R03s vs. R01s Posted on March 19, 2007 R03s help pave the way in the transition to tenure, says Ruth Chao (bio).

In transitioning to an R01, I think, for me, I was doing longitudinal data collection and then you have the decision as to whether you’re going to wait for at least two waves of your data to come in, and for someone who’s going up for tenure, you can't afford to do that. You need to be getting your data collected, getting it out, analyzed, and getting it out in publications. So, that's a judgment call you make in terms of, that's why R01s very, very early on can be difficult - it's labor intensive in terms of the data collection. You have to make sure you get your data collection done quickly enough so you can turn around and get your publications out from it.

So if the data collection is so labor intensive that you're not getting to the point where you're already starting to analyze the data and certainly write the data up for publications, then you really need to rethink and just stick with an R03 and maybe then when you feel like okay I think I've got closer to enough publications for tenure, then you go ahead and you apply for an R01.

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