School of Informatics

Writing a research proposal

What is a PhD?
Before beginning the writing of the proposal – your provisional plan and design of work and research
to be done – it is crucial to understand what studying for a PhD involves.

The primary purpose of PhD study is the preparation and presentation of a substantial piece of
original and individual research. You will be expected to research largely self-directed and on your
own initiative, with the support of academic supervisors offering their advice and guidance.

A good grasp of what studying for a PhD will involve will not only allow you to better understand if a
PhD is right for you, but it should greatly enhance the quality of the proposal you write.

Preliminary enquiries
A good research proposal which gets you noticed and likely earns you a PhD place will take some
time to plan and write. To ensure this time is not wasted on a research proposal which is either
inappropriate or for which there exists no supervisory expertise, it is strongly recommended you
contact the School directly to make preliminary enquiries and begin initial discussion on your
proposed research topic. The web page www.soi.city.ac.uk/research/phd/supervisors.html lists the
research interests of each academic in the School, while further information can often be found
under individual listings under the School people directory, at
www.soi.city.ac.uk/contacts/people/index.html. You should contact the relevant academic to discuss
your interests and proposed research area. However if you have more general enquiries you can
alternatively contact the relevant Senior Tutor for Research; contact details for whom are at
www.soi.city.ac.uk/research/phd/contact.html.

What is a research proposal?

Broadly, your proposal should explain the following:

- what the proposed research is about;

- why is the subject worth learning and understanding more about and what is the intended outcome
of the research; and
- how you will go about planning for and conducting your research and write-up.

A research proposal taking on these considerations will provide a clear indication of your ability to
undertake research study and the originality of your topic to the assessors. Bear in mind that the
assessment and approval process will involve your work being read by those who have not
discussed your research; it is therefore important that the proposal is ‘stand-alone’, that is it is easily
accessible and understandable to those other than the academic or academics you have initially
consulted with on applying. A well written proposal will of course also demonstrate competence of
your English language and grammar, necessary for taking on – and completing – a substantive
piece of writing such as a PhD thesis.

During the course of your academic experience to-date, it is expected that you will have learned
skills in writing rigorously and in a style appropriate to your discipline; make good use of these skills
when drafting and writing-up your proposal. Not only will reading the relevant literature as you

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research your proposal help you in developing the proposal’s content, but you will also become
further acquainted with the style and referencing practice (discussed further below) used in your
subject area.

Try not to become intimidated by the task at hand and bear in mind that you are not competing with
established researchers, but only with other prospective students at a similarly early stage of their
research career. The evidence of aptitude and genuine potential for research, rather than something
close to perfection, is what the assessors will be looking for. Also, do not fixate on committing to a
very precise thesis topic; while a good research proposal will give a good ‘flavour’ of what and how
you wish to research, it remains a ‘road map’ for what will likely be a somewhat organic process of
reviewing and developing work and research once the PhD starts.

Finally, a good summary of what defines a research proposal in terms of its aims and by what
factors it will be assessed, is given by Krathwohl (1998, cited in Punch, 2009, p10), as follows:

What is a proposal? It is an opportunity for you to present your idea and proposed actions for
consideration in a shared decision-making situation. You, with all the integrity at your command,
are helping those responsible for approving your proposal to see how you view the situation, how
the idea fills a need, how it builds on what has been done before, how it will proceed, how you will
avoid pitfalls, why pitfalls you have not avoided are not a serious threat, what the study’s
consequences are likely to be, and what significance they are likely to have. It is not a sales job
but a carefully prepared, enthusiastic, interestingly written, skilled presentation. Your presentation
displays your ability to assemble the foregoing materials into an internally consistent chain of
reasoning.

The elements of a research proposal

Your proposal will likely comprise the headings listed below, though exactly how much importance
you give to each section, and whether you include all these sections will depend on what your area
of academic interest is and your specific research topic.

As already indicated above, note that PhD proposals are not fully binding. As your work progresses,
your ideas will mature, resulting in your research taking a slightly different form from that which you
envisaged at the start. Nonetheless, you will be committed to the area – in broad terms – that you
identity in your proposal.

- Working title/abstract
The title should describe the nature of your project. Do not give uninformative titles. Often students
indicate the nature of their approach in the title, for example indicating a comparative study or if a
particular theoretical framework is adopted. Being clear helps the School of Informatics identify
appropriate supervisors.

An abstract, should you wish to include one, should be included immediately following the title and
should be a short, succinct summary of the proposal.

- Overview (statement of topic and problem)

This section should identify the general subject area and how your proposed thesis fits in with this
general field, explaining why it is significant/important and stating briefly what contribution to the field
it will make and its likely impact. Assessors will be looking for clear focus, identifying the problem.

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- Aims and research questions
Having identified your research topic you should specify the aims of your research, what research
questions or hypotheses you will address and how answering these will contribute to your chosen
field.

- Literature review
A critical, initial review of the relevant and related literature is required, to indicate your
understanding of what is already known and understood, and how this in-turn informs your research
questions.

- Methods/approach and timescale of research

An important aspect of your proposal is to identify how you intend carrying out your research, to
address its aims and questions. Different research topics will use different methods, which you
should describe and justify. For example, you might develop and evaluate a novel algorithm, tool or
method; you might undertake detailed quantitative or qualitative studies of technologies in use. Be
clear regarding the outcome of the various methods you will apply and demonstrate that you have
considered the feasibility of your chosen approach.

It is important at this stage for you to demonstrate that the research you intend to undertake can be
realistically fit within the timeframe of a PhD, which is three years full-time (plus a further one year
writing-up, submission and viva). Different academics will likely have different expectations here.
Some will likely require quite a detailed plan of how you will conduct your research over the course
of a PhD, while others will require less detail.

- References and bibliography

You should list all the publications and any other sources you have cited in your proposal as
references at the end; you should also include a bibliography of any other sources which you have
read in preparing your proposal (but not cited). The Harvard referencing system is used in the
School and should be used for the proposal; it is likely that you will be familiar with this system as it
is widely used. However if you have not used this system before, or feel you need to refresh your
knowledge, there is plenty of information on the Harvard system available online; one site which is
particularly useful as a guide is http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.

Further reading
Bentley, P.J. (2006) The PhD application handbook (Maidenhead, Open University Press)
Punch, K.F. (2009) Developing effective research proposals (London, SAGE)

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