge. While you can swim anywhere, you have to stay in the water.
Reviewers expect the same idea: your research can be somewhat innovative—at the water's edge—but not so innovative that it's out on the bank.
So the research you propose should be new and unique and able to push forward the frontier of knowledge just ahead starting from what's known, as the Expanding the Frontiers of Knowledge graphic we showed above illustrates.
When you write your application, you'll put the information about your project's importance and innovation in the Significance and Innovation sections.
Get an idea of how investigators who wrote outstanding applications balanced these complexities by viewing our Sample Applications and Summary Statements, and read more advice on the pages linked below.
Related Links
Strategy for NIH Funding
Find publications
NLM Databases and Electronic Resources
Find funded projects, experts in your field, their publications and grants, and study sections that reviewed their applications
NIH RePORTER
Step 6: Outline Your Experiments
This step goes further into the iterative approach that helps you design an innovative and feasible project in a highly significant research area.
Mapping It Out
Now that you have assessed your Specific Aims and are confident they are up to snuff, it's time to sketch out two or three sets of experiments, each likely taking several weeks to complete.
As you work, keep the following questions in mind:
- What are the anticipated outcomes of the experiments?
- Can they conclusively accomplish the aim?
- Is the scope of the project (number of experiments, complexity, money) appropriate to my demonstrated (relevant preliminary data and publications) skill level?
It will help to start a running tab of "who, what, when, where, and how (much money)." That approach gives you a reality check as you plan and ultimately can save you time.
Research usually takes longer than people think it will, so plan your research design with that thought in mind.
Get help if you have never judged timing before or are unsure how long some of your planned experiments are likely to take.
Use a "Wholistic" Approach
Your experimental design—the nitty-gritty of what you will actually do—must enable you to achieve the Specific Aims you describe and test your hypothesis.
For planning purposes, your Specific Aims and research design work in a feedback loop: your aims lead to your experiments, which determine your budget and personnel needs.
But the experiments you can design are limited by the accessibility of people and resources and desired scope of the project.
Using our Iterative Approach to Application Planning is key to ensuring that all aspects of your application stay in sync and in scope as you plan the various parts.
For example, let's say you have an idea for a project that you believe your review committee would judge to be highly significant.
You sketch out a reasonable number of Specific Aims, but when you start designing the experiments you find you cannot gather all the expertise needed to conduct them.
- First, go back to Step 3 and see if there are different experiments that would meet your objectives with the expertise at your disposal.
- If that doesn't work, return to Step 2 and create new aims or even to Step 1 and start over with a new project.
Note that your experimental design is a proposal whose goal is to convince your reviewers that you can create a cogent plan.
Your research may ultimately take you down a different path, which you may do as long as you are contributing to scientific knowledge. Read more on that topic in What Is a Grant?
If you find yourself trying to squeeze too much into your Research Plan, i.e., overloading on Specific Aims, now is the time to step back and reassess.
Set Boundaries
How do you know whether the scope of project is appropriate to your skill level?
If you are new to grant writing, you may want to get advice from your program officer or other respected sources.
Creating a conservative timeline together with the running tab we described above will help you keep expectations in line with reality.
If you find yourself trying to squeeze too much into your Research Plan, i.e., overloading on Specific Aims, now is the time to step back and reassess.
Be realistic about what you can accomplish. But know that even if you are a new investigator, it's fine to ask for five years—the maximum—for an R01 as long as you can fill the time productively.
Related Links
Strategy for NIH Funding
Sample Applications and Summary Statements
Step 7: Build Your Team
Top-notch expertise lies at the heart of your project's feasibility, so expect your reviewers to scrutinize your team's credentials closely.
For an R01 application to succeed in peer review, you'll need to convince them your team is able to complete your proposed research.
In this step, we show you how to meet that expectation.
Here we take you further into the design, focusing on people, while working within the iterative framework you've been relying on to plan effectively.
Make the Pieces Fit
Most projects rely on various types of expertise to carry out the different parts of the research.
For each experiment, you'll need to figure out the know-how required and make sure you can secure it. You may want to consider bringing in expert coinvestigators, consultants, or even another PI (using a multi-PI project approach).
