Canada is globally considered among the top countries for education and academic research. Canadian universities are known for their advanced education, diverse campuses, and strong research opportunities, such as SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR. If you’re also a student in Canada and aiming to secure these opportunities, don’t look further. This guide will provide you with the essential tips to secure SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR funding for your research in Canada.
Researchers and students commonly seek funding or grants due to financial constraints to pursue their desired research study and contribute to their academic disciplines. However, securing these grants can be challenging. By thoroughly mastering the essential tips and the agency-specific strategies, you can efficiently secure your sought-after research grant in Canada.
What are SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR?
In Canada, SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council), NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council), and CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) are referred to as tri-agency research funding programs. These funding and grant programs are awarded to Canadian nationals and permanent residents for their academic excellence and potential. However, a few exceptions can be made for international applicants.
If you’re a student in Canada and seeking a research grant or funding, the tri-agency programs are your best choice. They are regarded as pillars of research support that offer critical resources to advance innovation across various academic disciplines. Before getting into tips to secure these programs, let’s get familiar with each agency’s mission, key programs, evaluation criteria, and grant types.
SSHRC
This funding program focuses on social sciences, humanities, and arts. It prioritizes to grant research resources to address societal challenges, foster equity, and mobilize knowledge beyond academia. Its key programs include insight grants, partnership grants, and connection grants.
This program evaluates applicants on the criteria of originality, significance, feasibility, and knowledge dissemination.
NSERC
The NSERC funding program deals with natural sciences and engineering. It clearly emphasizes innovation, industry collaboration, and training highly qualified personnel (HQP). It offers a variety of key programs, such as discovery grants, alliance grants, and Collaborative Research and Development (CRD) grants.
Their review team selects applicants on the evaluation criteria of scientific merit, HQP training, and potential for societal or economic impact.
CIHR
This funding program focuses on health research, including biomedical science and community health. It prioritizes investing in patient-oriented, translational, and equity-focused projects. Its key programs include project grants, foundation grants, and team grants.
However, their criteria for evaluating applicants are relevance to health priorities, scientific thoughtfulness, and partnership engagement.
General Tips to Secure SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR Funding
Above, we have discussed the characteristics of tri-agency funding programs. Now, we are discussing the tips to secure SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR funding for your research in Canada. Understand these tips thoroughly and implement them while writing your application or research proposal, and you’d surely get your desired funding or grants. Here are the tips that you must efficiently follow:
Tip 1: Start early and plan strategically
The first step to securing SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR funding is to start early. You must start creating your plan 6-12 months before the deadline. Meanwhile, learn how to write a date in Canada. Create a timeline that is helpful to complete tasks like writing, peer review, and revisions. Moreover, use agency-specific templates and tools.
Tip 2: Understand the agency’s guidelines
The next step is to understand the agency’s guidelines. You must thoroughly read the funding opportunity announcements (FOAS). After that, note down the formatting rules, font size, margins, page limits, and required attachments. Furthermore, highlight evaluation criteria and ensure that each section addresses them explicitly.
Tip 3: Align with the agency’s mission
The third step is aligning with your agency’s mission. Craft your research proposal in a way that it fulful all the requirements and guidelines of your preferred agency.
For example, if you’re applying to SSHRC, frame your project in a way that shows addressing a particular societal challenge. Moreover, highlight community partnerships (if applicable) and knowledge mobilization plans.
In case of NSERC, emphasize your technical innovation and industry collaboration. Properly explain how your research paper must be written to bridge academics and real-world applications.
However, if you’re aiming to apply to CIHR, elaborate on different health outcomes and patient engagement. Moreover, add patient partners in your research design.
Tip 4: Collaborate and build networks
After you have aligned with the agency’s mission, the next step is collaborating and building networks. You must partner with interdisciplinary teams, industry, or NGOS related to your discipline to strengthen the feasibility and potential of your proposal.
For instance, in the case of SSHRC, you can partner with different sectors, such as museums and schools. However, for NSERC, ask industry collaborators to issue letters of support and approval.
Tip 5: Demonstrate the feasibility
Demonstrating the feasibility of your research study significantly enhances the chances of its approval. Clearly mention your milestones, research methodologies, and risk mitigation strategies in your research proposal. Moreover, elaborate whether you have access to the necessary facilities or datasets.
Tip 6: Justify your required budget
Budget is integral to academic research. To secure your desired funding, you can clearly estimate and justify it. Properly itemize your personnel, equipment, and travel expenses and try to align them with your project goals. For NSERC funding, explain why you need a particular equipment. However, for CIHR, justify patient reimbursement costs.
