Your Data Is Solid. Is Your Argument Landing?
Scientific Writing From the Reader’s Perspective, taught by Professor George Gopen, is the single most highly rated faculty development program offered at Indiana University.
Stephen P. Bogdewic, PhD, MA — Executive Vice Dean Emeritus at Indiana University
Understanding Reader Expectations Improves Your Chances for Funding and Publishing Research
The Gap Between Ideas and Reader Interpretation
The challenge facing most research institutions is not a shortage of scientific expertise. It is a gap between what researchers intend to communicate and what their readers actually perceive. A theory that cannot be communicated clearly cannot be evaluated. A paper whose argument is buried in its own prose will not be read as intended. A grant proposal that fails to deliver its ideas to reviewers cannot compete, regardless of the quality of the science behind it. But most writing seminars for research institutions focus on formats, tips, and grammar rules that do nothing to increase the chances for reader comprehension.
Research institutions are filled with excellent scientists who still struggle to get their writing funded or published. Their ideas may be strong, but their writing doesn’t deliver those ideas in the way reviewers actually read. The Reader Expectation Approach is a writing framework optimizing findings in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics to help researchers present complex ideas in a way that readers will accurately interpret.
Writing Workshops Built for Research Institutions
In a scientific marketplace where less than 20% of proposals are likely to be funded in any given funding period, no institution can afford writing that fails to deliver its science clearly. If your researchers’ ideas penetrate clearly and easily to the minds of those reviewing the work, their applications will stand out from the sea of poorly written submissions with which they compete.
REA training serves research institutions across three core writing activities:
- Theory development — writing that organizes and clarifies thinking at the point of composition, helping researchers develop their ideas as they write
- Publication — papers whose arguments remain intact from first draft to final submission, written in a way reviewers can follow without struggle
- Grant funding — proposals that deliver their science to reviewers clearly and confidently, producing measurable increases in funding success
George gave me my life, my career, my future. He gave me my dreams.
I owe him everything.Victoria Seewaldt, MD — Ruth Ziegler Chair in Population Sciences, City of Hope Cancer Center, Advisor to the National Institutes of Health
The empirical test, which I demand as a scientist, is that I would show it to people before and after… they were able to follow it much more clearly when I used the Gopen method… putting things where the reader expects.
Cliff Cunningham, PhD — Full Professor, Department of Biology, Duke University
How Scientific Writing Violates Reader Expectations
Poor scientific writing is not a matter of grammatical errors, excessive length, or imprecise word choice. It is writing that fails to transfer the writer’s intended meaning into the reader’s mind — and it is far more common than most institutions recognize. Consider what happens when a reviewer reads a grant proposal or manuscript. Having reached the end of a sentence, the reader assumes it has delivered its meaning completely. But the meaning a reader constructs from a sentence is not always the meaning the writer intended. When those two diverge — even subtly — the argument is lost, the science is misread, and the proposal fails on grounds that have nothing to do with the quality of the research itself.
The source of this problem is structural, not stylistic. Readers of English take their interpretive cues primarily from where information appears within a sentence, not from word choice alone. When key information is placed where readers do not expect to find it, confusion follows — even in prose that is technically accurate. The result is writing that demands more cognitive effort than reviewers are willing to give, generating the revision cycles, funding shortfalls, and publication delays that faculty development programs fail to prevent.
REA Writing Seminars Build Successful Research Institutions
REA support for research institutions includes universities, medical schools, national laboratories, and government scientific agencies. Institutions that have invested in REA training include the NIH, CDC, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Indiana University, Duke University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Oslo University Hospital.
For a full client roster download the PDF
Dear George, I am a professional writer by default — and your training has changed my approach to writing, forever.
Adam Bailis, PhD — Associate Dean of Research, Jefferson College of Health Professions, Thomas Jefferson University
Case Study: Indiana University School of Medicine
Before REA training, Indiana University ranked 40th in grant application success among research universities nationally. After a sustained investment in REA training, they moved to 14th place. Indiana’s research awards remained above $200 million in every measured year from 2019 onward.
Indiana University is one of six research universities whose grant funding outcomes have been tracked after investing in REA. Together, those six institutions demonstrate a combined increase of $3.4 billion in research funding. Data from all six institutions is available on the Results page.
Funding is more competitive than ever.
Can you really afford to be misunderstood?
REA training gives researchers specific tools they can apply to every paper, proposal, and report, indefinitely. By making reader expectations visible to individual writers, this training helps research institutions produce writing that reviewers can follow clearly — and fund confidently.
Schedule a brief discovery call to explore which combination of seminar, workshop, and e-learning would best serve your institution’s goals and timeline.