Academic research plan
Just as rare are programs designed to help doctoral students and postdocs learn how to create a research plan. We interviewed and corresponded with faculty and research scientists who have served on hiring committees. From your immediate point of view, the purpose of a research plan is to help get you research plan, however, serves another, very important function: it contributes to your development as a scientist. As will become apparent later in this document, one of the functions of a research plan is to demonstrate your intellectual vision and aspirations. Writing a research plan casts your gaze forward and prompts you to begin planning for when you have your own laboratory. And if you've already started to think about your own lab, it will help you to refine your plans. So take a stab at writing a research plan, even if you don't expect to be on the job market for a while. The aim of your research plan, then, as of the rest of your application, is to assure the hiring committee that life with you will be do you do this? Provide the committee a compelling, reassuring, believable image of what their life will be like when you are working down the them a story--a believable, credible story--about what your lab will be like 5 years from now: well-funded, vibrant, productive, pursuing a valuable, ambitious but realistic research agenda that meshes well with the department's mission and with the other research going on in the don't misunderstand: you shouldn't tell them this ("in 5 years my lab will be vibrant, productive, and well-funded ... Rather, you need to lead them to believe it by describing a research agenda that persuades them that you will succeed. If the research you plan is not compelling, no rhetorical skill will make it compelling to a committee of smart scientists. If the research you propose is not manifestly, obviously important, if you don't know why it's important, or if you can't convey its importance effectively, convincing the committee to hire you won't be easy. It isn't easy to change gears midcourse, but getting yourself into an important area of research will be well worth the effort in the long term--to your hirability, to your fundability, to your tenurability, and also to your career satisfaction. Curing cancer is not a suitable goal for one individual's research plan--exciting, yes, but much too big to be believable. That kind of research] can travel down several different mechanistic routes," this respondent says, "i. Angiogenesis, breakdown of extracellular matrix, gene activation, induction of molecules involved--it can use different models--implanting tumors, using different tumor models, in vivo, in vitro, etc. The combination of a manifestly important goal with manifestly interesting, feasible approaches is the foundation of the research specific is not the same thing as including loads of detail. Superfluous details are not just unnecessary, they are often the hallmark of a poor plan. Constructing a research plan along these lines strengthens your application in three ways: you avoid alienating the committee by boring them; you tell the committee precisely what you intend to do; and you show that you have a subtle mind and a deep knowledge of your 't do this yet? And by all means have several people--preferably senior colleagues who have served on hiring committees--critique your research there were two parts to this, remember? You not only have to tell a good story--you also have to make it seem real, to make them expect it to come do i make my research plan seem real?
If you want to get a job at an institution that takes its research seriously, you'll have to convince your future colleagues that you've gotten past the young, impressionable phase, where every idea glitters with promise despite the fact that it isn't feasible and isn't likely to work. In the words of one scholar, "you can tell a 'building castles in the sky' research plan. One of my sources was unequivocal on this point: "does the research question build on the preliminary data the person has generated? No matter how knowledgeable you are, no matter how well considered your research plan, you can't predict the future. Think of it as a continuum: at one end sit well-established researchers with strong research records, many first-author (or last-author) publications, and their own research funding. Most candidates for entry-level tenure-track faculty jobs at institutions that require research (that is, most of the people who write research plans for job applications) are somewhere in the middle. You probably won't get hired anywhere if you aren't well prepared to start a productive research program at a scale appropriate for the these days some institutions and departments are looking for more than that. Increasingly, especially in the biomedical field, universities are hiring established researchers, even at the "entry" (assistant professor) level. Increasingly, senior postdocs are being promoted to research associate or research faculty positions during what the grantdoctor calls the "postpostdoc" phase of their research career. In that position, they write research grants in their own names and their host institutions sponsor them. Very often these folks have an r01 before they begin applying for a tenure-track key objective if you’re applying to one of these institutions is securing research grants: if you have a grant in your own name, you'll be a strong candidate; if you don't have your own grant, you are less competitive. It's a cynical cop out on the institution’s part, really, taking a pass on the difficult job of evaluating talent and capitulating to the reality of big-time biomedical research: it's all about the cash. Indeed, second-tier research institutions tend to expect the most