Advice from Nature for Early-Career Investigators applying for their first NIH R01 grant

If you are an Early Stage Investigator seeking advice for your first NIH R01 application submission, you have likely received conflicting advice from multiple sources. Although usually well-intentioned, even experienced scientists often give unhelpful advice for preparing your grant proposal. For example, yes, there are a very small number of researchers who consistently finish gathering their preliminary data, write the grant proposal at the last minute, and manage to be successfully funded. Many of these people are individuals who work best under pressure and who are engaged in fields such as emergency medicine research. In over 20 years of working with hundreds of NIH-funded researchers at multiple high-ranking research institutions, I have come across only a small number of people who are consistently successful with this approach. Thus, taking a last-minute approach is not likely to set you up for the highest likelihood of success.

Trusted grant proposal advice can be hard to come by for new applicants, which is why I was excited to come across a series put out by the esteemed scientific journal Nature last year. There is a collection of articles titled Advice to Early Career Investigators that includes advice on various aspects of proposal preparation aimed at junior investigators. Although I found it grouped within the pediatric research section, the advice is applicable to research in many fields. For example, articles include Unexpected lifeskills for physician-scientists: advice to early career investigators and Essentials of data management: an overview. 

Perhaps the most relevant article listed that will apply to the majority of Early-Career Investigator applicants is Thirty-two steps for getting your R01: advice to early career investigators. This article is packed with direct, honest, and helpful advice. Step 1 is "At least a year ahead of the deadline, decide on the novel, clinically relevant question you would like to answer. Spend a week or two in PubMed, looking at everything that has been published. Decide how you can advance the science beyond what has been published. Look at the data differently: don’t just buy the conventional wisdom. Begin to formulate an overall aim that is novel, relevant and do-able. Dream big. If you don’t have a big vision, or if you are writing an incremental grant primarily to advance your career, stop. Begin again when you are inspired by the question." 

The authors have broken down the R01 proposal development into 32 clear and realistic steps that are likely to lead to a well-scored application. I highly recommend this particular article as well as this resource from Nature, and I hope the journal will continue to add to this collection to provide updated guidance for new NIH grant applicants.