What NOT to do on your proposal!

The Chronicle of Higher Education has published an amusing but informative article, written by seven experienced review panelists, entitled, "How to Fail at Grant Writing". Some examples:

"Don't explicitly state any goals, objectives, or hypotheses in your grant proposal. A good panelist will be able to figure out your questions from the methods."

"Make it obvious that you have cut and pasted sections from your other grants into this new proposal. Don't worry if the formatting does not match or there are sentences and sections from the old proposals that have no bearing on this one. Reviewers are impressed by people who are too busy to proofread."

NSF adds data management plan requirement

Any proposal to the National Science Foundation that is due on or after January 18, 2011, must include a supplementary document entitled, "Data Management Plan," which will demonstrate how the proposal will conform to the NSF's policy on dissemination and sharing of research results. For more information, see this section of the Grant Proposal Guidelines.