1 / 32

Writing the PhD. proposal and research papers .

Writing the PhD. proposal and research papers . I N A O E. Niusvel Acosta Mendoza. The PhD. proposal . I N A O E. I N A O E. What is a thesis proposal?.

lois
Download Presentation

Writing the PhD. proposal and research papers .

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Writingthe PhD. proposal and researchpapers. I N A O E Niusvel Acosta Mendoza

  2. The PhD. proposal. I N A O E

  3. I N A O E

  4. What is a thesis proposal? • Academic exercise known as thesis proposal is a prerequisite of the preparation of the thesis designed to prevent future problems in a student’s degree. • It is an exercise arbitrated by a committee of researchers with high expertise in the subject at hand. • Through the proposal, the quality of the doctoral program is guaranteed.

  5. Main aims of having a thesis proposal • The main aims of having this exercise are: • To ensure that you are preparedto undertake the work that you are proposing. • To ensure that the work being proposed is of appropriate scope for an PhD degree and has value to the computing community. • A proposal must ensure that these two points are clearly addressed so that the committee can approve it.

  6. Structure of a thesis proposal • Title • Abstract and keywords • Introduction • Background or theoretical basis • Related Work (literature review) • Justification and Motivation • Research problem • Evaluation • Proposal • Preliminary Results • Conclusion • References

  7. Title • It should be as concise as possible to delimit the phenomenon. • It is convenient to set a title early in our PhD, helping us to centering the thesis main topic. • This might not necessarily be the one at the end of your thesis (in fact, it will likely not coincide). • A rather generic title may give a wrong impression to the thesis committee.

  8. Abstract • Usually, it has less than 200 words, and it has to include: • The purpose or specific aim of the thesis • The methodology or experimentation procedure • The expected results • The main expected conclusion and impact • Communicates the content of the document. Sufficient for a reader to decide its relevance.

  9. Characteristic of a good abstract • Concise • Communication is effective and efficient • Informative • Regardless of the type the reader gets a quick overview of the contents of the document • Connected • Flow is smooth and without breaks • Conservative • Does not include new material over the material contained in the main document

  10. Introduction • It should describe the importance of the work and some relevant prior knowledge. • It should mention the motivation and research problem. • In some cases, it contains a brief summary of the state-of-the-art. • A rather naive way of doing it is by enumeration: “This fellow did this. This fellow did that, …” • You will be shouting that you are a novice in the field. • A more elegant/smart way is to tell the story with a good flow of ideas, and simply drop the key references where suitable.

  11. Background or theoretical basis • It should describe (in detail) and define the basic concepts and notation needed to understand the solution proposed. • Only the needed definitions and notations should be described.

  12. Related Work • It should describe relevant works of the state-of-the-art, which are related with the proposal. • Summarizes the related work • Those closest works to the proposed are described (in detail) to show their problems and highlight the differences with respect to the proposal. • Analyze and criticize the closest works

  13. Justification and Motivation • You do not take over a PhD because you are bored at home… • …but because there is a real need to understand a phenomena • Economical • Scientific • Academic • Others • Nope! “…because I need it to get my degree” is NOT a valid justification even if it is the only real one. • Research hypothesis statement.

  14. Research problem • It should indicate the problems to be solved in the research. • It help us to define the limits of our work. • The PhD is not the moment to get a Nobel prize • Try to be realistic, it is easy to under-/over-estimate your capacity • It is at times hard to differentiate limits from your goal • If too short; maybe not enough to get the degree • If too ambitious; maybe unfeasible and unable to defend

  15. Evaluation • The way to evaluate the proposal is clearly stated.

  16. Proposal • It should describe the proposal: • Research question (may be several questions) • General aim (should be only one aim) • Specific aims • Expected contributions • Methodology • Clearly indicate the limits of your work • Limits are stated in terms of what’s going to be implemented • Work plan

