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RE: The Art and Science of Successful Scientific Grant Writing - Part 2
Looking forward to putting these tips into action! Do you have any experiences with software such as Scrivener for the writing and/or EndNote for the citations? I find Word too difficult for documents as complex as these.
I have no experience with Scrivener. I have mostly used Word. I did try Endnote, but found that it was not very consistent in formatting references when interfaced with Word. However, Endnote was (and still is) a great platform for cataloging references.
Keeping such lengthy documents in Word seems cumbersome for my brain, especially as we go into documents with many different sections. But that could also be because I have not yet used the indexing function enough. Scrivener is pretty inexpensive, so I am going to give it a try.
EndNote looks fantastic, especially since I have folders filled with people I would like to cite from for grants and research papers. The only problem is the expense right now. I am crowdfunding a computer and external hard drive for my research team (ah the joys of fundless first research projects!), and if there is anything left over, we plan to buy GraphPad Prism and the audio software needed for the study. Hopefully, I will find a good deal on the computer and squeeze out enough for EndNote, which will help the whole team!
I have given Scrivener a try - I love it for solo-writing fiction, but there's too much of a workflow mismatch between how it works best and how collaborative manuscript writing works.
For reference managers, especially if you're on a budget, I would suggest looking into either Mendeley or Qiqqa. I've used both (Mendeley currently) and either is great.
Many thanks for your input here. This may be of great assistance to others reading these posts.
Thank you so much @effofex, all feedback is useful. I was hoping it would help me organize my thoughts a little better, especially if there are many sections to a particular paper or grant. I hadn't thought about yet about the collaborative aspects.
I will definitely check out Mendeley, because even with my student discount, EndNote is still pricey. I don't mind spending money on a good product. They seem to have a 30-day trial, so I am going to try it and Mendeley to see which one I like better.
Scrivener is good for organizing thoughts, and it'd be nice if there was something similar in word. The closest I've found within the software is using outline mode to collapse and move paragraphs around.
Outside of the software, I'm a fan of synthesis matrices.
Another new technique for me, thank you! I will definitely check it out.