How To Write Successful Research Proposals

How To Write Successful Research Proposals
Although academic, scientific and professional proposals tend to be short – much shorter, for instance, than the documents that arise from the proposed activities in many cases – they are extremely important. A research proposal may determine your acceptance into a programme of advanced study or earn you vital funding for a large and expensive scholarly project. A business, financial or technical proposal can mean the difference between professional success and failure. A proposal informing an editor about your paper or book can win or lose a publication contract. All serious proposals must therefore be effectively organised, elegantly written and completely free of errors in order to communicate your intentions with clarity and precision.

A proposal is necessarily a process document in that it serves a purpose in the process of a project and outlines plans and procedures that are intended by the author, though they may change as the activities involved actually take place and the realities of the project become clearer. As tentative as proposals may therefore be at times, they are nonetheless essential to the initial stages and successful progress of many scholarly and professional projects. Great ideas only become successful physical and intellectual products if clear proposals demonstrating the value and feasibility of those ideas are written and presented. For the short period of time in which a proposal represents an imagined project, it is as important as the future work that depends on its success. Proposals should never be considered informal documents that can be hastily produced. They require considerable reflection, a carefully designed structure and a writing style that is clear and correct. They also require extremely attentive proofreading, so it is wise to recruit a mentor or colleague to look over your proposal before you consider it finished. A professional proofreader who is familiar with the style and format of scholarly and professional proposals may also prove immensely useful by checking and correcting your grammar, spelling, punctuation and formatting as well as offering comments to help you improve the explanations of your ideas and intentions.

Proposals tend to reach a wide and varied audience. In rare situations an author may be able to write a proposal knowing that the readers anticipated will have knowledge and expertise similar to his or her own. More often, however, at least part of that audience will not be specialists in the author’s field, and this presents a challenge for the proposal writer. Complex and sophisticated information is difficult enough to communicate to readers who know the subject and its terminology and assumptions well; when writing for readers who do not, those complex concepts must be expressed in simple language that can be readily understood by a general audience. This sort of writing requires an especially plain and concise style that avoids excessive specialised terminology and jargon, explains ideas and processes carefully and precisely, and focuses on the most important points that will likely be of greatest concern to the intended readers. Such readers may also have very little time to consider proposals, so if yours is to receive the kind of attention it deserves, it will need to catch their attention immediately and then hold it with interesting information presented in a logical and accessible fashion.

Treating the proposals you write with as much care as you do the other scholarly and professional documents you write will greatly increase the chances that they will achieve exactly what you would wish. The best piece of advice, therefore, is never to rush them, but take the time to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ until your writing and presentation attain a polish that will allow your ideas to shine from the page.