In How to generate research proposals I sought to help early career researchers in the daunting task of writing their first research proposal.
Two years after the fact, I think the core of the advice stands very well. The most important points in the post are:
Develop a pipeline to collect ideas as they come to you.
Think about scope (is your question concrete?) and methodology (is your question tractable?).
Devote some time to figuring out what good research looks like.
None of this is particularly original. The value I added is collecting all the advice in a single place and giving an example of how this might shake out in practice.
One thing I would emphasize more is that there are many “obvious” projects lying around, which clearly are valuable, but nobody else has done because they are a lot of work. For example, compiling parameter sizes for Machine Learning models since the 1950s. These projects are great for early career researchers. I think this point is better covered in other similar posts.
In terms of impact, my post has been well received. I keep seeing occassional upvotes, it has been referenced in other articles, and some people have thanked me for writing it.
In terms of writing, it could be better. I use long sentences, and weird phrasing. I do not know what I was thinking titling it “How to generate research proposals” instead of “How to write research proposals”. Still, the summary at the beginning is good, and the use of bold font (Linh Chi Nguyen’s fault) helps focus attention on the most important points.
In How to generate research proposals I sought to help early career researchers in the daunting task of writing their first research proposal.
Two years after the fact, I think the core of the advice stands very well. The most important points in the post are:
Develop a pipeline to collect ideas as they come to you.
Think about scope (is your question concrete?) and methodology (is your question tractable?).
Devote some time to figuring out what good research looks like.
None of this is particularly original. The value I added is collecting all the advice in a single place and giving an example of how this might shake out in practice.
One thing I would emphasize more is that there are many “obvious” projects lying around, which clearly are valuable, but nobody else has done because they are a lot of work. For example, compiling parameter sizes for Machine Learning models since the 1950s. These projects are great for early career researchers. I think this point is better covered in other similar posts.
In terms of impact, my post has been well received. I keep seeing occassional upvotes, it has been referenced in other articles, and some people have thanked me for writing it.
In terms of writing, it could be better. I use long sentences, and weird phrasing. I do not know what I was thinking titling it “How to generate research proposals” instead of “How to write research proposals”. Still, the summary at the beginning is good, and the use of bold font (Linh Chi Nguyen’s fault) helps focus attention on the most important points.