ArticleJAMA network open2024
Use of Promotional Language in Grant Applications and Grant Success.
Article in JAMA network open, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Impact upfront: novel format for Novo Nordisk Foundation funding.Health research policy and systems · 2025Review
- Scientific publications that use promotional language in the abstract receive more citations and public attention.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- The gender gap in scholarly self-promotion on social media.Nature communications · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Importance: 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. Objectives: 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. Design, Setting, and Participants: 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. Main Outcomes and Measures: 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. Results: 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%). Conclusions and Relevance: 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.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.