References cited, to include or not include?

[flagler20]

I'm writing a proposal for a small grant ($5,000) with a limit of 750 words in the project description.  There is no mention of a references cited section on the proposal application.  Does that mean I should not include one?  Or is it expected that it will follow the description?  One would think it would be specified in the application if that were the case.  

 

Also, a related question.  For these small grants that are applied towards a dissertation project, given that it would fund only a small portion of my activities is it better to focus on one aspect of my dissertation or describe the whole thing?  There is no budget requirement so how the money is spent is totally at the discretion of the award winner after the money is received, so I would tend to think it's better to describe the entirety of my dissertation project, but on the other hand it's probably easier to make a persuasive case in only 750 words by going into more depth on just one or two studies/chapters.

[fuzzylogician]

Is there any chance you know someone who has applied before (preferably someone who actually won the grant) who would be willing to share their proposal with you? If you know such a person, email them and ask. People are often very generous; I've received proposals from others this way and I've shared my own with people who've asked. It's extremely helpful to see a proposal that was funded. If not, I think these are questions that you need to ask of your advisor or other professors. Expectations may vary depending on the grant/fellowship and the field so it's hard to give an answer without knowing more details. Do you know who will be reading your proposal? Is it people in your subfield/field or people from other fields, or non-academics? You probably want to pitch things very differently depending on your target audience and the description of the grant. If it were me, I'd probably spend more time describing the scope of the project and why it's important and less on the actual details for something this short. This is assuming that most of the time in these situations, and especially given how short the proposal is, at least some people evaluating it will be non-experts, so you want to hold their hands and help them see why your project matters. I'm also assuming that there is some other place to justify why you need the money and roughly what you'll do with it. I think it's fair to contact the grant admin person and ask about the references; if I had to guess, I'd not include references if they weren't asked for. But again, these things depend. 

[guttata]

I've never had a grant where I've totally excluded references. If no mention is made, I usually take it as an excuse to cite (within the state page limits) and then list citations in excess of the page limit. For example: on a proposal with a 3 page limit, I might have 3 pages of text, in-text citations inclusive, followed by 2 pages of citations.

 

Your second part might be more field-dependent. In ecology, I know some people who have done an entire dissertation on $5000 or less - these would not be "small grants," which I would consider something in the neighborhood of $500-$2500. If 5k is only going to fund one (or part of one) project, I would focus on the specifics of what it will be used for rather than outlining your entire dissertation.

[TakeruK]

I agree with the above, especially fuzzy's recommendation to ask for old grant proposals. I have sent others my old materials for entry level graduate grants in the past. And today, I just submitted a proposal that would hopefully (mostly) fund me until dissertation (my entry level fellowship ends this academic year). To help me write this, a former winner sent me their entire application package! Really helpful.

 

So, here are my answers to your main questions, keeping in mind that any specific experience should override this:

 

1. Always include references in a research proposal. For 750 words, that is 1.5 pages, which is probably enough to merit 3-5 references (you don't want the references to take up a disproportionate amount of space!). Normally, (warning: potentially field dependent advice here), I cite a couple of references when describing the research problem / motivation (to show I'm not just making things up) and when I describe my approach, I demonstrate that my project is feasible by citing a couple of other papers that proved something similar worked in the past. Another field-dependent statement is that in my field, references always count against the page limit...a 5 page limit is 5 pages including figures, tables and references, usually.

 

2. I agree that you should describe the entirety of your project. And I agree that for grants like this that, the point is to demonstrate that your work is interesting and worthy of the money. Therefore, it would not be a good idea to go into depth (the audience probably will not care / get excited about it). Instead, you want them to see the big picture and realise that you're awesome and your project is awesome and your results will be awesome!

[flagler20]

Ok, thanks for the advice.  The thing is though that it's a word limit, not a page limit.  So then the question becomes, do I save words at the end for references, or do I not worry about going over the word count with references?  Unfortunately I don't have time to ask anyone.  I had written the proposal without references and it is ready to submit, but I'm having last minute doubts.  I guess I shouldn't expect any definitive answers on here.  So I'll just use 2-3 references and include them in the word count.

 

Also, all of my research will be done abroad so all of my expenses are travel expenses. 

Edited January 31, 2015 by flagler20

[rising_star]

Personally, I would always include references. If you don't do so, then you're plagiarizing, which you definitely don't want to do. If you can't ask someone for their application, perhaps you can call or email the folks running the grant and ask them if the references are included in the 750 words or not. Given your space constraints, I would make sure you clearly present your over-arching research question, and then focus specifically on what research this $5K grant would fund. I've dealt with similar issues in the past and that's what I did (plus limiting my use of references as much as possible to save words/space). Good luck!

[fuzzylogician]

Personally, I would always include references. If you don't do so, then you're plagiarizing, which you definitely don't want to do.

 

The one time I had a similar situation (a one page limit, not a word limit, but still it was pretty limiting) they did not want references. I wrote things such as "I build on research showing that the earth is round (Smith 1345, White et al. 1566) and more current research showing the effects of the moon's gravitational force on tides in Mozambique (Black 1999, Black et al. 2001) and argue that, in fact the earth is oval shaped." Even though I didn't include full references for these citations, I don't think this is plagiarism since it clearly attributes existing work to its authors. 

