How To Prepare For A Successful R01 Resubmission When You Don’t Have Your Summary Statement Yet
After putting in so much effort into your R01, hitting that 'submit' button for your grant application brings a momentary sigh of relief. And while most people believe it’s the end of the process – a waiting game for the summary statement – I'm here to tell you that there’s plenty you can do in the interim.
Over the years that I’ve been consulting with researchers on their grants, I've noticed that as soon as the grant gets submitted they immediately move onto other projects. On the one hand: of course they do! You’re often putting projects aside to focus on your grant application, and when that’s done you need to pick those other projects back up. But what I’m going to suggest is that you take a bit of time to prepare yourself for what comes next in the grant process—whether that’s preparing for a potential resubmission or preparing to launch the project. Let's delve deeper into how this period between submission and getting your results can be used constructively.
While You’re Writing: Track Your Time
We all know the overwhelming feeling when deadlines loom, and the grant needs to be written, proofread, and submitted. But have you ever wondered how much time you truly spend on the grant-writing process? I’m not just talking about those hours you dedicate to crafting the perfect research plan. It’s about the time spent in meetings discussing potential roadblocks, those endless back-and-forth grant-related emails, the countless hours in planning, strategizing, and even the nitty-gritty of document compilation.
It might seem like a giant pain in the butt, but I can't stress enough the value of tracking these hours so that you know what to expect next time. A detailed breakdown of time not only aids in future planning but also helps you identify areas of inefficiency. Recognizing the difference in time invested in drafting a new grant versus revising for a resubmission can offer clarity and streamline the process in the long run.
Immediately Post-Submission: Take Time To Reflect
For a lot of researchers, submitting a grant is like crossing the finish line after a marathon. Once that adrenaline rush starts to fade away, it’s a golden opportunity to reflect. Take some intentional time for introspection:
Which aspects of the grant writing process went smoothly for you, and which ones were more challenging?
Are there areas in your planning that you could have streamlined?
What would you tweak or do completely different for the next grant?
Did certain sections feel rushed, and do you suspect that your reviewers are going to need more depth or clarity?
Documenting these thoughts is vital because, at some point, your memory will fail you. What seems unforgettable today might be hazy even a couple of weeks down the road.
Liminal Period: Review Your Grant To Elevate Its Appeal
Why would you want to review your grant application before your reviewers do? Ideally you would have done this pre-submission, but if you weren’t able to it doesn’t mean it’s too late. Give yourself at least a couple of weeks away from your application. When you circle back, you’ll likely view it with fresh eyes, almost mimicking a reviewer's perspective.
You might ask, without the summary statement to give guidance on what didn’t work, how can you possibly improve the grant? My answer: You don’t necessarily need external feedback to strengthen your application.
Take a couple of hours to review your application through the eyes of your most skeptical reviewer. Assess it according to the scoring criteria. Highlight the strengths that stand out, but more crucially, zoom in on your proposal’s potential weak spots. This preemptive measure can be the difference between a grant that gets the nod and one that misses the pay line…again.
Focus on anticipating and addressing objections that you weren’t able to address the first time. If you anticipate critiques around your publication record, what can you do to address this critique? This could be through clearing your publication pipeline (or at least chipping away at it). If you anticipate critiques around your team composition, bringing onboard a new collaborator with niche expertise can also significantly up your game.
These actions not only showcase your dedication but also convey to reviewers, through your resubmission, that the project is continuously evolving and progressing.
Liminal Period: Decide What You’ll Do When You Get Your Summary Statement
Without your summary statement, it’s understandable that you might feel like the path for your next moves isn’t clear. But you can still imagine the possible outcomes and make decisions in advance about what you’ll do in a particular scenario—so that you’re not making in-the-moment emotional decisions.
Think about it this way:
What happens if your grant gets discussed, but doesn’t score well enough to get funded? What will you do? For example, you could set aside grant-writing time now in anticipation that you’ll need to resubmit immediately. Or maybe you already have a lot on your plate and you know that you’ll submit a more competitive grant if you skip the upcoming cycle and aim for the next one.
What happens if your grant gets triaged? What will you do? Same considerations.
What happens if you get that Hooray, holy sh*t result—a fundable score—how will you start preparing to get your project off the ground?
By mentally preparing for a multitude of outcomes now, you're essentially future-proofing your next steps.
Conclusion
Having a thought framework in place before you get your summary statement will prepare you mentally for whatever the outcome of your original grant. If you’re scored and funded, go celebrate. You deserve it.
But if there’s still work to be done, you will already be steps ahead, ready to implement the improvements, and ready to take your resubmission across the pay line.
Free Resource Library
If you found this helpful, I strongly encourage you to sign up for our free resource library. We have lots of tools and tutorials in there to help you write a stronger NIH grant, including one called Deciphering Your Summary Statement. It breaks down how to handle reading between the lines of your summary statement and figuring out exactly what your reviewers are asking of you. There are also lots of other tools in there to help you plan and prepare your next grant so that you are organized and ready to go.