Project title: Applying availability, recovery and cryptography on engineering of cloud computing.
The PhD proposal (no less than 3000 words) gives a relatively brief overview of what you would like to study. You will demonstrate how and why you have chosen to do this particular research, so that the University or School can see whether it is a viable project.
A research proposal will include the following:
A working title: this might not be the finalised title of your project, but must show that you have thought about what you are hoping to achieve. Make sure any key words appear in the working title.
A general overview: a brief section about the subject area you are looking at, and how it fits into which discipline(s). This will be most important in PhD research proposals.
A review of relevant literature: this isn’t an enormous literature review, but you need to show that you are aware of the important issues, themes and debates in the relevant literature. You must refer to key texts and briefly show that you understand how they are relevant to your research area. You are therefore summarising what has been done before on this topic. Remember that a PhD is original research, so for PhD proposals you will also need to show that what you’ll be studying hasn’t been done before.
Key research questions: the aims and objectives of the research. What are the questions you’ll be looking to answer? What are you hoping to find out? If undertaking original research, your hypothesis can be explained in this section. Be careful not to include an unachievable number of goals or be over-ambitious. Ambition is good but you must be able to actually carry out the things you have described.
Methodology: how are you planning to do this research? What methods will you use? Are you looking for qualitative or quantitative data, or both? Will you be carrying out laboratory experiments or questionnaires? What options are open to you or what different methods could you use, and why have you chosen the ones you have?
Expected results: obviously you can’t say what the results will be, because you haven’t done the research yet. You can, however, explain what kinds of results you hope to achieve, such as a greater understanding of the way something works, a new method of doing something and so on. Think about how your research will affect or impact the subject area.
Timescale: include a timescale, showing that you understand the need to plan your research carefully and have thought about how long the different tasks might take you. It doesn’t need to be very detailed and it may of course change later, but it’s essential that you show you’ve thought about whether your project is achievable in the time available.
