4

Grants for the NSF/NIH/many other government agencies often only allow people who are in "faculty-level" academic positions to be PIs and co-PIs*. When this is true, what is the best way of acknowledging a postdoc/student's contribution to the grant if they wrote large portions of it or made significant intellectual contributions? In addition, sometimes a postdoc/student has significant relevant experience that a PI lacks. What is the best way to highlight this, both to credit the postdoc and prevent reviewers from raising this as an issue? (I'm most interested in NSF here, but NIH/others would also be interesting.)

Possible answers:

    - including the postdoc on the grant as a co-author, but not a co-PI (I believe this is possible for NSF)
    - Highlighting the postdoc's skills in the proposal itself/including postdoc's bio.
    - Adding a "letter of collaboration" from the postdoc. (If, for instance, the postdoc is in a somewhat independent position and can't be listed as personnel.)

(* This of course depends on the agency, the institution, probably even the type of grant.)

This question is essentially the PI-side version of this one: What to do when an advisor takes credit for a grant proposal?

Improve this question
2
  • Perhaps this can be generalized to other not-PI-eligible contributors, e.g. students, in addition to postdocs.
    – ff524
    Commented Oct 31, 2016 at 0:38
  • Fair enough - edited it. I think this is more common with postdocs, but definitely can happen with grads, too.
    – AJK
    Commented Oct 31, 2016 at 0:50

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Regarding "sometimes a postdoc has significant relevant experience that a PI lacks", I have been referred to by name in (successful) NSF proposals I have co-authored to highlight some expertise I bring to the project, e.g.

ff524, a PhD student whose efforts have contributed to the research component of the project, will also be engaged in X. [insert my impressive background in X here]

or

This interdisciplinary collaboration is facilitated by ff524, a PhD student in Department A who has previously worked with PI X in Department A as well as with PI Y in Department B.

Presumably one could do the same with postdocs.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .