Scientific Grant Writing - Sessi

Visuals

Serial vs. Parallel

Three principles

• A visual's purpose is immediately apparent.
• A visual does not raise unanswered questions.
• A visual is made fully clear with captions.

Qualities

• Self contained
• clear
• convincing
• concise
• relevant
• QUICK TO GRASP the point or the uniqueness

Introduction

: Draw the reader inside the paper

role

• Highlight the novelty
• Justify your purpose and timing
• Justify your approach
• Place work in context of others'
• Justify the impact of problem
• Facilitate understanding for rest of the paper

When

• After writing the preliminary abstract
• After the result are in form my team

Its length

depends

Writing style

more casual

What's in the introduction

• Main research question
• The scope of the research(data, field boundaries)
• The personal story of the WHYs(why now/why this/why this why/why should the reader care?
• Some definitions

Beginning and End

• Do not use common sense to start
• Do end with a description of the structure of the paper

What to reference

• Others' methods used
• Any result/interpretation supportive or conflicting
• Earlier work framing your approach
• Review papers adding value
• Preferably peer-reviewed/target journal/most cited/verified/

Reference trap

• unchecked references
• unbalanced references
• plagiarised references
• unnecessary references
• missing references
• courtesy references
• plagiarism
  • reference and quotes.
  • rewriting is a gift. use it.
• Trap of imprecision or over generalization
• The judgement trap
  • extend/build/add dimension/zoom in/zoom out
  • the author recognise...
  • requires validation/more evidence/duplication
  • alternative interpretation
  • explore alternatives/pan right/pan left
  • the times, they are changing
  • inspired/motived
  • balanced view
  • justified claim

Qualities of introduction

• mindful/story-like/authoritative/complete/concise

Conclusion

write positively.

Qualities of conclusion
positively charged/predictable/concise/coherent with title, abstract, and introduction/different from introduction

Sentence structure

positive/negative/ordering

Fluidity: Guiding Expectation

• Expectations: writing from the readers' perspective.
• Topic based progression: constant topic/topic to sub-topic/topic-stresss chain
• Sentence-based progression: time/logical/announced sequence/numeric sequences
• No progression: expansion(example, summary, illustration...)
  transition words: (in addition, moreover, further more, thus, hence, therefore, it follows..., accordingly, ...) dangerous
• Avoid distracting details