 

That said, I agree that you want to ask and get an answer one way or the other. I basically did what other successful applicants did before me, and it worked for me.

[rising_star]

Oh, I get including in-text citations and not full ones. I meant that not including any references (parenthetical or otherwise) would be plagiarism and thus highly problematic. 

[fuzzylogician]

That is true for sure. You can't refer to other people's ideas without giving them credit. I understood the question as asking about including a separate reference list spelling out the full information of each in-line citation.  

[fuzzylogician]

do I save words at the end for references, or do I not worry about going over the word count with references?  Unfortunately I don't have time to ask anyone.  I had written the proposal without references and it is ready to submit, but I'm having last minute doubts.  I guess I shouldn't expect any definitive answers on here.  

 

Can you submit a cover letter with your application? Or include some text in an email if it's submitted that way? If so, I'd put the references on a separate page and not worry about the word limit, and say something to the effect that you weren't sure from the description of the grant whether or not a full references list should be included, so you are attaching one to the application as an appendix. If one is not necessary, please ignore that page (or: you are happy to submit a revised version without that page). 

[Secret_Ninja]

I'm writing a proposal for a small grant ($5,000) with a limit of 750 words in the project description.  There is no mention of a references cited section on the proposal application.  Does that mean I should not include one?  Or is it expected that it will follow the description?  One would think it would be specified in the application if that were the case.  

 

Also, a related question.  For these small grants that are applied towards a dissertation project, given that it would fund only a small portion of my activities is it better to focus on one aspect of my dissertation or describe the whole thing?  There is no budget requirement so how the money is spent is totally at the discretion of the award winner after the money is received, so I would tend to think it's better to describe the entirety of my dissertation project, but on the other hand it's probably easier to make a persuasive case in only 750 words by going into more depth on just one or two studies/chapters.

I had a similar experience and I emailed the grantor directly. I am glad I did. They told me they expected only a few citations and wanted available space to be utilized for my project. They were very forthcoming and even suggested using very short citations for well known articles and longer ones for anything more obscure. You should absolutely contact the grantor. 

 

I would lean towards describing your entire project. Even if the grant is only supporting a small portion of your research, the committee cannot make an educated selection based off partial information. I know it is tough to pare down your work into 750 words and have impact, but trust me, it can be done. This being said, make the best judgement based off the grantor. For example, if I am applying to a grant whom I know is conservation oriented, I push that angle instead of the anthropological one, and vice versa. It is all the same project, all the same outcomes, but you shift how you drive your message home.  

[TakeruK]

Oh, definitely use very short citations when writing proposals with this kind of limit. In my field, I use "Smith et al." to refer to 3 or more authors and sometimes might even use it for a 2-author paper (although I try to use Smith & Jones, etc.). Use standard journal abbreviations for your field. For me, a citation can be as short as "Smith et al. (2007), ApJ, 720:13."

 

Also, if it's a page limit, not just a word limit, don't put each citation on a separate line. In the proposal I just wrote, having each one on a separate line would have taken up 90% of my final page. I just put them all into a paragraph form, bolded the first author's last name for easy finding, and put a separator between each entry so that they don't just all blur together. This only took up 7 or 8 lines. 

 

Another colleague used numerical references, so that the in-line citation might read as "The Earth is round [14]", and then each reference is numbered at the end. This is not the standard way to cite in my field, but it's not unheard of. I guess what I mean is that for these types of proposals, unless otherwise stated, you are not generally going to be judged on whether or not you format according to a certain set of rules. Especially since each journal/publication has different rules anyways. So, my advice would be to use the most compact notation you can that is still obviously understandable. But this might be field-specific because my field does not have a standardized style format (i.e. nothing like APA). Maybe fields that have a national standard might expect every piece of work to be written in that style.

[flagler20]

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Another colleague used numerical references, so that the in-line citation might read as "The Earth is round [14]", and then each reference is numbered at the end. This is not the standard way to cite in my field, but it's not unheard of. I guess what I mean is that for these types of proposals, unless otherwise stated, you are not generally going to be judged on whether or not you format according to a certain set of rules. Especially since each journal/publication has different rules anyways. So, my advice would be to use the most compact notation you can that is still obviously understandable. But this might be field-specific because my field does not have a standardized style format (i.e. nothing like APA). Maybe fields that have a national standard might expect every piece of work to be written in that style.

 

The problem with numerical references is that you trade-off upfront brevity for back-end length because then you have no choice but to include full citations at the end.  Using in-text citations with author names allows you to omit a full reference section at the end, but takes up words in the body of the proposal.  But I don't really have a choice and will probably have to go with numerical references anyways because the citations I would be using are not for foundational papers which would be recognized with just the author and year.

Edited January 31, 2015 by flagler20

[TakeruK]

I also dislike numerical references because I think a statement like

 

Smith et al. (2012) argues Method X is the best way to find Y.

 

is stronger and flows better than a statement like

 

X is the best way to find Y. [13]

 

But sometimes they are a necessity! 

 

I am curious about what you mean by "full citations" though. Even for the back-end material, I use full but heavily abbreviated citations. From my example above, it only adds 2 "words" to the in-line citation (journal abbreviation and volume/page number). First author name, year, journal, volume, and page number are the only critical elements needed and would only "cost" 4-6 words. Actually only journal, volume and page number are required to uniquely identify the work, but name and year provides valuable context!