To get there, go through the Iterative Approach to Application Planning shown above.
As you design your Specific Aims and experiments, you'll assess the expertise you'll need, while making sure you stay within your targeted budget.
Though we don't delve into budget planning until Step 9, you will need to consider money when you plan for personnel, your biggest expense.
In these times of tight budgets, your best bet is a modular budget—up to $250,000 in annual direct costs—if you can accomplish your goals within that limit. Most people request $250,000; some ask for $225,000.
In a typical scenario, you can figure personnel will come in at about 80 percent of your budget, and equipment and supplies at around 20 percent.
Even so, you will be able to hire only a limited number of people.
Once you have determined who they are, your institution can give you the salary levels for each type of worker. Then you can calculate costs based on their level of effort (which you will also need for your application's Budget Justification).
In the application, you will specify all key personnel (including collaborators and consultants) by name; for technical staff, note the position only.
Use the Credit Card
Get commitments from collaborators at the planning stage, so you don't waste time designing work you cannot deliver.
Most of the technical staff you hire will likely work on your grant full-time.
Others, especially senior-level collaborators, will work part-time for credit (e.g., the potential of future publications), rather than pay.
It's often a good idea to expand your pool of expertise by recruiting expert consultants and collaborators, especially those who are known and respected in the field.
If you are a new investigator, adding these highly experienced people to your team will help build your reviewers' trust in your future success.
But while collaborations are common, there are some drawbacks.
For one, you will not have control over the execution of that part of the research, for example, the timing of your collaborators' actions. Or something may come up and they may back out at the last minute.
Another issue—which you should decide on at the outset—is the order of authors on future publications. Your collaborators will want to use the data they generate for their grant too and may see themselves as the lead.
Note that collaborators differ from consultants:
- Consultants usually provide advice or services that fill small gaps, for example, supplying software. They usually receive a fee rather than a salary from your grant.
- Collaborators play an active role in the research. A grant may pay part of their salary through a subaward (or not as we noted above).
If you decide to include outside consultants or collaborators (or both), secure a written agreement at the planning stage, so you don't waste time designing work you cannot deliver. You'll include this agreement in your application.
Here are some questions to consider:
- Is the collaborator in your institution?
- If not, what inter-institutional agreements may be necessary?
- You might want to look at multiple PI agreements as an example.
- What intellectual property arrangements do you need to make?
Read more about these arrangements in Consultants or Collaborators—How They Differ.
Up for a Multiple PI Application?
If your application includes an established PI, it will not qualify for the new investigator payline.
Another way to beef up expertise or create a research team is to be part of a multiple PI application.
Think carefully before you decide to go this route especially if you are a new investigator.
Unless all the PIs on a multiple PI application are new, you will not benefit from your new investigator status, and you will lose it for future applications. Read more in Are You "New"? in our New Investigator Guide to NIH Funding.
We can think of a number of reasons that multiple PI applications are often better suited to people who already have grants.
- It's important that new investigators establish their own identity, which can be more difficult in a multiple PI situation.
- It can be more challenging to write a multiple PI application because it is more complex. It can be harder to manage too.
- You are more locked into the research you proposed when another person is involved than you are when you are on your own. (Read more on that topic in What Is a Grant? linked below.)
Note that the multiple PI option is for collaborative, usually multidisciplinary, research and is usually appropriate only if you are in different fields and could not complete the research without the other person.
(When you apply you'll need a detailed leadership plan that describes the governance of the project and justifies use of multiple PIs.)
Despite these caveats, a multiple PI application can be useful for research that needs a team science approach. Learn more about the pros and cons of working on a team on our Team Science page.
If you are conducting multidisciplinary research, make sure NIH has a review committee that will be able to effectively review all aspects of the application.
Not yet ready for an R01? Explore other ways of participating on a grant besides being a principal investigator, such as leading a project on a program project grant. Read more in Not Ready for Independent Support?
Related Links
Strategy for NIH Funding
- Part 2. Pick and Design a Project
- What Is a Grant? in Getting a Grant for Innovative Research
Sample Applications and Summary Statements—find examples of outstanding funded applications
Step 8: Define Resources
In this step, we explore sizing up and gaining access to the resources you'll need to conduct your planned research. We continue the design phase, keeping to the Iterative Approach to Application Planning shown in the box above.
