Grant Writing
Our grant writing service is a cost-effective way to add manpower (or “peoplepower” if the former is now considered offensive) to your grant writing process. Here are some questions that we get asked:
How can you write a better grant application than me?
It’s your research, so it would be a shame if other people were able to write a “better” grant application than you. Our service allows you to have competent people working on your project under your direction, so the chances of success are higher. It gets done faster and it takes less effort on your part. We don’t get clients from well-established and well-funded labs. Those labs already have people who can do that kind of work “in-house”. The established PIs have been doing it for a long time, therefore they are good at it. In addition, they may know their grant reviewers as the world of compartmentalized science is shockingly small. Our clients are stressed out international assistant professors or busy clinicians who also do research. The assistant professors usually have no one to ask for help. Senior colleagues can help at their convenience, but one needs to be quite cautious around senior colleagues if one has no tenure yet. If a senior colleague says he/she will do it and then can’t make it in time while you need it right now….you can’t push them. Colleagues are always good at providing feedback, but they won’t provide the “legwork”. That is why underfunded and understaffed labs can benefit from outsourcing this kind of work to some degree. When you work with us, you get those extra lab members who are good at writing.
Can I see your previous work?
It would be great to showcase some success stories with full names and grant numbers, but so far no one wanted to say: “I would like to thank Grantigen for the help with my RO1 grant writing. Although I was hired as an expert, I paid for help in order to write my first grant.” If you would like to help us by providing your success story after working with us, that would be much appreciated! In the meantime, we are happy to have you come back for more collaboration or when business comes through word of mouth. Apparently, telling a trusted colleague in the same situation about our service doesn’t seem to carry any stigmata.
How much is this going to cost me?
It is difficult to quote a service without knowing what needs to be done. Providing there is sufficient time to discuss ideas and write them down, it will cost you about the same as having a postdoc work on this project. The cost will depend more on how much work needs to be done than how big the grant is, although these things happen to be positively correlated. We don’t drag-on to make up more billable hours. You will be provided with a quote and the number of revisions included in the quote. We won’t change the quote if it turns out that it takes more time than we anticipated. The most important thing is the timeline. We are a small company and the need for this service is never spread out evenly throughout the year. We will appreciate it if you give us more time to do the work. This will also result in a lower quote.
There are some alternative fee structures:
- We charge you a minimal fee for the grant writing service and then take a percentage of the grant IF it is awarded. This sounds like a win-win situation but it’s more complicated than it seems. Your department/university may not allow this kind of arrangement as we found out the hard way. A contract co-signed by the department head or a decision maker in the accounting department will be required.
- The grant is for a startup company or some industry collaboration where Grantigen could benefit as a co-applicant. In this case, we could consider a fee waiver should you choose to team up with us on a project we really like.
- If we happen to know each other from previous academic collaboration or conferences, the fee structure can be adjusted to allow more flexibility as the project develops.
How do I know that your service is indeed confidential and that you will not reuse my grant for someone else’s application?
Our goal is to provide such a service that you decide to work with us again. Our business benefits from that. The best thing is that you don’t need to take our word for it and worry about us in regards to your grant being confidential. Chances are that at some point, your grant will end up on your competitor’s desk! Even though grant review is being done anonymously at the NIH for example, it’s not that difficult to figure out who does what and what one plans to do in the future. If your grant application somehow gets hacked from our computer, the hacker wouldn’t know what to do with it. Your reviewers however, will know exactly what to do with it. Paradoxical indeed, but we can’t change the system.
In regards to us not using your grant application for someone else – you also don’t need to take our word for it. It is quite unlikely that we will have both you and your competition as clients. Besides, you don’t need to entrust us with writing the full grant. We can do the general writing while you focus on the sensitive specifics. Having said all this, we don’t do to other people what we would not want done to us if the situation were reversed. Therefore no, we do not reuse grant applications. In addition, if you happen to be a great client, we will simply not work with your competition. We will be happy to sign an NDA agreement if it is not in conflict with out Terms of Service (available upon request).
Scientific Paper Writing
In what areas have you written papers?
We remain within the scope of the biomedical field as we have no expertise in physics or math for example.
Why should I choose you? There are other companies offering this service.
You are welcome to shop around. Ask for a short proposal. During the initial consultation when you review the first draft, you can easily decide with whom you feel most comfortable working. People requesting this service are capable of writing papers of course, but they simply don’t have time for it. Busy clinicians spend all their time doing clinical work, yet they have the pressure to publish at the same time. We are happy to help both with papers and clinical trials.
What is the cost?
Our fees are very competitive. However, we don’t charge by the “word”. Therefore, we don’t write more words than necessary in order to charge you more. Our cost depends on the complexity of the research, the writer’s familiarity with the topic and our availability at that time. Once those things are in place, typing any number of words is not that difficult. Since our workload is not evenly spread out, the perfect writer for your specific topic may not be immediately available to take your request. Please allow 30 – 60 days for the project.
Custom Biomedical Illustrations
To help your idea stand out visually, we provide a variety of illustration styles. The widely-used molecular visualization programs such PyMol offer impressive automatic outputs. The only possible drawback is that there are so many great looking, yet similar figures. It almost seems that someone has already standardized the overall appearance of illustrations in biomedical publications. Changing it would seem bad to somewhat less courageous scientists. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. More illustrations are in the gallery section.
Custom Biomedical Script Writing
If you are an animation studio or a medical communication agency with an in-house animation team, we will be happy to deliver only the script. We can work on your draft, or you can let us do everything from scratch and then make changes once you see the initial script. Our collaborators love working with us! The burden of researching scientific literature, and coming up with an interesting story is our job, so you can focus on yours. Our turnaround time is fast, and the fees are very competitive. Feel free to schedule a no-obligation consultation with us.
Custom Biomedical Animation Movies
Full-service video production is a fairly recent service. Our animator has a background in biology. Here is a brief description of the process:
- We start with the initial consultation. We need to get a clear idea of what needs to be shown in the video and also assess whether it’s possible (for us) to do so in that time-frame. Our imagination is not the limiting factor (or so we think), but if your idea is very ambitious, it will take more time. Either way, it will be clear what needs to be done after we discuss it.
- The first step is script production.
- A storyboard comes next. It may lack details but it will show the general idea.
- In the next step, we produce a quick low resolution video that will help you decide what further changes are needed.
- Finally we deliver a high resolution video
Here is the example of the important points shown in the AKT1 potassium channel video:
After you approve all the previous steps, the final video is delivered.