JCR Inclusion Grants

What is an Inclusion Grant? The general idea is to help JCR authors offered a revision opportunity who do not have access to sufficient funds to conduct the required research. We are trying to include potential authors who may otherwise by shut out of JCR due to resource constraints.

When an author team receives a “revise and resubmit” decision from JCR, it is usually accompanied by a request for new empirical data. This may be due to flaws in existing study designs, and/or underpowered existing studies, more qualitative data needed, as well as for other reasons. The move for more rigor and reproducibility, indeed the open science movement more broadly, has encouraged reviewers to ask for higher-powered (often pre-registered, in the case of experiments) studies as part of a revision.

However well-intentioned, these requests burden author teams differentially. Authors from schools with very small research budgets (which could include smaller, “balanced” schools, schools from outside the United States, etc.) may simply be so resource constrained that they are unable to carry out the required empirical work to satisfy JCR standards.

JCR is launching a one-year pilot project to both determine the extent that this may be a problem, and to assist authors with serious resource constraints in completing their JCR revision. This initiative will be limited to funding based on very clear reviewer asks for a correction to a flawed study design, or for higher-powered studies, or clear guidance as to what kind(s) of additional qualitative data should be collected, and not for more nebulous asks from the review team. Authors will need to ask for funding to complete the study the reviewers have asked for. That is, this funding is for those cases with a clear-and-concrete review ask for which there is little room for ambiguity about ask-execution-evaluation.

Proposals for Inclusion Grants will be judged by two overarching criteria: does the planned new empirical work do what the reviewers have asked, and has the author team convincingly shown evidence of the need for funding?

The funding maximum for this pilot project is $2000 per paper/author team.

In your submission, you must explain why you are requesting research funding, showing the reviewer ask you are addressing, and including detailed proof of research budgets and constraints at your current institution. This will likely include screenshots of budgets, and/or annual funding memos from your institution. These will be treated in confidence. 

Submission

 Applicants should apply to June Cotte, jcotte@ivey.ca. Proposals will be assessed by June Cotte and Associate Editor Stephen Spiller. All proposals will be evaluated based on methodological rigor, feasibility, and demonstrated need for funding.

Formatting Guidelines

All research grant proposals would be submitted via email to jcotte@ivey.ca and should use JCR formatting. The document could be structured as follows:

1. Cover Page
2. Brief summary of revision request(s)
3. A copy of the JCR decision letter and reviewer comments
4. Research plan for the revision
5. Demonstrated need for funding
6. Budget Table, showing current funds, and how JCR funds would be used