Take Stock
Convincing your reviewers of your project's feasibility is as critical as wowing them with a project they will view as instrumental to your field.
A key part of "yes we can" is access to needed resources, especially major pieces of equipment.
If you are a new investigator, your reviewers will expect you to have fewer resources at your disposal, but they will also expect you to complete all the work you propose.
As you design your Specific Aims and experiments using our iterative process, you'll factor in the resources you'll need (both those at hand and those you request in the application), staying within the limits of your targeted budget.
Our last article discussed using a modular budget—up to $250,000 in annual direct costs—if that's sufficient to meet your goals.
Fill In the Blanks
As you plan your experiments, you'll note your resource needs, particularly expensive equipment (e.g., costing over $10,000) and then take these steps.
1. See what equipment you can share with other investigators.
Try to gain access to large equipment by sharing it with other investigators at your institution or by sharing the cost of buying it.
2. See if you can find a collaborator who has the equipment you need, and determine whether you can work out a feasible arrangement.
For example, if your collaborator's lab is far from yours, you wouldn't want to rely on a machine you'll need for several hours a day.
3. Explore options to access core facilities that provide services and expertise.
Consider whether you can access core facilities at your or a collaborator’s institution to meet your needs for a major piece of equipment and expertise.
If that works, you can avoid having to purchase the equipment and use time to set it up during the grant.
Reviewers often view this approach favorably since you will be working with established facilities with demonstrated results. Make sure to include any facility user fees in your budget.
4. If the options listed above don't pan out and you're new to your institution, look to your start-up funds to see if you can afford a major purchase.
Take into account expenses you may need to pay for.
- For example, do your start-up funds pay for office supplies and support services? In some places, indirect costs pay for those items so find out your institution's arrangements.
- Inquire about policies for access and payments to graduate students (we're counting them as resources rather than personnel on the grant).
Your department chair can tell you which resources and level of support your institution will furnish, so you can then figure out what pieces are missing.
Be aware that you will need to describe your institutional support in your application.
5. Request money in the application to buy the equipment.
This approach is always fine for items such as reagents or small pieces of equipment or other items not usually shared.
But asking NIH to pay for a major purchase is trickier, so we will give you some tips.
- Be sure the equipment is absolutely essential.
- Take care that your reviewers would not expect your organization to have the equipment, e.g., because it's unique to your project.
- If your institution would be expected to have the equipment, explain why you cannot readily access it.
- Use this rule of thumb to gauge whether reviewers would likely think your request is justified.
- If you will be using the equipment at least half-time, they'll likely feel it is appropriate.
- Much less may not be enough.
- Justify the request in your application by explaining why you need the equipment for your research and why you cannot get it any other way.
Should you end up buying the equipment, keep in mind that you will also need to budget for a maintenance contract and repairs.
You should also be aware that if you move to another institution, you may not be able to take your equipment—or your funds—with you. That decision is made by your current institution, your grant's legal grantee.
It's a good idea to get advice from experienced investigators before deciding whether to request funds for a major purchase.
Related Links
Strategy for NIH Funding
Sample Applications and Summary Statements—find examples of outstanding funded applications
Step 9: Nail Your Budget
You want the budget for your R01 application to be in the Goldilocks zone—not too big and not too small, but just right.
On the Mark
Hitting that "just right" sweet spot is critical for multiple reasons.
Let's start with the least obvious: your reviewers will view your budget request as a general gauge of your competence.
A request that misses its mark will undermine their confidence not only in your money smarts but also in your ability to manage a major independent project.
And of course the more evident reason to create an appropriate budget is that the success of your project depends on it.
The Iterative Approach to Application Planning we've been using, shown above, can help you stay on track.
In the Loop
The best things in life may be free, but research isn't one of them.
So—no surprise—all aspects of your experimental design revolve around your budget.
You can plan only those experiments you can afford, and in this era of scarce resources, you want your budget to be as lean as possible.
For most people, that means a modular budget of $250,000 (or less) in annual direct costs.
