Proposal tips
14 Feb 2017Here are some tips to use and pitfalls to avoid when writing your proposal based on previous years:
-Make sure the references are correctly formatted. I don’t care the format as long as it is consistent (i.e. journal abbreviation, volume, issue, species italicized).
-Only cite primary literature, papers or books. Don’t cite encyclopedias or websites.
-Do not go over the page limit. It is max 5 pages of text, double spaced, not including references or figures. It takes more skill to make something short than to make it long, so you are not benefitting by including more.
-Don’t use statements like “to the best of my knowledge”. You are responsible to research the truth. Something is either truly not known, in which case say it is not known, or it is known and then you can say what it is.
-Make sure your factual statements are true.
-Citations should be appropriate. The paper you cite should be the first or best paper to suggest or prove the statement you’re reporting. If you don’t know, look what paper other papers are citing for similar statements. If I don’t think you are citing correctly, I will read the paper you’re citing, so I will catch discrepancies.
-You should have a good understanding of your method. Some people used complicated methods in their proposal but did not fully understand the necessary input data or result of the methods. This can cause big problems. If you are having trouble understanding how a method works, talk to one of your instructors.
-Your methods should fully address your question. That will probably make your question relatively narrow, but you can still discuss broader implications elsewhere in the proposal.
-Information in the background/introduction should have an overarching purpose, not just random facts about the topic. Each fact should help the reader better appreciate or understand the question, methods or results.
-Your methods can be relatively simple as long as the question is interesting. Throwing in bells and whistles does not improve your mark.