Introduction

Universities require Ph.D. applicants to submit a research proposal before accepting a candidate for a Ph.D. admission. A research proposal is a comprehensive document of around 4000-5000  words, giving a broad overview of the research that a research scholar is willing to pursue.

A research proposal will help a research scholar to give shape to his innovative ideas and prepare an outline that he would like to follow during his Ph.D. studies.

In a research proposal, the candidate needs to provide details on what motivated the candidate to take up research in the specified domain; which research papers support his research problem under consideration; what objectives can be achieved within the time frame defined by the university;  how will he go about research, including approach and methodology; timeline and feasibility as well as any other considerations that must be made to progress the research, such as computing and machinery resources.

Many universities provide guidelines on writing research proposals that will help a research scholar to structure his ideas and meet the requirements of a specific university. Regardless of university-specific requirements, most of the research proposals usually include:

Research Title

The research title is a crucial deciding factor in getting approval for your research paper.

Language Point of View

The following points should be considered from a language point of view while assigning the title for a research proposal.

• As a general guideline, try to keep your Title between 50 and 150 characters so that it can be easily remembered.
• Avoid redundant phrasing, such as, “A Study of,”,” An Analysis of”, “A Study to Investigate the…,” or “A Review of the….” or similar constructions.
• Capitalize all nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that appear between the first and last words of the Title.[e.g.“Design of New and Efficient Algorithms for Robot Path Planning”].
• Rarely use abbreviations or acronyms unless they are commonly known. [e.g.: “Addressing HIV Issues Through Community Counselling” can be one of the Titles as HIV is an abbreviation well known. Whereas “Application of NN in  Solving Pathological Issues in Pomegranate Plant” Here NN (Neural Network) is not known to many, which may lead to ambiguity.

Domain Point of View

A researcher begins his research voyage by selecting the research domain –  the area in which he intends to carry out his research.  The research domain can be

• Simply the core technology domain such as Cloud Computing, Big Data Analytics, or Image Processing where the researcher intends to add or improve framework or algorithms for the domain itself, or
• A multidisciplinary domain such as Cloud Computing in Agriculture; Image Processing in Health Care or Data Analytics for E-Commerce, etc.

The researcher may work in specific sub-domains such as Pathology in Agriculture, PAAS architecture in Cloud, Liver Cancer in Health care etc. While selecting the Title of the research proposal,  the domains and sub-domains of the research proposal should be clearly part of the Title as it makes things more clear for the adjudication panel about the topic of the research proposal.

The following points should also be considered from a research domain point of view while assigning the Research Title

• Titles should describe what the research is about – they should give the reader a clear idea as to what the paper is about.
• The initial aim of a title is to capture the reader’s attention and to highlight the research problem under investigation.
• Ensure that your Title includes keywords and terms which are commonly used within your research discipline.[e.g. “ Development of Machine Learning Algorithms for  Grape Leaf Image Analysis ”]

How to Write Abstract for PhD Proposal?

An abstract should usually be no longer than half a page, and provide a brief summary of what you are going to cover in your research proposal. Now how to fit the critical points from the entire proposal— why the research will be carried out, what the objectives are, how these will be addressed with different methodologies and what are the expected outcomes—into a paragraph of just 200-300 words. It’s not an easy task, but here’s a 08-step guide that should make it easier:

i. Start writing the abstract only after completing the proposal write-up.

ii. Explain the domain, subdomain and historical development in the subdomain in 20-40 words.

iii. List the major challenges identified ( from the research gap of the survey section) in 20-40 words.

iv. Explain the objectives you have set for the research in 20-40 words.

v. Describe the Methodology you will be using to solve the problem in  30-50 words.

vi. Explain how the results will be compared and analyzed.

vii. Make sure that the abstract does not contain new information, undefined abbreviations or group names or a discussion of previous literature or reference citations.

viii. There must be consistency between the information presented in the abstract and in the proposal.

  For more details, you can visit my blog post on writing abstract.

How to Write an Introduction for PhD Proposal?