experience; harvard and johns hopkins do not expect you to have your own research grant. Few people applying for tenure-track jobs have had the opportunity to start their own research programs. As not, all your data were collected in someone else's lab, as a part of someone else's research agenda. One respondent said it beautifully: "the best plans usually build on the prior experience of the applicant but are not direct extensions of their postdoctoral work. M going to type that phrase again, it's so important: the best plans usually build on the prior experience of the applicant but are not direct extensions of their postdoctoral you're one of the select few applicants with lots of experience leading your own lab, that's the key to your rhetorical strategy. It's different enough to be original, but similar enough that your years of training aren't r respondent wrote, "most candidates (95%) stick to extensions of what they are most familiar with, but the key is, have they figured out some rather creative new directions for the research and have they done a good job convincing us that they can do it based on what is already known? Once we have a short list of candidates," writes yet another source, "the research proposals are looked at more carefully for imaginative ideas that differ from the candidates’ ph. Decide what turf is his or hers, what turf is yours, and what story you intend to tell in your research plan and his or her letter of recommendation. Talk to your adviser about carving out your own research niche within the larger research effort, where you do work motivated by your own original ideas, something related but oblique to what your adviser is doing in the rest of the the research plan more important in the screening phase or late in the game?
General, research plans are weighed more heavily later in the game, with more readily comprehensible evidence (especially pedigree, letters of recommendation, impact factor of journals, etc. Being weighed more heavily in the early r, your research plan must be designed to serve more than one purpose. One person i spoke to said that a research plan should be "about three pages of 1. Some will think it's a bit too long, others a bit too short, but no one will throw it out because of its er that we said that a research plan needs to help you through initial screening and withstand careful scrutiny in the later do you make a good first impression? The idea is to present, up front, in half a page or so, the information that the committee is most likely to be looking for in the early, screening phase of the search: clearly stated research goals, the most compelling motivation, and the general approach you intend to attention to the layout. A research plan should tell how great the science is, not how great you are. Focus on contributions to scientific knowledge, not research experience and expertise," writes one obvious mistakes. In her list of fatal errors, one respondent wrote: "poorly covering or misstating the literature, grammatical or spelling errors, and, near the top of the list, writing research plans that ask for too much effort on the part of the reader--they should be clear and concise. You want the value of your research to speak for itself--avoid exaggerated claims of its importance. Is it big enough, but with answerable individual questions so that the question generates a research path that could be followed for some time? Your research plan should be coherent, with a theme common to all your work, but not so close that they seem to be shades of the same ize your research plan to the institution you're applying for. It's pretty obvious, but you wouldn't send the same research plan to johns hopkins university and to swarthmore college. And speaking of swarthmore: research plans sent to predominantly undergraduate institutions should be carefully designed to coexist with substantial teaching loads and to benefit from the participation of undergraduate ts, suggestions? To other american chemical society websites:American chemical g the research plan for your academic job g the research plan for your academic job jason g. Research plan is more than a to-do list for this week in lab, or a manila folder full of ideas for maybe someday—at least if you are thinking of a tenure-track academic career in chemistry at virtually any bachelor’s or higher degree–granting institution in the country. A perusal of the academic job ads in c&en every august–october will quickly reveal that most schools expect a cover letter (whether they say so or not), a cv, a teaching statement, and a research plan, along with reference letters and transcripts. Research plan is a thoughtful, compelling, well-written document that outlines your exciting, unique research ideas that you and your students will pursue over the next half decade or so to advance knowledge in your discipline and earn you grants, papers, speaking invitations, tenure, promotion, and a national reputation. More specifics i only really knew for my own institution, hope college (a research intensive undergraduate liberal arts college with no graduate program), and even there you might get a dozen nuanced opinions among my dozen colleagues. So i polled a broad cross-section of my network, spanning chemical subdisciplines at institutions ranging from small, teaching-centered liberal arts colleges to our nation’s elite research programs, such as scripps and mit. More senior advisors and members of search committees may have gotten their jobs with a single research project, conventional wisdom these days is that you need two to three distinct but related projects. But even the safest project must be worth doing, and even the riskiest must appear to have a reasonable chance of closely connected should your research be with your past?
