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[资源] 【转载】Writing a Research Plan 如何写好研究计划

今天无意中发现的，感觉很不错。搜索了下没有发现重复

Writing a Research Plan

By Jim Austin

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag ... ing_a_research_plan

July 26, 2002

Hiring committees desperately want to avoid making a serious mistake by investing institutional and intellectual capital in the wrong person. The aim of your research plan, then, as of the rest of your application, is to assure the hiring committee that life with you will be pain-free.

Nearly every applicant for a tenure-track faculty job is expected to include a research plan. Exceptions are rare. Just as rare are programs designed to help doctoral students and postdocs learn how to create a research plan. Which is too bad: Writing an effective research plan is tricky. And until now, there was little advice to be found.

Okay, so that isn't exactly true: It isn't hard to find advice. Opinions, after all, are not in short supply in the academy. What is hard is finding advice you can rely on. We can help.

Why? Because we talked to a lot of people. We interviewed and corresponded with faculty and research scientists who have served on hiring committees. All of our sources have experience; some of our sources have a lot of experience. We considered everything, filtered out the muck, and distilled it all down to a general strategy and a few simple principles, with a few variations on the theme thrown in for good measure. Our aim is to do some of your homework for you, to make sure that you'll never have to read more than you have time for.

Furthermore, we'll keep talking to people about this topic, and we'll incorporate new responses into this document as we receive them. As a consequence this piece, like the other tools in the tool kit, will remain fresh and useful when other resources have become dated and useless.

So, onward and upward ...
What's the purpose of a research plan?

It depends on who's asking the question, and who’s answering it. From your immediate point of view, the purpose of a research plan is to help get you hired.

The research plan, however, serves another, very important function: It contributes to your development as a scientist. Your research plan is a map for your career as a research science professional. As will become apparent later in this document, one of the functions of a research plan is to demonstrate your intellectual vision and aspirations. It's also an opportunity to begin to demonstrate the creative and independent thinking required of a successful scientist.

Not yet on the job market? Just starting out as a postdoc? A research plan isn't just for demonstrating; it's also for honing and refining. It's possible to function quite well as a postdoc or grad student while giving little thought to your future. Writing a research plan casts your gaze forward and prompts you to begin planning for when you have your own laboratory. And if you've already started to think about your own lab, it will help you to refine your plans. So take a stab at writing a research plan, even if you don't expect to be on the job market for a while. Think of it as a rough draft, a fantasy trip for your career.

But never mind about that. Most of you are trying to get hired. In that case what matters is, what is the committee looking for?

The answer: relief from anxiety.

Hiring committees desperately want to avoid making a serious mistake by investing institutional and intellectual capital in the wrong person. The aim of your research plan, then, as of the rest of your application, is to assure the hiring committee that life with you will be pain-free.

How do you do this? Provide the committee a compelling, reassuring, believable image of what their life will be like when you are working down the hall.

Tell them a story--a believable, credible story--about what your lab will be like 5 years from now: well-funded, vibrant, productive, pursuing a valuable, ambitious but realistic research agenda that meshes well with the department's mission and with the other research going on in the department.

Please don't misunderstand: You shouldn't tell them this ("in 5 years my lab will be vibrant, productive, and well-funded ..."

; rather, you need to lead them to believe it by describing a research agenda that persuades them that you will succeed. There are two parts to this: You have to tell a good story, and you have to make them believe it. If the story isn't compelling you won't get hired, and if they can't quite imagine it becoming reality, you won't get hired.
How do I tell a good story?

First, choose an important subject. If the research you plan is not compelling, no rhetorical skill will make it compelling to a committee of smart scientists. If the research you propose is not manifestly, obviously important, if you don't know why it's important, or if you can't convey its importance effectively, convincing the committee to hire you won't be easy. Note that there are two issues here: believing in the importance of your own work, and persuading others that your work is important.

If you don't think the work you'll be doing is important, your best bet is to change fields. The goal of science may be to uncover truth, but uncovering objective truth is a very difficult thing to do, and doing it requires passion. If you aren't passionate about your work, your best bet is to find work about which you can be passionate. It isn't easy to change gears midcourse, but getting yourself into an important area of research will be well worth the effort in the long term--to your hirability, to your fundability, to your tenurability, and also to your career satisfaction. Do another postdoc if you must.

