The following sites provide helpful information about scientific proposal and report writing. The sites, particularly those for general writing tips, may provide more guidance and ideas to present experiments for scientists writing research project plans. Most of the resources available are intended for grant-writing audiences. Though the Office of Scientific Quality Review manages the intramural peer review of ARS's research project plans for quality and improvement purposes (vs. funding purposes), we believe the skills acquired while learning to write a grant proposal are very similar to the skills needed to write a project plan. Thus, we encourage our scientists to build their grant-writing skills, as well as their general scientific writing skills. These sites are not necessarily endorsed by the Agricultural Research Service and are intended to be used in support of internal guidance and training only.  If you would like to add links to this list, please contact us at osqr@ars.usda.gov

GENERAL WRITING TIPS FOR SCIENTISTS

Grantsmanship Hints
Article written by James S. Schepers, USDA, ARS, E. John Sadler, USDA, ARS, and William R. Raun, Oklahoma State University. Published in the Agronomy Journal 92(1):1-5, 2000.
Grantsmanship Hints

Bioscience
Guidelines for Writing Applications
http://www.bioscience.org/services/grant1.htm

Columbia University
Grant Proposal Writing
http://www.cpmcnet.columbia.edu/research/writing.htm

The Foundation Center
The Foundation Center's Guide to Proposal Writing http://www.fdncenter.org/getstarted/learnabout/proposalwriting.html

TIPS FOR SCIENTIFIC WRITING

Published by NOAA
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ftproot/ssd/html/writetip.htm

Dr. Naline Nadkarni, Ecologist and Science-writing advisor
How to Write a Proposal or Research Report
http://192.211.16.16/curricular/bgc1998/report.tips.html

Indiana University
Guides for better science research, writing, and presentation
http://www.indiana.edu/~cheminfo/14-05.html

University of Virginia - Charlottesville
How to Write a Winning Proposal and Get Those Grants
http://www.virginia.edu/~trc/grantsbook.htm

The Whitaker Organization
Proposal Writing
http://whitaker.org/sanders.html

University of Wisconsin-Madison
Grants Information Center
http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/Memorial/grants/proposal.htm

Virginia Tech
Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Student
http://filebox.vt.edu/eng/mech/writing/

SEMINARS

Iowa State University
USDA's competitive grants program: Information and guidelines for successful grantsmanship (Old, but gives an idea of what's been done before)
http://www.ent.iastate.edu/entsoc/ncb99/prog/abs/165.html

National Institutes of Health
Office of Extramural Grants (Offered Nationwide)
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/seminars.htm

COLLEGE COURSES ON SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH WRITING

North Carolina State University (scroll down to this entry)
333 Communication for Science and Research
http://www.chass.ncsu.edu/english/spr2000.html