You also must be able to make the case for why your training makes this a good problem for you to study—how you bring a unique skill set as well as unique ideas to this research. The five years you will have to do, fund, and publish the research before crafting your tenure package will go by too fast for you to break into something entirely outside your realm of mistry is a partial exception to this advice—in this subdiscipline it is quite common to bring a project with you from a postdoc (or more rarely your ph. It is also wise to be sure your advisor tells that same story in his or her letter and articulates support of your pursuing this research in your career as a genuinely independent scientist (and not merely someone who could be perceived as his or her latest "flunky" of a collaborator. Also beware of presuming you can help advance the research of someone already in a department. Some places will view collaboration very favorably, but the safest route is to cautiously float such ideas during interviews while presenting research plans that are exciting and achievable on your do you show your fit? The research plan that you target in the middle to get you a job at both harvard university and hope college will not get you an interview at either! Not that my colleagues and i at hope cannot tackle research that is just as exciting as harvard’s. However, we need to have enough of a niche or a unique angle both to endure the longer timeframe necessitated by smaller groups of undergraduate researchers and to ensure that we still stand out. If something you are planning to say is contingent on something you read on their web site, find a way to confirm it! The research plan is not the place to articulate start-up needs, you should consider instrumentation and other resources that will be necessary to get started, and where you will go for funding or resources down the road. Research plan should show the big picture clearly and excite a broad audience of chemists across your sub-discipline. So having at least the introduction and executive summaries of your projects comprehensible and compelling to those outside your discipline is highly science, written well, makes a good research plan. As you craft and refine your research plan, keep the following strategies, as well as your audience in mind:Begin the document with an abstract or executive summary that engages a broad audience and shows synergies among your projects. Provide sufficient details and references to convince the experts you know your stuff and actually have a plan for what your group will be doing in the lab. Give details of first and key experiments, and backup plans or fallback positions for their riskiest aspects. While this is especially important at schools with greater teaching missions, it can help set you apart even at research intensive institutions. This is especially true if there is doubt about how you plan to target or "market" your research. Otherwise, it is appropriate to hold off until the interview to discuss this , how long should your research plan be? In my opinion, ten pages total for your research plans should be a fairly firm upper limit unless you are specifically told otherwise by a search committee, and then only if you have two to three distinct lly, this question has answered itself already! Your research plan needs to be a well thought out document that is an integrated part of applications tailored to each institution to which you apply. So add “write research plans” to this week’s to do list (and every week’s for the next few months) and start writing up the ideas in that manila folder into some genuine research plans.
He has received the dreyfus start-up award, research corporation cottrell college science award, and nsf career award, and is currently on sabbatical as a visiting research professor at arizona state university. Use color as necessary but not ional schoolcollege planningchemistry olympiadproject seedundergraduatestudent chaptersattending acs meetingsundergraduate researchinternships, summer jobs & coopsstudy abroad programsfinding a mentornetworkingin chemistrytwo year/community college studentsgraduateacs directory of graduate researchgraduate & postdoc magazinegrants & fellowshipscareer planninginternational studentsplanning for graduate work in rds & there, or gone to get coffee??? Your security, this online session is about to end due to you do not respond, everything you entered on this page will be lost and you will have to login remaining: 00: write an academic research proposal is most likened to writing a proposal that addresses a project. The main difference is that the research proposal is a plan to conduct either academic or scientific research, not to develop a project. It is basically outlining proposed research on an academic subject and outlining any types of procedures for quantitative or qualitative research on a g a research proposala research proposal for academic writing analyzes a topic and proposes a theory for that topic that may not have been used before. You will normally see this sort of proposal as a precursor to a doctoral dissertation or a master’s degree level thesis proposal will introduce what the research proposes to do and/or prove. It will also give an in depth account of the methods and theories that will be used to support the hypothesis within the proposal encompasses argumentative writing as well as hardcore research. It will usually contain reviews of various books which support the thesis or hypothesis that it proposes to e of a research proposali. It will discern if your research is qualitative or quantitative and should allude to the thesis . You will need to provide a well rounded, intelligent and substantial statement on why the research that you are doing needs to be done. It will normally begin with the statement “the purpose of this academic research study is…”d. It will provide a detailed discussion of whether you will be doing quantitative or qualitative research and the instruments of research (survey, interview, questionnaire, etc. It will review any pressing and pertinent research that is in anyway tied to the hypothesis debunking it. Referencesthis section will list all of your reference material in either apa or mla enable javascript to view the comments powered by ts powered by do you write a research proposal for academic writing? Write an academic research proposal is most likened to writing a proposal that addresses a project. It is basically outlining proposed research on an academic subject and outlining any types of procedures for quantitative or qualitative research on a h grammar rules & usagewritinghow do you write a research proposal for academic writing? Writing skillshow to write a research paperhow to write a bibliographytips on writing an essay mla styledefinition of academic writingreport writing formatexpository writing vs. Technical writinghelpful tips for writing an abstracttips on academic writing tips on writing conference yourdictionary and save customized word lists. Set a username for will see it as author name with your public word write an academic research proposal is most likened to writing a proposal that addresses a project. Set a username for will see it as author name with your public word sity of southern zing your social sciences research g a research zing your social sciences research paper: writing a research purpose of this guide is to provide advice on how to develop and organize a research paper in the social of research flaws to ndent and dependent ry of research terms. Choosing a research ing a topic ning a topic ing the timeliness of a topic idea.
An oral g with g someone else's to manage group of structured group project survival g a book le book review ing collected g a field informed g a policy g a research goal of a research proposal is to present and justify the need to study a research problem and to present the practical ways in which the proposed study should be conducted. The design elements and procedures for conducting the research are governed by standards within the predominant discipline in which the problem resides, so guidelines for research proposals are more exacting and less formal than a general project proposal. In addition to providing a rationale, a proposal describes detailed methodology for conducting the research consistent with requirements of the professional or academic field and a statement on anticipated outcomes and/or benefits derived from the study's ohl, david r. Syracuse, ny: syracuse university press, to approach writing a research professor may assign the task of writing a research proposal for the following reasons:Develop your skills in thinking about and designing a comprehensive research study;. How to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature to ensure a research problem has not already been answered [or you may determine the problem has been answered ineffectively] and, in so doing, become better at locating scholarship related to your topic;. Review, examine, and consider the use of different methods for gathering and analyzing data related to the research problem; and,Nurture a sense of inquisitiveness within yourself and to help see yourself as an active participant in the process of doing scholarly research. Proposal should contain all the key elements involved in designing a completed research study, with sufficient information that allows readers to assess the validity and usefulness of your proposed study. The only elements missing from a research proposal are the findings of the study and your analysis of those results. Finally, an effective proposal is judged on the quality of your writing and, therefore, it is important that your writing is coherent, clear, and less of the research problem you are investigating and the methodology you choose, all research proposals must address the following questions:What do you plan to accomplish? Be clear and succinct in defining the research problem and what it is you are proposing to do you want to do it? In addition to detailing your research design, you also must conduct a thorough review of the literature and provide convincing evidence that it is a topic worthy of study. If you're having trouble formulating a research problem to propose investigating, go mistakes to e to be concise; being "all over the map" without a clear sense of e to cite landmark works in your literature e to delimit the contextual boundaries of your research [e. To develop a coherent and persuasive argument for the proposed e to stay focused on the research problem; going off on unrelated or imprecise writing, or poor much detail on minor issues, but not enough detail on major r, margaret. University of illinois at ure and writing ing the proposal with writing a regular academic paper, research proposals are generally organized the same way throughout most social science disciplines. Exactly should i plan to do, and can i get it done in the time available? General, a compelling research proposal should document your knowledge of the topic and demonstrate your enthusiasm for conducting the study. General your proposal should include the following sections:In the real world of higher education, a research proposal is most often written by scholars seeking grant funding for a research project or it's the first step in getting approval to write a doctoral dissertation. Even if this is just a course assignment, treat your introduction as the initial pitch of an idea or a thorough examination of the significance of a research problem. Note that most proposals do not include an abstract [summary] before the about your introduction as a narrative written in one to three paragraphs that succinctly answers the following four questions:What is the central research problem? Is this important research, what is its significance, and why should someone reading the proposal care about the outcomes of the proposed study? Approach writing this section with the thought that you can’t assume your readers will know as much about the research problem as you do.
