Dear all, this is my proposal for the co-design competition.
Current grants are highly competitive and mostly favors the professors and left the young academicians losing grounds on obtaining good grants. Professors are naturally thought to be the more intelligent one in carrying out the studies and produce stated outcomes. Yet, we know the future lies in the younger generation and younger academicians should never feel the need to attach professorsā name to it or even putting professorsā name as PI so their application has higher chance in getting accepted. The current grant is also very process strenuous and hierarchical where it goes to the research office and needing many peopleās signature. Can all these unnecessary policies be abolished? Yes. Can the current system improve? Yes.
My proposal for grant application will be:
- A proposal of not more than 2 pages (1000 words) is provided with research problem, gaps, and research objectives laid out. The methods part should be brief and not more than 300 words. The applicants should also write a paragraph stating how he/she has the capacity to carry out the research successfully, including their qualification. Budget should also be listed out on how the fund would be spent.
- Each applicant should also present a 200 word abstract which will be used for people to vote for their proposal. This will be the main layout of their proposal and details of the 1000 word proposal can be read further when people click on it to read more about it.
- 50% of the fund budget must be allocated to data collection which will be held within Prolific.
- Applicants should have at least a masters to apply for the grant.
- All applicants should be young researchers where their PhD should not be older than 3 years old.
- Applicants does not need to get signature from the university or superior.
- Applicants can also come from research agencies and consulting companies, so long they have adequate research skills.
- The proposal is rated on novelty, idea innovation and contribution to the community and society.
- The study should only be a one-year term.
- Each applicant can only be on one project.
- Each applicant can only apply once every 2 years.
- Budget for each project should not be more than 10k USD. Each project should be expected to produce a paper in the next one year after the study has completed.
- This then is uploaded on the Prolific portal, where the list of proposal is arranged according to topics and not field of study. This allows everyone to have a view on all submissions.
- Prolific will then send mass emails to indicate that proposals have begun and those who voted for projects will be eligible for a $500 lucky draw in the form of Prolific credit.
- Each person is allowed to vote maximum 10 proposals that they think itās the best. Criteria is they can only choose top 10 proposals that attracts their attention, then they will provide a 1-10 rating to the projects where 1 is nice proposal while 10 is excellent proposal.
- People are also allowed to provide comments to the proposals to improve the proposal.
- No modification of the proposals should be made. So it says āMany cooks spoil the brothā.
- After 2 weeks of voting, depending on how much funds are allocated for this initiative, then the top proposals with the highest score will be selected to receive the grant.
- for the scoring, for people who vote, they will need to vote 10 good proposals, and those with extreme scores (eg. 1 proposal scoring 10 while the other 9 scores 1) will have all their scores revoked, to prevent mass voting by the applicantsā close associates.
- The claims are to be made with the Prolific fund department, where the department will pay for the payment and invoices. Hence, no money needs to be transferred.
- All data collection must be held on Prolific and published work acknowledge Prolific as the grant provider.
Hope you all enjoy reading it!
Thank you.