The introduction gives an overview of the research project you propose to carry out. It explains the background of the work, focusing briefly on the major issues of its knowledge domain and clarifying why these issues are worthy of attention.

It then proceeds with the concise presentation of the research statement. The research statement should capture both the essence of the proposal and its delimiting boundaries and should be followed by a clarification of the extent to which you expect its outcomes to represent an advance in the knowledge domain you have described.

The introduction should cite all relevant references pertaining to the major issues described, and it should close with a brief description of each one of the sections that follow.

The reader, by the end of the introduction, should know exactly what research issue you are trying to solve with your proposal. State the intent of your study, including the research question and your unique methodology to solve the problem.

The introduction should describe important results that you have found or hope to find. The introduction leads the reader from a general research issue or problem to your specific area of research. For more details, you can visit my blog post on Introduction.

History

Start your introduction with a short history. There can be two possibilities to start an introduction. One way is to tell your readers whether was there a seminal paper, research funding, special event, or invention of an algorithm which spurred the development of the field under investigation.

For example,  one option is, the introduction of Big Data gave a new impetus to the storage and analysis of huge data sets.

Another option can be, the first paragraphs of your introduction should be a historical narrative, from the very first research in the field to the current day with key statistics describing the development of the field.

Here in both cases introduce the keywords of the field and describe what the various keywords mean.

How to Write a Literature Review for PhD Proposal?

The literature review demonstrates the applicant’s knowledge of the main research achievements in the area of study. You should pay attention to providing some of the key references in your area of research which requires extensive research on your part.

Provide an overview of existing thinking about and/or research into your research problem. Identify a gap, problem or unresolved issue in the existing knowledge/research that your research can fill or identify a research focus that will be useful.  Here your citations are crucial.  For keeping track of the survey papers one can use Zotero which I personally use. Try to survey the papers in which the authors are authoritative in the domain of your research.

The challenge here is to pick representative papers from within the research area and summarize them concisely. There can be a vast amount of papers available and a survey has limited space to capture the key work in the field.

The papers selected should be a mix of papers including the base paper in the selected domain to the most recently published paper. The author needs to go through abstracts and conclusions for a relatively large number of papers and select a subset that covers the selected topic area for detailed reading and presentation in the survey.

Identifying the papers having higher citations and which are published in conferences and journals of high reputation will have to be given higher priority for selection. Each survey should have its own analysis of the significance of the approach and the results presented in each paper.  For more details on literature review, you can visit my blog post on how to write survey paper.

How to Write Problem Statement and   Objectives for PhD Proposal?

The maiden task in writing a research proposal is to identify the “Research problem” that will be solved during the course of the research. Basically, a research problem identifies a gap/flaw/deviation in the existing system which needs further study/experimentation/analysis.

The statement of the problem briefly addresses the question: What is the problem that the research will address? The ultimate goal of a statement of the problem is to transform a generalized problem (something that bothers you; a perceived lack) into a targeted, well-defined problem; one that can be resolved through focused research and careful decision-making.

Research objectives divide the problem statements in to set of sub-problems. Each sub-problem forms a separate research objective.  It is advisable to have a minimum of 03 and maximum of 04 objectives can be set for the  PhD proposal. Each objective must be defined in such a way that the solution for the objective can be achievable within a span of 4-6 months.

Example: Problem Statement

The main objective of this work is to design novel and efficient algorithms for a visually guided wheeled autonomous Robot that can explore an unknown or partially known 3D environment, construct navigation maps, identify objects of interest and plan paths. It is also aimed at reducing the uncertainties of real-life situations that can cause problems for Robot navigation. This problem involves four main objectives:

1. Efficient representation of the navigational environment to handle environmental uncertainties.

2. An appropriate mechanism to identify objects of interest from the sensors with quick response time.

3. Predicting the motion of moving objects within the navigational environment.

4. Design of a control scheme for Robot navigation.

It must be emphasized that these tasks are in no way independent of each other. The design of a Robot controller is dependent on the nature of the available knowledge of the Robot’s immediate surroundings as well as the large-scale structure of the environment. The richer and more accurate this knowledge is, the easier it becomes to a suitable control algorithm.