Tip 7: Seek feedback relentlessly
The next step is to seek feedback on your research proposal. Share the drafts with your peers and mentors to see what they see about that. Accept their feedback, whether it’s good or bad. Also, ask non-experts to provide feedback on your draft to ensure clarity and readability.
Moreover, seek feedback from institutional grant offices so they can check the critical elements efficiently.
Tip 8: Persist and repeat
Make changes in your proposal according to feedback. However, if your application still gets rejected, don’t get disheartened. You can request reviewers to provide you with feedback and modify it accordingly. You can apply for your desired funding or grants more than once. Not every applicant can successfully secure funding on the first try.
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Agency-Specific Tips to Secure Funding
General tips to secure SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR funding for your research in Canada are thoroughly discussed above. Master them completely to ensure your research funding or approval. However, along with those, you must also keep in mind the agency-specific tips that you must consider while applying for tri-agency programs. Here are the agency-specific tips to secure research funding in Canada:
Tips to Follow While Applying for SSHRC
Follow these essential tips while applying for SSHRC funding:
- As SSHRC deals with social sciences, highlight your research study’s societal impact.
- Blend different methodologies to address complex issues.
- Also, thoroughly demonstrate how your research promotes equity, diversity, and inclusion in research design and outcomes.
Tips to Follow While Applying for NSERC
Here are the tips you must keep in mind while applying for NSERC funding:
- As NSERC deals with natural sciences and engineering, so efficiently showcase innovation and training through your research project.
- Demonstrate your technical excellence by emphasizing novel technologies and using primary data to validate feasibility.
- Completely outline how your research can train students through internships and workshops.
- Mention your key sponsors and elaborate on how your study can benefit both parties.
Tips to Follow While Applying for CIHR
Follow these important tips while applying for CIHR funding:
- As CIHR is related to healthcare-related research, so focus on presenting different health outcomes of your research project. Get experts’ support to write your medical papers.
- Whatever healthcare department you choose, involve its patients in setting research questions and interpreting results.
- Explain how your research findings will contribute to the betterment of the healthcare sector.
- Also, address health disparities in terms of access to care or underrepresented populations.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Here are the common mistakes that you must avoid while writing an application or proposal for your research:
- Ignoring Formatting Rules: A funding or grant application must be written in a particular format, such as MLA or APA. Not adhering to any format can lead to the rejection of the application.
- Overly Technical Language: Your research proposal shouldn’t be overly technical and difficult for reviewers to understand. So, avoid using jargon.
- Unrealistic Timelines: Sometimes students or researchers claim to complete their research quicker than it may actually take. However, unrealistic timelines can also lead to rejection. So, break your research project into small achievable milestones.
- Weak Literature Review: Students can be unsuccessful in providing a strong literature review without any solid gaps. So, prepare a literature review that efficiently discusses existing literature and identifies gaps.
- Neglecting EDI: Agencies are more likely to prefer applications prioritizing EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) values. So, clearly demonstrate your research design reflects EDI values.
Ensure Your Desired Funding with Professional Help
This blog extensively discussed the tips to secure SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR funding for your research in Canada. However, it is possible that you might not secure your dream funding or grant by writing your application or proposal adhering to these tips. So, to avoid any disruption, you must avail yourself of professional research proposal writing services. These services are fully equipped with the missions, requirements, and guidelines of the tri-agency funding programs.
No matter what grant students want to secure, they efficiently assist in ensuring this by providing well-written and highly approvable research proposals and applications. So, contact these services now and start your academic research journey!
Frequently Asked Questions
The key difference between SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR is that SSHRC focuses on social sciences and humanities, NSERC focuses on natural sciences and engineering, and CIHR focuses on healthcare research.
The tri-agency programs (SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR) are specifically for Canadian students and permanent residents. However, some international visa holders might get an exception to apply to any particular funding program.
Keep these sections in mind while writing a tri-agency research proposal:
- Clear Objectives
- Research Methodology
- Significance
- Feasibility
- Alignment With the Agency’s Mission
Whenever writing a tri-agency application, avoid these common mistakes:
- Jargon
- Vague Budgets
- Unrealistic Timelines
- Weak Impact Statements
- Ignoring Formatting Rules
The success rates for SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR programs may vary due to their guidelines and requirements. However, the average range lies between 15-30%.
