If you have been facing repeated rejections in your PhD research proposal and you don’t know how to improvise it, you are not alone. It is a common concern for PhD scholars to feel stuck with back-to-back rejections of proposal. Being new to research and not having the right kind of support with them, they fail to identify the problem areas or even if they do, with a single person perspective and lack of expert opinion they are not able to rectify it. Getting your proposal reviewed before the RAC will ensure an expert eye into the content and look at it from not just a wider perspective but also the technical know-how to help you improvise it and ensure acceptance.
Before we understand how “Review Manuscript” for your proposal can help you to overcome the repeated rejection of your proposal, let us first understand some of the common mistakes that budding scholars, at the initial stage of their PhD journey, make with their proposal:
1) Their research topic is too broad and unjustified
2) There is a lack of alignment in the aim and objective of the research
3) They create a weak theoretical base of the study
4) The research framework designed isn’t up to the mark
5) They have a poor representation of work and weak writing style
6) They do not follow the university criteria/ guidelines of submission
1) Their research topic is too broad and unjustified: Let us understand both the issues, broad and unjustified separately. The topic being too broad is one of the most common problem we see in dissertation and thesis. In more simpler terms it means that you have not fenced the focus of your research in a defined zone. The outcome of this can be that your research will go in an unclear direction or take up so much within itself that won’t do justice to any specific objective. The best thing to do when drafting the research topic is to have a narrow focus. When you do this, you will be able to go in depth of the topic. The criterion of a good research is always quality over quantity and depth over breadth. At times, your articulation of the topic can also be a problem. What you may have in mind as a researcher may not be well laid on paper in the topic and the proposal can get rejected on the grounds of ambiguity in the topic. You must know how to communicate what you have in your mind well enough to the audience in the RAC. How do you know whether your research topic is clear, focused and not ambiguous? Your topic must address the Who, Where, What and When to be defined enough in a manageable scope.
Poor justification of the topic is another common reason for rejection in the RAC. A well justified topic is the one that has both novelty and importance. Novelty or originality implies that your research can’t be something that has been done before, rather it should be a contribution to existing research that has emerged from the gap you have identified in the existing literature in your area of study. Importance of the topic is another important feature that the committee will look for. As a researcher you should know whom your research benefit will go to and how the knowledge you develop will be used by the world.
2) There is a lack of alignment in the aim and objective of the research: The committee that will investigate your proposal will get to know whether your research aim, objectives and the research questions are going in the same direction or no and whether there is a good fit between them. To be able to create alignment between the three, it is important that you know the difference between the aim, objective, and the research questions. Research aim is the broader goal you want to achieve from your research, the objective is how you will achieve that goal. The research questions are the specific questions that you will answer in your research. Sometimes taking an expert help or review of your proposal can help you to tightly align the three in a convincing manner.
3) They create a weak theoretical base of the study: The university will get convinced on your research proposal on the grounds of a strong theoretical base. It is imperative to prove that you have read on your research area extensively to be able to know where the research gap lies. Your research topic must emerge from this existing research be creating an integrated summary of existing research. Some of the common signs of a weak theoretical framework are more use of opinion rather than a detailed list of relevant references. Missing on to landmark studies in your research area and rather relying more on low quality and outdated sources. The RAC will have experts sitting, who will identify the weakness in the theoretical review immediately.
4) The research framework designed isn’t up to the mark: The research framework or design is the answer to “How” in your research. You need to provide sufficient detail in this section so that the committee doesn’t feel that you have not figured out exactly how will you do research. A poor research design is one of the primary reasons for the rejection of a research proposal. The committee will not approve your proposal till the time they are not sure that you have a clearly defined and realistic plan to achieve your research aims. A good proposal should include the following details well-articulated.
a) Your research beliefs
b) Your broader research approaches
c) Your strategy for research execution
d) Time horizon
e) Techniques and procedures
5) They have a poor representation of work and weak writing style: If your research proposal is totally in place in all other areas but presentation and writing style, it is going to put you at a disadvantage in front of the committee. It will give a negative image about your working style and overall quality of your work. Use of inappropriate language, grammar and spelling issue or inconsistent use of UK/US English, not putting captions for figures and tables or low-quality visuals and diagrams. All these problems can be easily fixed by good editing and proofreading of your proposal before hand. Getting it done from a professional source always makes the work flawless.