Acquiring this knowledge, from sensory data is a challenging problem as it involves uncertainty. The prediction of the future position and trajectory of a moving object is dependent on how well the objects in the environment are sensed by the Robot.

The navigation system developed here is applicable to any indoor environment consisting of rooms, corridors and doorways, which are accessible by a wheeled platform. This behaviour is mainly but is not limited to personal and Service Robots.

How to Write a Method Section for PhD Proposal?

The method section of a research proposal represents the technical steps involved in conducting the research. Details about the methods focus on characterizing and defining them, explaining your chosen techniques, and providing a full account of the procedures used for selecting, collecting and analyzing the data.

The methods section of a research proposal should fully explain the reasons for choosing a specific methodology or technique. Also, it’s essential that the researcher describes the specific research methods of data collection he is going to use, whether they are primary or secondary data collection.

The methods the researcher chooses should have a clear connection with the overall research approach and he needs to explain the reasons for choosing the research techniques in his study, and how they help you towards understanding his study’s purpose.

You can refer to my post in, the writing methodology section for more details.

How to Draw Activity Chart Section for PhD Proposal?

 It is possible to build a detailed description of what the researcher plans to do (literature to explore in-depth, principles or theorems to formulate and prove, experiments to carry out, sub-systems to build, systems integrations to perform, tests to accomplish) and desirable, to establish specific milestones and timelines and a Gantt diagram.

Example: The sample Gantt chart below shows a set of activities planned  for the research proposal. This can be extended to any length. This chart helps the adjudicators to know how well the researcher has planned the research activities.

 

 

How to Outline the Preliminary Work Carried out for the PhD Proposal?

This section of the research proposal gives a concise outline of the work carried out so far and the progress made towards the objectives of the project.

Here the researcher has to showcase his passion towards the research proposal he has selected through some preliminary work carried out so far. Preliminary work can be gathering data regarding infrastructure/software requirements, collection of standard data sets, implementation of the existing algorithms for the proposed work etc.

If the researcher has already got some preliminary results then he should provide them in a  simplified manner that helps support the rest of the proposal. If the researcher has submitted/presented some survey paper or work paper, then that should be highlighted. This section should concentrate on the parts that contribute specifically to the goals of the proposal, avoiding detailed descriptions.

How to Write the Conclusion Section for the PhD Proposal?

The conclusion briefly restates the objectives of the research proposal, recap the research approach the researcher plans to follow, and clarifies in a few words what he is expecting to find out, why it is scientifically valuable, and how he is going to validate the results.

Example: The control loop for motion planning comprising sensing, planning and acting has not yet been closed for mobile Robots in dynamic environments. Researchers have put lots of effort into this topic and a number of algorithms have been developed.

Based on the literature survey, it is felt that the Area-based disparity matching in Stereovision and dynamic path planning algorithms deserves more investigation. The proposed work intends to apply machine learning techniques to these algorithms. Further research in these areas using could bring better results for motion planning and overcome the existing problems.

How to Write the References Section for the PhD Proposal?

In this section you should list all the references you have made throughout the research proposal, making sure that you comply with the referencing conventions or citation styles that have been established for your specific field.

For more details, you can refer to my previous blog on writing references.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, a research proposal is a crucial component of the Ph.D. application process, as it provides the candidate with an opportunity to showcase their potential as a researcher and demonstrate their preparedness for independent research.

The document is a comprehensive outline of the research problem, methodology, timeline, feasibility, and other essential aspects that the candidate intends to explore during their Ph.D. studies. Writing a well-structured research proposal not only helps the candidate to clarify their research objectives and goals but also enables them to get feedback and support from their peers and advisors.

Therefore, it is essential for Ph.D. applicants to put in the necessary effort and time to create a compelling research proposal that reflects their research potential and aligns with the university’s requirements.

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