Use of Promotional Language in Grant Applications and Grant Success

Scientific writing is critical for successfully showing the merits of innovative ideas to funding agencies, colleagues, and practitioners, and it has evolved over time, particularly in the increased use of promotional words.

To evaluate whether promotional language in biomedical grant writing is associated with receipt of funding and to assess who uses promotional language in their grant applications, after accounting for principal investigators (PIs), grants, and other confounders.

This cross-sectional study uses previously collected data on 2439 funded and rejected National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant applications from 2007 to 2019 and 9096 funded and rejected Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF) biomedical grant applications from 2015 to 2022, bibliographic data on the publications of each PI from OpenAlex, and fixed-effects regression analysis.

Promotional language was measured using a validated dictionary of 139 science-specific terms. Grant application success was modeled as a binary outcome and was based on the percentage of promotional words, controlling for variables including characteristics of grants and PIs. The level of promotional words was modeled on the PI's grant-related characteristics.

Of the 11 535 grants included in this study, the percentage of promotional words was positively associated with the probability of receiving funding (NNF grants: odds ratio, 1.47 [95% CI, 1.25-1.71]; NIH grants: odds ratio, 1.51 [95% CI, 1.10-2.11]). Younger PIs used more promotional language than the oldest PIs (1.2% vs 0.8%), men generally used more promotional language than women (1.0% vs 0.9%), and those requesting the highest funding amounts used more promotional language than those requesting the lowest funding amounts (1.1% vs 0.9%).

This study found that the percentage of promotional language used in medical science grants was positively associated with receiving funding after accounting for PI, grant, and year confounds and that younger PIs, men PIs, and PIs requesting higher amounts of funding generally used more promotional language in their grants. These can patterns inform research strategies for communicating the merits of good ideas to funding agencies and other researchers.