Hello OHMers, happy holidays -
A friend and colleague who has followed the discussion of NEH grant
possibilities for OHM wrote me to share some thoughts drawn from their
experience as a review panel member for a recent round of DH Implementation
Grants. I thought they were pretty relevant, so copied them in below. My
biggest takeaway is the need for innovation in humanistic inquiry, which
confirms what some have suggested -- framing the effort as supporting a
particular historical study, and simultaneously a proof-of-concept. This may
fit a 'start-up' grant model better than an implementation one at this stage.
Karl
----- Original Message -----
* The Implementation grants are ‘Low Risk / High Reward’ That is, project
ideas may be fabulous, however, funded projects in the ‘Implementation’ round
already have some element of success and stability. “Implementation” means just
that. They will fund projects that are already up and running in some form. The
funding is to enhance or elaborate what has already been done.
Stronger proposals are those that have:
* Evidence that PIs are already in a successful partnership, such as having
co-authored or presented on the project jointly prior.
* Have already obtained ’support’ for the project which could be NEH Start
Up funds, or campus or other external funding, or recognition of any sort.
* Statement of Innovation concerns innovation in both technology and
humanistic inquiry - really creative innovations in both areas.
The percentages of grant winners in past years is approx. 15%. Very slim. My
panel reviewed 18 proposals (out of 54? submitted). Of those 18, 4 were
outstanding, 11 were good and showed promise for future developments, 3 were
turkeys. Only 1 of the 4 that my panel ranked as outstanding went on to receive
funding, and that particular one had obtained NEH Start Up funds previously.
The other few that NEH funded in this round were reviewed by the other panels
and I don’t have background on those. We were told that many successful grants
had be submitted previously, so it often takes more than one try (I am sure you
are aware of that).
Preservation, sustainability and data management of the project are important
and requires thought and planning. This was a weakness of many of the middle
level proposals. The higher ranked proposals mostly used their library or
state-level repository partnering, and included many details about how the
storage, preservation, etc would work.
…. it is helpful to talk to the NEH grant officers throughout the writing
process to make sure, firstly, that the idea is appropriate for the grant, as
well as to get a pre-review.
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