Writing your proposal
Pitching your workshop
Proposals for running workshops come in two forms: either an email inquiry or a more formal written proposal submission. Once the appropriate venue or conference has been identified (see Picking a venue section), writing a convincing email or proposal to the venue or conference organizers is key to getting your workshop approved.
Tips for writing a convincing proposal
Emphasize the importance of reproducibility and communicate the expected outcome of the workshop. See the email and proposal examples below and be sure to provide expected results for the intended community you are targeting. These expected outcomes could be based off of results from previous reproducibility workshops that you have run or from similar workshops run by another group. Making it clear to the reader what the benefits of this workshop are will make your proposal more compelling.
Be as specific as possible about the workshop you are offering. Clearly explain or outline what the workshop will look like, including:
Proposed date and duration of the workshop.
Specific topics that your workshop will cover. Some examples are data management, data sharing, electronic lab notebooks, wet lab protocol sharing, bioinformatic tools, and data analysis/visualization.
Who you are and who will be running your workshop. Will you have instructors, moderators, or speakers? Don’t forget to explain why you chose these people and what value or expertise they specifically bring to the workshop.
The more planned out your workshop appears, the more likely your readers will be convinced that this is a worthy event to host.
Whenever possible make it relevant to the venue or conference. For example, if you’re proposing to run a workshop at a conference, when you are choosing panel speakers for the workshop, see if you can find at least one person who is an expert in a field that is directly relevant to the conference. Using keywords can help tailor the proposal specifically to your readers and grab their attention. For example, if it is a Synthetic biology conference, you could use the word “synthetic biologists” instead of a generic “researchers.”
Ask upfront for what you need. Clearly state what your requirements are for the workshop and what would be ideal to have. For example, if you want the event to be free to attend, state that in the proposal or in your first email inquiry. You don’t want to waste time and effort in pursuing a workshop at a venue or conference that can’t support the requirements for your workshop’s needs.
Ask your colleagues to review your proposal. Before sending out that email or proposal, consider asking for feedback and edits from your colleagues, even if it is to simply proofread it for grammatical and spelling errors. You don’t want to come across as a sloppy person who runs mediocre workshops.
Example email proposal
Dear XXXX organizers,
My name is YYYY and I am an eLife ambassador at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health at the University of British Columbia.
Reproducibility is an important part of efficient, sustainable, and productive research. The eLife ambassadors are working with a number of organizations to conduct, refine, and enable others to run reproducibility workshops at conferences. We believe that your conference would be the perfect place to run such a pilot workshop. Previous reproducibility workshops and minisymposia have been well-received with positive feedback from attendees.
At the moment we are looking to run 90 minute pilot workshops at three big conferences in 2018. We will use these pilot events to determine if the workshop format is a feasible and efficient way to engage with researchers on reproducibility. The results will be published in eLife. I am already registered and planning on participating at XXXX this year and would be happy to work with you to organize such a workshop.
The pilot at XXXX would:
Consist of one or multiple workshops covering data management, data sharing, electronic lab notebooks, wet lab protocol sharing, wet lab reagent sharing, bioinformatic tools, and data analysis/visualization
Devote half of each ~90 minute workshop to the “theory and importance of reproducibility” and the other half to describing a “reproducibility toolkit” that can be used to achieve reproducible experiments on a practical level
Be free and supported by eLife (although it would be nice to have XXXX registration fees waived for additional organizers if possible)
Incorporate any advice you have on how best to tailor reproducibility discussions to the audience at XXXX
Thank you very much and I am looking forward to getting this conversation started. Sincerely,
YYYY
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