  17. Proposal • Research questions: • They represent open problems regarding the phenomenon of interest • They ought to guide your research • All goals (main and specific) are collateral consequences of them • All experiments are driven to answer them • All experimental hypothesis are stated to (educated) guess about them • All conclusions are stated to satisfy them • A rather bad habit is to state them (just because you’ve been told to), and ignore them the next minute…

  18. Proposal • General aim: • The general aim states what is to be achieved during the thesis • It is a long term aim. • It may fall beyond the reach and limits of the proposal. • The aim in science is to understand a phenomenon

  19. Proposal • Specific aims: • Short term goals. • They will be covered during the thesis. • They may include developing specific tools/algorithms, among others. • They often/should also include validation as one of them. • Each one of them has to be describable in at most 1 paragraph. • It is not enough to state them, it is necessary to describe them.

  20. Proposal • Methodology: • Planning and description of tasks and experiments • They should refer to the achievement and solving of the research questions and goals. • It is important both; identification and description • The more detailed, the easier will be to carry out them later on

  21. Proposal • Work plan or scheduling: • This is the chronological timing in weeks or months of the expected times when the tasks will be carried out. • Always leave enough time for reading and writing.

  22. Conclusion • At the time of writing the proposal it is early to have final or definitive conclusions • …so these do not refer to the intermediate results in case you have some • … they more often refer to the feasibility of the thesis, the foreseen hinders, a brief discussion over the literature read so far, among others. • It should state the impact of your thesis.

  23. References • Cite ALL relevant references read so far • …so that the thesis committee can assess whether you are reading sufficiently and effectively • Be coherent with the style format throughout the document • Include: • Scientific papers • Books • Other thesis (regardless of the degree) • Technical reports • Other sources of information; private communications from other researchers, public documents,web sites, standards, patents, etc.

  24. Thesis committee’s response • The committee as a whole will consider the comments of the reviewing members and will place your thesis proposal in one of four categories: • Acceptable as submitted (This category is rarely used) • Minor changes required • Major changes required • Rejected as submitted

  25. Researchpapers. I N A O E

  26. What is a research paper? • It is a published written document which describes original research results • … writing for others not for me. • It refers to a scientific problem. • The research results should be valid. • Communicates for the first time the outcomes of an investigation. • It has only one goal: • report the result of an investigation. • Research papers are the largest source of information in the research world. 1. M. Alonso and N. Piñeiro, ¿Cómo escribir un artículo científico?, Alcmeon, Revista Argentina de Clínica Neuropsiquiátrica, 14(2): 76-81, 2007. 2. G.A. Slafer, ¿Cómo escribir un artículo científico?, Revista de investigación en educación, 6:124-132, 2009.

  27. Some type of papers • Scientist or research papers • Notes • Short papers • Review and survey papers • Conference/meeting reports • Conference papers • Books • M.d and Ph.D thesis • Textbooks and research monographs

  28. Structure and content

  29. Structure and content • Front (including information of the authors), abstract and keywords. • Introduction (may be include the related work) • Background • Related Work (optional if and only if it is included into the introduction) • Proposed method or algorithm or …. • Experiments • Discussion • Conclusion • Acknowledgment (optional) • References

  30. Writingthe PhD. proposal and researchpapers. I N A O E Niusvel Acosta Mendoza

  31. Bibliography • C. G. Burke, The doctoral dissertation proposal • U. Manitoba, Guidelines for writing a successful MSc thesis proposal • Luca Aceto, How to write a paper (Versions 1 and 2) • M. Alonso and N. Piñeiro, ¿Cómo escribir un artículo científico?, Alcmeon, Revista Argentina de Clínica Neuropsiquiátrica, 14(2): 76-81, 2007. • G.A. Slafer, ¿Cómo escribir un artículo científico?, Revista de investigación en educación, 6:124-132, 2009. • Writing technical articles • R. Ferriols and F. Ferriols, Escribir y publicar un artículocientífico original, Ediciones MAYO s.a., 2005. [book]

More Related