rivka | (no subject)

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First rough chop of grant application to meet draconian new page limits: 25 pages to 18. I still have to get it down to 12.

Also, I haven't added all the "more detail" sections I promise the reviewers in my response to their critiques. "We have revised Section X.X to include more information about scenarios in which CBT techniques may be incorporated in PATCH, as well as additional examples of an MI approach to conspiracy beliefs." "We expanded the discussion of subject availability and recruitment strategies in Section X.X." "Please see Section X.X for more details about how potential participants will be approached once they have been identified." Yeah, none of that will be a problem when the PAGE LIMITS HAVE BEEN CUT IN HALF.

I haven't read the chopped version yet to see if it even makes sense. *weeps tears of blood*

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ARG.

If only you could shave the linespacing. *g*

By reading the application guidelines, you can envision all the tricks generations of NIH researchers have tried. They specify a list of allowable fonts, a minimum font size, permissible margins, etc. etc. etc. They've seen it all.

Overlapping text in red and blue ink, with sheets of colored cellophane?

Oh, I like that one.

This is inspired....I wonder if it will work for my thesis?

I can't tell you how many hours I have spent making sure that no Times crept in when the only allowed fonts were Arial and Times New Roman.

How much are you allowed add as supporting documentation or appendices ? The one I did earier this year could only be 13 pages in the main grant body, but I was allowed another 13 pages of appendices, which was pleasantly and usefully surprising.

Sadly, NIH is on to that trick. The only thing you're allowed to outsource is research methods you've previously described in published articles.

txtspk is out of the ? i spose.

That would be awesome! Alas, probably not very useful in this case.

*wants to go write a grant - or in my case, a paper - solely in textspeak now*

You could use a twitterator thing to shorten everything first, then go and manually shorten some more. Or moar. No, a lolgrantapplicashun would be wrong.

I think the lolgrantapplicashun process is for another time, sadly.

rivka needs to cut, not add in all those LOLs and CAN HAZes and whatever. Next time, maybe?

Conspiracy beliefs may play a role in ART initiation, refusal, n adherence, although dis area has bn under-studied.

da proposed project is a bridge in a larger body of research designed to identify, explore, n reduce da negative impact of HIV conspiracy theories among African-Americans w/ HIV.

The autoshorteners don't seem to shorten it enough to be worthwhile.

Edited 2010-04-14 20:19 (UTC)

Perhaps it's more a job for Making Light-style disemvoweling...

Th prpsd prjct s hghl nnvtv n ts fcs n HV cnsprc blfs n ts trgt f RT nttn.

That would help a lot with the limits, yes. But wouldn't it create an automatic bias in the reviewer that the grant must not actually be worth reading? I know I feel vaguely soiled just looking at that text.

Edited 2010-04-14 20:24 (UTC)

... or possible to read, even, which txtspk and LOL both are. Drat. I'm all out of shortcuts now.

Subliminal text! that's what you need...

Heeee!

My HIV studeez, let me show u dem.

Sigh - I am dreading cutting down my thesis as I know its going to be over. I suspect grant apps are even harder as you NEED that info for the app to make sense.
Remove all formating? So that all Titles etc are the same font/size as the paragraphs? Any way you can translate procedural processes into flow diagrams? May not take up as much space and they always say a picture paints a 1000 words.

Cutting a document in half while adding more detail is a neat trick. Good luck.

B

Reminds me of one of my favorite sayings

"I didn't have time to write a sentence so I wrote a paragraph instead"

I am sure you are doing this, but remove the second and third adverb and adjective in all sentences, grab your thesaurus, and use bullet points and tables and graphs.

Under the circumstances, a cover note to the effect of 'due to the revised page limit, it was not possible to expand on everything' might be advisable, just to remind reviewers that their expectations will not be met.

I'd also suggest that you get an external editor to go oover your text and see how it can be compressed without loss of detail. (I once cut a 3500 word article down to 1500 words. One idea bit the dust, but the rest was in there. That was... educational. Also not without wailing and cursing.)

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