How You Can Plan for Your R01 Resubmission Before You Get Your Score
Of course, you deserve to be optimistic about the results of your NIH R01 submission, but the truth is, it’s never too early to start preparing for your resubmission, even if you don’t have your score or summary statement yet.
What does this mean?
While you're imagining how great it’s going to feel to get a fundable score, remember too that because of the low success rate at NIH and the competitiveness of these grants, it’s a smart move to do some prep in the event you do have to resubmit your R01.
I know you put a lot of effort into your first submission, and you may feel like you’re due a break from writing, but these strategies I’m going to share won’t take much time, and you’ll be glad you decided to get ahead of the game in the event you really do have to work on a resubmission.
Immediately after your R01 Submission
Right after you post your submission, you go into the waiting period. At this point, one of the most important things you can start to do here is to take stock of your initial R01 writing experience.
To improve your writing, take 10-20 minutes to really reflect on what worked, what didn’t work, and what you want to make a note of to do on your next R01 (or your resubmission). In addition, you want to make note of any areas in your grant that aren’t quite what you want them to be.
These are the areas in your R01 where you anticipate reviewers getting stuck or having issues. I know how hard you worked on getting ahead of the possible objections, but oftentimes, there are still some things that just aren’t ready in time or that you know there’s nothing you can do about if you want to get your grant submitted before the deadline.
For example, generating more preliminary data for one of your aims or not having enough publications on the topic that you’re proposing in the application are items you just don’t have enough time to do in advance of your submission.
When you are aware of these areas of improvement, you can start devising a mental improvement plan just in case you do receive critiques during the peer review process.
During the R01 Limbo
When it comes to this waiting period of waiting for scoring and feedback, take the time to review your first submission and find ways you can enhance your competitiveness when it comes time for your possible resubmission.
This can include taking action on some of those items we talked about in your reflection period immediately after submitting your R01. For example, you can generate more preliminary data to support one of your aims or work on getting a publication out the door by the time your resubmission needs to go in.
Both of these actions will be a huge display of your ability to be productive and support those crucial arguments you’re making for the value of your research–and that you are the right person for the job.
The other thing you can do at this stage is consider how you’re going to handle your results. This is a helpful step because what routinely happens is when you do get your summary statement in front of you, it can be an emotional experience—which makes it easy to overreact.
If you can decide in advance how you want to handle seeing your results, you can make that time a lot less stressful because you’re mentally prepared for that moment.
A helpful tactic to be mentally prepared is to approach it like a decision tree. Think about the different scenarios you may have to react to, including if your grant is not discussed and if your grant is discussed but not fundable.
Considering these real scenarios will lead to thoughts about other important areas, like your submission deadline. Are you going to resubmit right away, or will you give yourself an extra cycle to take a deeper look at your application and see what more needs to be done?
Another element to think about during this waiting period is to find out if your institution has an internal review program that you can participate in with your resubmission so you can start looking into what the deadlines are.
After Getting Your Score
This is where the emotion comes in. You’ve gotten your score, and you have some ideas of how you did, but you don’t know the details yet because you’re still waiting for the summary statement.
Yes, you’re going to need some time to process those emotions depending on what your score is, but it’s also the time to enact some of those decisions you prepared for in the earlier two stages.
You can start refining your timeline and make a firm decision on your resubmission timeline. You can reach out to colleagues who might be able to review your resubmission.
If you do plan to use an editor or a consultant, this is when you would reach out and start arranging timelines with them so that you can make sure that you're getting on their calendar with ample time to go through a review process and actually incorporate their feedback and recommendations.
While you’re in this next tier waiting stage, you can begin developing a solid plan for feedback–whether that’s the internal review process through your institution or working with an editor or consultant–or all three.
My attitude is to throw everything you can at improving your resubmission, so the more feedback you have lined up, the better.
Don’t Play The Waiting Game
What I hope you take away from all of this is that you don’t have to sit around and anxiously wait for your results.
There are plenty of ways to stay productive and make your resubmission even more competitive. Of course, you hope the dream scenario comes into play where your first submission is so strong that it’s recommended for funding. But there’s always a chance, a good chance, that won’t happen.
So, there’s no downside in preparing in advance and doing all you can to hit the ground running and earn a fundable score on your resubmission.
If you found this useful, I strongly encourage you to sign up for our free resource library. One of the tutorials you’ll find in there is how to decipher your summary statement. So it walks you through the process of reading your summary statement and kind of reading between the lines, what are your reviewers actually asking for actually telling you to do. It’s another great way to prep and be ready to write a competitive resubmission!