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I am a young academic in a scientific field and, in the process of updating my CV, I've realized I'm unsure exactly what is appropriate to list with regard to grant applications/funded grants. Specifically, a few types of ambiguities have arisen:

1) If you receive funding from a grant but were not part of the project until after the application was funded (say your role is "Consultant" or "Statistician"), can you list this on your CV?

2) If you are listing non-funded grants that you had at least some hand in writing (say, an NIH grant that received an impact score but was not funded), but you were not the PI (say you're a co-Investigator), can you list it? Is the answer different if you had a non-investigator role such as "Statistician"?

3) Closely related to #2-- if you help with a grant that ultimately does get funded but you are not the PI or a co-I (again, suppose you're a consultant or statistician), can this be listed on your CV? Does it depend on how great of a hand you had in writing the grant?

Thanks for any input.

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  • what did you decide to do . . . do you have an example CV (or CV section) you'd be willing to share? (perhaps with identifying information removed . . . i.e., just a template?)
    – abcd
    Jun 15, 2018 at 15:34

2 Answers 2

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My philosophy about such issues is that you can list everything on a CV, as long as you make clear what your actual role was, i.e., you may list any project or grant that officially recognizes you in some function, but of course you cannot imply that you were the PI in all of these projects if this was not the case.

Further, make sure that you list only "official" responsibilities on the CV - it may be true that you are doing all the work for a project, but that does not make you the official PI. Saying or implying otherwise is not good.

Finally, note that different roles in a project can be used to illustrate different things for you as a researcher. Personally, I have two different sections for projetcs on my CV:

  • Projects, which lists all funded projects I was ever involved with, plus my official role. This shows that I am experienced in working in different roles in different national and international research teams.
  • Successful grant proposals, which lists all successful project proposals that I was officially recognized as an author, i.e., either coordinator, PI, or co-investigator. This shows that I am able to get funding for my research.
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I like your approach, more or less.

As someone who looks at lots of CVs in a non-academic research unit at a university, I don't really care to see grants listed on which you only worked. I want to see grants that you were a PI or co-PI on, mostly, and perhaps any that you were a significant part of the writing team on. The purpose of listing these grants is to show that you can be part of the writing and winning team for funded work.

In another section, I might be interested in short summaries of your participation in projects (funded or otherwise). What I don't want to have to do is spend a lot of time figuring out whether you were instrumental in thew writing of a proposal or just did the work after the money was won.

The key here is whether your qualifications and background were considered by the funding agency when approving the proposal. If not, then it's not worth implying that you had any role in winning the money.

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  • Thanks for your answer (+1 to both answers). To clarify your statement "perhaps any that you were a significant part of the writing team on" - in at least one funded grant I was responsible for writing the entirety of the statistical analysis section (the proposed analysis, how it tests our scientific hypotheses, and justification for the sample size). My role on this grant was "Biostatistician" or something like that-- would this be generally accepted as being a significant part of the writing team?
    – Homer
    Jul 13, 2014 at 14:10
  • These are the borderline cases. I have a couple of these that I leave off my CV b/c I'm not quite sure what to do with them.
    – Bill Barth
    Jul 13, 2014 at 20:05

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