About
Navigating the process to secure funding and fellowships—from project ideation to submission to award— requires copious amounts of time and energy from an interconnected group of co-authors, reviewers, and grants professionals. However, most of the resulting materials are not accessible or even visible to those outside the grants-making process, much less the general public. Consequently, this important piece of the research process remains opaque, hiding these materials from analysis and acknowledgement.
This inaccessibility is an obstacle for the beneficial uses of such materials, whether as examples to help guide proposal writing, or as scholarly objects documenting the questions, methods, sources, and labor that shape a research agenda or program development over time. Although some funders and applicants post full proposals to websites or scholarly repositories, this practice is haphazard and varies depending on individual and institutional norms. Grant documents are also shared through informal networks, but this may end up reinforcing inequities through differences in awareness of and access to these networks.
An open repository of funding proposals will elevate their recognition as scholarly products, improve access for the public and other grant seekers, and bring transparency to this facet of the research process.
This site builds on the longstanding OGrants project, led by Ethan White, to document a new phase of discussion, needs assessment, and technical planning for a repository of open grants.
Full grant proposal
The 2021 funding proposal granted by the Institute of Museum and Library Services summarizes past OGrants work and future planning through 2023.
Project team
University of Florida
- Perry Collins, MA/MLIS, Copyright and OER Librarian (PI, June 2023 and later)
- Hao Ye, PhD, Reproducibility Librarian (PI, May 2023 and earlier)
- Bess de Farber, MNM, Research Administration Manager for Libraries
- Chelsea Johnston, MLIS, Scholarly Publishing and Repository Librarian
- Brian Keith, MBA/MLIS, Associate Dean Administrative Services and Faculty Affairs for Libraries
- Xiaoli Ma, MA/MSI, Metadata Librarian
- Chris Nicolich, MS, Application Developer
- Plato Smith, PhD, Data Management Librarian
- Laurie Taylor, PhD, Sr. Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies
- Hannah Toombs, PhD Candidate, Anthropology
- Natalia Uribe-Castañeda, PhD Student, Interdisciplinary Ecology
Advisory Committee
The Planning for Open Grants project is advised by an external advisory committee, selected from among domain experts and stakeholders.
Tech stack
This site is built in Jekyll using the Hyde theme built on Poole. It is developed on GitHub and hosted on Netlify.
Timeline
This site started in 2012 as a blog post on Jabberwocky Ecology. In 2017 Ethan White built the original version of the current site to make it easier for others to contribute and submit grants.
In 2021, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded the University of Florida a grant, under leadership of librarians Hao Ye and Perry Collins, to undertake planning for a long-term open grants repository, building from OGrants as well as efforts by Bess de Farber and Laurie Taylor to share library funding proposals. Website control was transferred to the ogrants Github organization for further developments and maintenance.
Acknowledgments
Development of this site is supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Data-Driven Discovery Initiative through Grant GBMF4563 to Ethan White.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services Award # LG-250067-OLS-21 to Hao Ye and Perry Collins.
