Tips for Writing a Good Proposal
- Contact facility
staff before writing
and ask them about opportunities
for collaboration. Staff
are available to:
- Provide details
about the equipment
and capabilities,
including availability
or subscription.
- Help confirm the
feasibility of your
approach.
- Help estimate and
justify the amount
of facility time
you are requesting.
- Help address why
this specific facility
is the best choice
to meet your requirements.
- Provide constructive
comments on your
statement of research.
- Include background information
on why the proposed experiment
is important.
- Include a precisely
defined objective;
don't combine loosely
related experiments
in a single proposal.
- Clearly articulate
the science case:
state the problem
and its importance.
- Place your research plan in the context of what others have done are doing. Include references to literature where appropriate.
- Describe what is particularly innovative about your strategy to address the problem. State why the proposal is timely.
- Address how the experiment will make a difference. Focus on how this particular effort will contribute to the field. Describe the proposed work including samples, methods, and procedures.
- State clearly and
exactly what you
are going to synthesize,
measure, or calculate.
- Describe how your
sample(s) have been
characterized by
other methods to
ensure phase purity,
crystal quality,
or specific intrinsic
behavior.
- Provide sufficient
detail to demonstrate
that you have thought
carefully about your
plan.
- Describe the techniques
to be used to generate
and analyze the data.
- Demonstrate familiarity
with prior work done
in this area.
- Refer to current literature, especially your own work
- Summarize the
key points of
cited references
and explain how
your proposed
work fits in.
- Demonstrate your
team’s productivity
at the facility,
if applicable, by
describing how the
results of previous
experiments were
used and published.
- Describe related
results (published
and unpublished)
from work done
by your group.
- Include key
data in graphic
format.
- Explain why you
need this particular
user facility and instrument.
- Justify the amount
of time requested.
- Identify potential showstoppers and how you plan to avoid them; if you don’t identify them, the reviewers will!
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