Scaling Research Without Grants

Today, I’m pulling back the curtain on a mini-lesson from my Round 2+ Navigate program: Scaling Research Through Writing. I make the case for why 2026 should be a writing year for you. I walk you through how writing and publishing help expand your research’s reach, deepen collaborations, and even enhance your mentorship. 

I also share practical strategies for working with grad students, post-docs, and early-career faculty to develop their writing skills, because when you teach writing, you multiply the impact of your research and your team. If you’ve been thinking about how to make your scholarly work matter more, this episode is full of ideas to help you scale your research program without waiting for grants to come through.

Tune in to learn how to shift your mindset about academic writing and how to leverage it as a strategic tool for growth and influence in your field. 

And don’t miss Episode 300 next week, it’s our special wrap-up for 2025!

Why Writing Is a Tool to Scale Your Research

Scaling your research isn’t just about bigger grants or bigger budgets. It’s about increasing your research’s impact on your field, on the people your work serves, and on the next generation of scholars. Writing helps you do that in multiple ways:

• Dissemination of results: The more you write and publish, the more your research reaches the people who need it.
• Collaborations and networks: Writing projects create natural opportunities to connect with colleagues and students.
• Prestige and recognition: Publications build your professional reputation, opening doors for future projects and opportunities.
• Student and team development: Guiding your students through writing strengthens their skills, sets them up for long-term success, and increases the output of your research program.

Teaching Writing to Scale Your Research

One of the most underutilized ways to scale your research is by becoming a better teacher of writing. When you invest in developing your students’ and junior colleagues’ writing skills, you:

• Save time in the long run by building capable, independent collaborators.
• Increase the number of publications coming from your team.
• Multiply your impact by preparing students for successful careers.

Think of it as explicit instruction—showing students how you write, modeling the process, and giving targeted feedback. Tools like reverse outlining, rhetorical analysis of articles, and over-the-shoulder mentoring can help them develop genre mastery in your field. 

Practical Tips for 2026

As you plan for the new year:

• Prioritize publishing your backlog of papers.
• Invest in improving your own writing practice and project management.
• Take a proactive role in developing your students and post-docs as writers.
• Be strategic in selecting students who are motivated and teachable.

Even a small, focused effort on these fronts can have a significant effect on your research’s reach and influence.

“Here’s the thing about academic writing. Certainly, even in the bachelors degree program, you got some really great composition courses and you learned some general structure of academic-style writing. But the kind of academic writing that you do in order to scale your research program is a very honed niche skill for your specific field and subfield. It would be really hard for the grad students, post-docs, and even early tenure faculty that you work with to learn how to do that kind of writing from a book.”

“Teaching writing is just like teaching anything else. You need a curriculum and you need a plan. When I say curriculum, I don’t mean that you need to have a super formal curriculum, but you need to have a method, an approach, or a decided way to do it. Selecting students who will be teachable is an important vetting process. You want to select students who are good. You don’t want to waste a ton of time on students who don’t care about this or don’t want to do it or who aren’t that great at it. Really spend your energy and time on students who are going to benefit from this work.”

We’re receiving applications for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®. Check out the program details and start your application process here.

CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION:

1. Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Apply here!
2. Cathy’s book, Making Time to Write: How to Resist the Patriarchy and Take Control of Your Academic Career Through Writing is available in print! Learn how to build your career around your writing practice while shattering the myths of writing every day, accountability, and motivation, doing mindset work that’s going to reshape your writing,and changing academic culture one womxn and nonbinary professor at a time. Get your print copy today or order it for a friend here!
3. If you would like to hear more from Cathy for free, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter, In the Pipeline, at scholarsvoice.org. It’s a newsletter that she personally writes that goes out once a week with writing and publication tips, strategies, inspiration, book reviews and more.

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