Why go the modular route? You will have an easier time on several fronts.
- Reviewers tend to be more skeptical about larger projects, especially in a time of fiscal constraints when everyone is hurting.
- Unlike with a detailed budget, reviewers have no details to critique.
- No details means you have less to prepare for your application.
To plan your budget effectively, rely on our iterative process.
Reviewers tend to be more skeptical about larger projects, especially in a time of major fiscal constraints like today.
Start by calculating how much money each experiment will cost based on the personnel and resources needed to do the work.
If the numbers don't line up with your (no-flab) dollar target, go back and revise, making sure that any new plans you make fit your Specific Aims.
And should those objectives change, be sure that your new aims are still significant to your field.
As you develop your plans, stay in this feedback loop, rechecking that all parts remain in sync.
How Much Is Enough?
To gauge expenses, add up costs for people—the largest expense category—reagents, and possibly equipment.
Coming up short will not further your cause—ask for enough money to perform your research and no more.
Include your salary and that of other key personnel as well as consultants you need to hire.
Coming up short will not further your cause—ask for enough money to perform your research and no more.
In addition to fitting the work you propose, your budget must be appropriate to your career level.
If you are a new investigator, reviewers may be skeptical if you ask for a lot of money. Most new investigators should stick to a modular budget.
Here are some FY 2010 data on average grant costs for competing R01 applications you can use as a benchmark.
- Average R01 received roughly $290,000 in direct costs (that does not include the institution's overhead, called facilities and administrative costs).
- About 76 percent of new investigators used a modular budget.
- For non-new investigators, 66 percent went the modular route.
Some types of research are inherently more expensive and require a larger budget. Appropriateness is key.
And note that though you will stay within the limits of a modular budget, your expenses may vary over time.
For example, your personnel costs may be lower in the first year since you may be able to hold off recruiting some of your people until later, but you may need to spend more on equipment.
If you are requesting funds for a big equipment purchase, create a separate module for it as a one-time request (i.e., do not add it to the base amount). We discussed the ins and outs of buying equipment in Step Seven to a Winning Application—Build Your Team.
You can find more information about application budgets and get more advice in the links below and see examples of budgets from successful investigators at Sample Applications and Summary Statements.
Related Links
Strategy for NIH Funding
- Part 2. Pick and Design a Project
- Part 3. Write Your Application
Step 10: Write to Excite
Now that the design phase is over, you are ready to put all that planning to the final test: writing the Research Strategy.
Here we give you tips on creating that winning application by keeping its audience—your peer reviewers—in the forefront of your mind.
Organization, Organization, Organization
Make no mistake: reviewers will not excuse a poorly organized or otherwise unappealing application.
Let's start by acknowledging that your reviewers—your application’s judge and jury—have day jobs.
In their “spare time,” they do us all a great service by agreeing to peer review applications on behalf of NIH. For each review meeting, they look at hundreds of applications and carefully read through those assigned to them.
So while you can expect your reviewers to take their role seriously, they have expectations of you too.
Make no mistake: reviewers will not excuse a poorly organized or otherwise unappealing application.
It won't matter how elegant your science is if your reviewers can't find or understand information they seek. And if that task is too hard, they'll give up and move on to the next application.
NIH gives you broad guidelines for organizing the application, for example, including headers for each section of the Research Strategy.
Beyond that, its organization is up to you, and there are surely dozens of ways to go about it.
But whatever path you choose, be sure to give your reviewers guideposts to your organization. Here are some tips:
- At a minimum, use headers that reflect the application sections, and in the Approach section, your Specific Aims. Add others for clarity as well.
- Use graphics as visual aids.
- Add emphasis with bold or bold italics.
- Label all materials clearly to make it easy to find information.
And don't fill up all the white space just to gain a few extra lines of text.
Instead, spend time editing useless words (see an "in order to?"— just "to" is enough) so you have the space to give your reviewers some visual breaks. (See how hard it is to read without white space in our Example of Text Without Formatting linked below.)
In addition to the guidance we give you here, follow all the instructions in the Grant Application Guide, including font and page limits, so you don't risk having your application returned to you without a review.
