Share your research proposal to support academic collegiality

So, here is a blog entry that is exciting to write as it touches on something that we felt is really important – sharing in academia. Some types of sharing are more common than others (lunch comes to mind as a rare one?). But this is a text about a specific purpose of sharing – research proposals. And we think that there are many good reasons to get into the habit of sharing your proposals. Moreover, share it where it is visible and where people can reach out to you. The benefits of sharing a proposal on a public platform outweigh the downsides and we will explain why.

So, some of the ideas written here come from our personal experience of writing proposals and getting frustrated by not being able to find helpful examples. Then, some of it is also based on our personal experience of sharing and experiencing what comes next. For example, when I (aistė here!:)) shared one unsuccessful and one successful proposal on my ResearchGate account, people approached me with some questions that they could not get answers to elsewhere. And some questions are simple, but at the time of writing they often feel crucial and frustration of not knowing the answer is real! One such example is formatting of text sections. I know, might seem trivial for some, but when you are limited in time and space to write a proposal, formatting gets into your head!

We also understand that sharing proposals might be not such a good idea in some research fields. We feel that in ours (policy and anthropology), however, it can be done. And this is why:

1. Build a community through sharing! Academia can often feel as a disconnected place where everyone is busy with their own work, where something as trivial as buildings can be the reason who you hang out with and who feels as an outsider. But it does not have to be that way! Sharing your proposal allows people from different fields and from far away countries to find you and to speak to you. And this creates a feeling of community that is a highlight of academic work, at least for us. Supportive and empathetic academic community is the place where we want to be.
2. Nurture academic integrity! The word integrity might mean many things to different people. So, here we will use the ICAI definition, which is about a ‘commitment to six fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage.’ (1) Maybe not all apply directly, but surely one needs honesty and courage to share their proposal online!:) And then you need to trust those who will read. For some this trust is associated with the fear of criticism or the fear of ideas being stolen. At the same time, you can only start and build that trust by sharing. Similarly, by sharing publicly, you claim the ownership of the ideas presented. Next, respect and responsibility might come when people will approach you with questions. You should have the responsibility to reply and show respect for questions that might seem trivial to you, because someone is, perhaps, going through quite a different journey of academic career than you have (it is easy to forget that). We used a personal and oversimplified interpretation of ICAI values here, but feel free to think about how it would apply to you personally! Fairness, however, should have its own paragraph and therefore appears next.
3. Contribute to fair access for all! Good quality writing courses, especially proposal writing courses or even resources such as university writing centers are not available for many people. Often, we depend on our own resources to build up those skills. So, being aware that access to good training and good writing support through a university is more of a privilege than a norm, is one of the reasons why sharing your proposal publicly can help others.
4. Sharing disrupts cliques and opens space for collegial support! The other thing connected to the 3rd point above is that some of us ended up in labs and offices where there was no healthy and supportive working relationship. It means that looking for the next academic job and writing a proposal can feel very lonely. But one does not have to have an amazing lab team to get help. They could find it online and you can contribute by simply sharing your proposal. On the other hand, it might feel like you do not have enough hours in the day to support someone you never even met. It might also feel that your advice would not be so helpful. So, it is ok to decline an advice request, if you feel overwhelmed at work or in general, and it is also ok to say that there are limits to the advice you might give.
5. Make resources more openly available for scholars without the same resources! For instance, at my (Hi, this is Asia!) PhD university, we had a research proposal writing class which was dedicated to breaking down the structure for a large research proposal. As part of this course, we had access to successful and unsuccessful research proposals written by prior students and shared with us (with their agreement). These examples were extremely helpful in writing our own proposals; however, not all students have access to example proposals and actively working to decrease that inequality benefits everyone. It increases the potential for the diversity of ideas within the field and has the potential to reach people who would benefit the most including those from underrepresented groups, or from non-native language speakers to name a few. Reaching these groups only allows for richer scholarship.
6. Open access research proposals open the door for collaboration possibilities to a wider network of people. Sharing a proposal following a successful or unsuccessful submission has the opportunity for researchers to engage with your research either at the beginning of the project when collaboration may be most beneficial and practical or, conversely, you may be able to collaborate with a colleague to be able to restructure and resubmit a proposal to be more successful.

What then are the perceived downsides? As mentioned before, a common perceived downside of sharing any kind of work with either data or ideas is that other scholars will take those ideas or data without crediting the author and use them for their own research. While this is always a possibility, there are a few options for decreasing the likelihood. One, is that you have the option to censor any data that you may have included in the proposal but have not yet published. Secondly, by making the proposal openly available, the upside is that your work is clearly associated with you. Making proposals openly available makes it more transparent when stealing occurs.

There can sometimes be a feeling as if we are competing against one another as academics, but we all bring our own unique qualifications when we apply for a grant or a job position. Rather than trying to compete with other scholars who offer their own unique insights and skill sets, it is more productive to try and be the best candidate we can, be ourselves. Let’s open the doors to more possibilities for collaborations within our disciplines as well as between disciplines. Let’s shift our mentality away from competition and towards sharing! 

(1) The International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI). The Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity, third edition: 20019_ICAI-Fundamental-Values_R12.pdf (academicintegrity.org)

Text authors: SEAS fellows Asia and Aistė🙂