Winter
2015

Fish 521 - Grant Proposal Writing for Graduate Students

Reading

These books are not required but are meant as suggestions for further reading. There are many more on the market - this is just a selection I happen to have on my bookshelf.

Friedland AJ, Folt CL (2009) Writing Successful Science Proposals. 2nd edition. Yale University Press, New Haven & London. (Amazon, also available for Kindle): This book comes closest to a textbook for the class. Discusses many aspects of proposal writing and guides through the proposal process, from conceiving the idea to preparing the proposal. Full of good advice on aspects not commonly found. It's also the cheapest textbook you ever bought ($ 16.27 at Amazon) and its mercifully brief . Here is an excerpt from Yale University Press, and a new edition came out in 2009.

Zeiger M (2000) Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers. McGraw-Hill, New York. (Amazon): Probably my favorite book, which has spent more time on students' desks than on my bookshelf. Covers sentence and paragraph structure, parts of a typical research paper and how to write them, how to design figures and tables, etc. Also provides lots of examples, which are, as the title suggests, primarily from the biomedical literature. Nevertheless, an excellent book for all fields.

Williams JM (2005) Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace. Pearson Longman, New York. (Amazon): Excellent book on writing English prose in general. Considers sentence structure, grammar and style, rather than specific structuring of scientific papers, though many examples are from scientific writing. Very useful and very enjoyable to read.

Day RA & Gastel B (2006) How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper. 6th edition. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut & London. (Amazon): Somewhat brief on scientific writing aspects (each section of a typical paper gets about four pages), but in contrast to the other books here, covers other aspects of publishing, such as how to deal with reviewers' comments and editors, how to publish a book chapter, how to write letters of recommendation, how to provide peer reviews etc. Fundamental reference for all written communications in science.

Lester JD, Lester JD Jr (2002) The Essential Guide: Research Writing Across the Disciplines. Pearson Longman, New York. (Amazon): Somewhat basic guide to research writing. Useful for issues such as finding information, bibliography, electronic research tools etc.