6) They do not follow the university criteria/ guidelines of submission: The proposals usually follow a standardized structure, but each university has its own nuances in terms of what all they want should be included in their research proposal. Some of them have a very specific structure and format such as font type and size.
All the above problems that researchers face with their proposal are common to find can easily be handled by getting your proposal reviewed. This will brighten up the chances of the acceptance of your proposal. A good “review manuscript” option can help you in the following ways:
a) Correction of Vague Terms: The manuscript review by experts can help to change or confirm the use of words and terms that can make your proposal weak. Sometimes just putting in the appropriate terminology and replacing vague words with more succinct terms can add a lot of weight to the document. Someone with experience can identify and do it better as compared to a novice who might overlook the use of such terminology and can get stuck in the RAC.
b) Provides Constructive Feedback: The reviewers can give you honest opinion on whether they have understood the points you have advanced in your proposal. If their interpretation of your explanation does not match your intent, it is a clear intention that it might get stuck with the committee as well and there is a problem with the flow of thought or discussion. The review process can help you overcome this before submission itself.
c) Stops you from making blunders in your arguments: Your proposal is made in a sequential manner and one step leads to the next. If you have made a mistake in your research aim, or research question or the theoretical framework, the mistake will reflect and move on to the next stage as well. This will deplete the overall quality as well the relevance of your research proposal. The outcomes always follow the rule of logic and if you have missed any step in that rule the expert can help to identify as well as rectify it. Always know that if your premise has faults then everything that follows it is also not going to be reliable either. A manuscript review option is always a good choice to avoid these mistakes.
d) Adds a multi-dimensional perspective to the proposal: Looking at your research from other people’s perspective is always a previous contribution to research. You do not have a monopoly on good ideas and sometimes others can give you suggestions and ideas that can take your proposal to the next level of relevance and quality. You will also be able to get out of any personal biases and have an out of the box perspective to your research . Hence, you must always opt for review of your manuscript. Especially if you have faced rejections before or you have the slightest of apprehension about your research.
e) Instils Confidence: Once your proposal has gone through the screening and improvisations from the reviewers, you have the confidence that can help you defend as well as justify your proposal. Your reviewer will help you to answer a battery of questions and critical comments making you feel confident to stand in front of the committee without the fear of rejection.
f) Aids in Concise Writing: The review of your proposal will help you to make your content concise and professional by removing unnecessary paragraphs and sentences and make the proposal look crisp and not vague.
g) Removes grammatical and spelling errors: Although your content and arguments raised in the proposal are more important than the spelling and grammar but error free content facilitates the reading process and makes the reading flow more efficient and gives a more professional image of your content in front of the committee.
h) Encourages you to perform better: if the review has given you good feedback about your work you are able to identify your weak areas and for further work you know how to perform better and not repeat the same mistakes again.
i) Aligns your proposal with university guidelines: Experienced reviewers can ensure that they have aligned your work according to the university guidelines and not missed onto the meticulous guidelines that you must have overlooked. With their experience they can help you to create that perfect document which will not have any scope for rejection or improvisation.
In conclusion, review manuscript for proposal is extremely beneficial for researchers. The primary benefit is that whatever comes out after the review is in excellent form, virtually free from errors. Once the quality of the content and the writing style is guaranteed and has multi-dimensional views to it, it brightens up the chances of the acceptance of the proposal in the RAC even if there have been previous rejections.
You as a researchers, must not hesitate in opting for the review of your manuscript but identify the reviewer only after getting convinced with their background, expertise, knowledge and ability to enrich the quality of your proposal.