Perform for Your Audience
Answer likely concerns proactively to mitigate the possibility that reviewers will raise them at the meeting when you are not there to respond.
Although all your reviewers will score your application, not all will be experts in your field or familiar with your science.
How to get through to them all? Write for both audiences: 1) your assigned reviewers who have expertise in your field and 2) the others who are experts in other fields.
You’ll need different lingo and more background information to convey the significance and feasibility of your research to the "non-expert" committee members, especially in the parts they are most likely to read:
- Specific Aims
- Abstract
- Significance section of the Research Strategy
Based on your knowledge of your reviewers' scientific perspectives, it's also a good idea to anticipate and address their questions about your project's significance and innovation.
You'll want to answer likely concerns proactively to mitigate the possibility that reviewers will raise them at the meeting when you are not there to respond.
If you look at our sample applications, you'll see how the successful PIs who created those applications did just that.
(See Step 4: Identify a Study Section and Know Your Audience linked below for help investigating and writing for your reviewers.)
Try to get as many people excited about your project as you can. Let them know why they should give you the best score by showing how your research is unique and will make a difference.
Score With Impact
When considering the review criteria, reviewers will look at different parts of your application, so you want to know where to cover your bases.
At NIH, success requires impact. You'll need to lay out a convincing case that your project can make a high impact on its field.
The effectiveness of your argument helps to form your reviewers' judgment of your application, which in turn, results in its overall impact score, the main basis for our funding decision.
To arrive at that all-important score, reviewers use NIH's five review criteria—significance, innovation, approach, investigator, and environment.
Impact reflects both the importance of your research (significance and innovation) and its feasibility (approach, investigator, and environment).
When considering the review criteria, reviewers will look at different parts of your application, so you want to know where to cover your bases.
Significance, innovation, and approach correspond to sections of the Research Strategy.
Reviewers assess the investigator criterion largely from your biosketches and gauge environment from the Facilities and Other Resources and the Equipment attachments on the Other Project Information form of the Grant Application Package.
Here are some items to contemplate so you can make sure your application leaves no doubts about significance and innovation:
- Show you are aware of the opportunities and roadblocks in your field.
- Highlight the significance of your research in the context of your field, long-term plans, and preliminary data.
- While you will delve into significance in detail in that section, also think about highlighting significance in your abstract and aims, especially if you think some of your reviewers will need this information to appreciate the importance of your research.
- Explain your innovation: how your research is new and unique and can push the frontiers of your field's knowledge ahead.
Approach Boldly
While all the criteria are important, NIH data show that scores correlate closest with your application's Approach section.
Don't skip the details. Reviewers expect them, so include enough details that they can assess your experimental design and feel confident you are using appropriate methods to get the results you anticipate.
You also want to include enough background and preliminary data to highlight the context and significance of your plans.
To reach your goal, do the following:
- Show how your experiments will yield meaningful data that test your hypothesis.
- Include details to show reviewers you understand and can handle a method, especially if you are new to the field or a new investigator.
- Give alternative experiments and approaches in case you get negative or surprising results.
Highlight Expertise and Resources
Also consider addressing any concerns you feel reviewers may have directly in the Research Strategy.
Make a strong case to your reviewers that your team can perform the research, and you have access to necessary resources.
While you will put the details in the Resources and Biosketches forms, also consider addressing any concerns you feel reviewers may have directly in the Research Strategy.
You'll also do well to make clear where you excel and what unique skills you and your team bring to the research.
Keep it All in Sync
An application is a complex system with interrelated information and parts, so be sure everything is in sync for people, money, resources, and time.
Check for accuracy and consistency, taking these steps:
- Make sure your references and figures are placed and cited accurately.
- Check all factual information.
- Then recheck all factual information.
- Find a lot more items in our Checklists in Inspect Your Application in the Strategy for NIH Funding.
To take stock of internal consistency, get editorial help from others, including nonscientist family and friends.
Related Links
Strategy for NIH Funding
Sample Applications and Summary Statements—find examples of outstanding funded applications
Strategy for NIH Funding
Table of Contents for the Strategy
We welcome your comments, questions, or suggestions. Email deaweb@niaid.nih.gov.