Note that this section is not an essay going over everything you have learned about the topic; instead, you must choose what is relevant to help explain the goals for your that end, while there are no hard and fast rules, you should attempt to address some or all of the following key points:State the research problem and give a more detailed explanation about the purpose of the study than what you stated in the introduction. Be sure to note how your proposed study builds on previous assumptions about the research n how you plan to go about conducting your research. Clearly identify the key sources you intend to use and explain how they will contribute to your analysis of the the boundaries of your proposed research in order to provide a clear focus. Literature ted to the background and significance of your study is a section of your proposal devoted to a more deliberate review and synthesis of prior studies related to the research problem under investigation. Think about what questions other researchers have asked, what methods they have used, and what is your understanding of their findings and, where stated, their recommendations. Assess what you believe is missing and state how previous research has failed to adequately examine the issue that your study addresses. For more information on writing literature reviews, go a literature review is information dense, it is crucial that this section is intelligently structured to enable a reader to grasp the key arguments underpinning your study in relation to that of other researchers. Generally, you can have confidence that all of the significant conceptual categories have been identified if you start to see repetition in the conclusions or recommendations that are being help frame your proposal's literature review, here are the "five c’s" of writing a literature review:Cite, so as to keep the primary focus on the literature pertinent to your research e the various arguments, theories, methodologies, and findings expressed in the literature: what do the authors agree on? The literature to your own area of research and investigation: how does your own work draw upon, depart from, synthesize, or add a new perspective to what has been said in the literature? Research design and section must be well-written and logically organized because you are not actually doing the research, yet, your reader has to have confidence that it is worth pursuing. Thus, the objective here is to convince the reader that your overall research design and methods of analysis will correctly address the problem and that the methods will provide the means to effectively interpret the potential results. Your design and methods should be unmistakably tied to the specific aims of your be the overall research design by building upon and drawing examples from your review of the literature. Consider not only methods that other researchers have used but methods of data gathering that have not been used but perhaps could be. Be specific about the methodological approaches you plan to undertake to obtain information, the techniques you would use to analyze the data, and the tests of external validity to which you commit yourself [i. Describing the methods you will use, be sure to cover the following:Specify the research operations you will undertake and the way you will interpret the results of these operations in relation to the research problem. In mind that a methodology is not just a list of tasks; it is an argument as to why these tasks add up to the best way to investigate the research problem. This is an important point because the mere listing of tasks to be performed does not demonstrate that, collectively, they effectively address the research problem. Be sure you explain pate and acknowledge any potential barriers and pitfalls in carrying out your research design and explain how you plan to address them. The purpose of this section is to argue how and in what ways you believe your research will refine, revise, or extend existing knowledge in the subject area under investigation. Depending on the aims and objectives of your study, describe how the anticipated results will impact future scholarly research, theory, practice, forms of interventions, or policymaking. The purpose is to reflect upon gaps or understudied areas of the current literature and describe how your proposed research contributes to a new understanding of the research problem should the study be implemented as conclusion reiterates the importance or significance of your proposal and provides a brief summary of the entire study.
This section should be only one or two paragraphs long, emphasizing why the research problem is worth investigating, why your research study is unique, and how it should advance existing e reading this section should come away with an understanding of:Why the study should be done,The specific purpose of the study and the research questions it attempts to answer,The decision to why the research design and methods used where chosen over other options,The potential implications emerging from your proposed study of the research problem, and. Sense of how your study fits within the broader scholarship about the research with any scholarly research paper, you must cite the sources you used in composing your proposal. In a standard research proposal, this section can take two forms, so consult with your professor about which one is nces -- lists only the literature that you actually used or cited in your graphy -- lists everything you used or cited in your proposal, with additional citations to any key sources relevant to understanding the research either case, this section should testify to the fact that you did enough preparatory work to make sure the project will complement and not duplicate the efforts of other researchers. This section normally does not count towards the total page length of your research p a research proposal: writing the proposal.