Passion for your work is a necessary, but insufficient, condition for capturing the attention of hiring committees. After all, some people are passionate about, um, peculiar things. To convince the committee to hire you, you must convince them that your passion is justified and that they will benefit from investing in your passion--that is, that your work is important.

Be specific. Curing cancer is not a suitable goal for one individual's research plan--exciting, yes, but much too big to be believable. Inhibiting tumor growth? That's better, says one of our respondents--especially when that general goal is supported by more specific strategies. "[That kind of research] can travel down several different mechanistic routes," this respondent says, "i.e., angiogenesis, breakdown of extracellular matrix, gene activation, induction of molecules involved--it can use different models--implanting tumors, using different tumor models, in vivo, in vitro, etc." The combination of a manifestly important goal with manifestly interesting, feasible approaches is the foundation of the research plan.

Being specific is not the same thing as including loads of detail. Being specific means including only as much detail as the job requires--not more. "Vague generalities are the sign of a vague mind," says one source. "This means that the proposal must walk the fine line of enough detail to show the reader that the candidate knows what they are talking about, but not too much detail that it confuses or bores the search committee."

Keep it short and focus on the major themes. "Brevity and clarity are the most important elements," wrote another respondent, expressing a sentiment shared by everyone. "Clear, concise writing ... is a plus," said another. "Superfluous details are not just unnecessary, they are often the hallmark of a poor plan. The specific aims must be clear and succinct." Identify your goals, state why those goals are important, define your approach to achieving those goals, and indicate the kinds of evidence that will validate your approach. Oh, and do it clearly and succinctly.

"If you were sitting for 4 hours reading such proposals, what would you look for? Clear and to the point wins every time in this arena."

Effective communication requires anticipating readers' needs, giving them exactly the information they need just when they need it. Constructing a research plan along these lines strengthens your application in three ways: You avoid alienating the committee by boring them; you tell the committee precisely what you intend to do; and you show that you have a subtle mind and a deep knowledge of your field.

Can't do this yet? No hurry--consider spending another year as a postdoc, and study hard.

Be serious about writing. Writes one respondent: "If the proposal confuses the reader in almost any way, it is simply tossed out. I strongly recommend that the candidate have colleagues pre-review the proposal and make sure the English is clear and ideas explained so that a variety of people in the general area can understand what is being proposed and the importance of the work."

If your writing skills are weak, it might be time to strengthen them. Or hire an editor. And by all means have several people--preferably senior colleagues who have served on hiring committees--critique your research plan.

But there were two parts to this, remember? You not only have to tell a good story--you also have to make it seem real, to make them expect it to come true.
How do I make my research plan seem real?

Have a solid, well-considered, realistic plan. If you want to get a job at an institution that takes its research seriously, you'll have to convince your future colleagues that you've gotten past the young, impressionable phase, where every idea glitters with promise despite the fact that it isn't feasible and isn't likely to work. Show the committee that, although your high ideals remain intact, your years of graduate and postdoctoral study have helped you to know the difference between good ideas and good intentions. In the words of one scholar, "You can tell a 'building castles in the sky' research plan. They are not built on solid data and go to the very bottom of the pool." Indeed.

Include preliminary data. Preliminary data offer the most convincing argument for the viability of your research plan. If you have them, use them--positive results will be of interest and persuasive to hiring committee members. The nature of your preliminary data and findings will vary--some will have much to share, others might be forced to share very preliminary data.

Nothing grounds your hopes and dreams in the real world like good, solid data. Your plan might sound exciting, but will it work? It's one thing to make it sound good; if you can show that you've already taken the first, tentative but successful steps of that long journey, reaching your destination will seem a lot less like a pipe dream. One of my sources was unequivocal on this point: "Does the research question build on the preliminary data the person has generated? No preliminary data equals no research question." Which also equals no job offer at that institution.

It is important to remember that just as institutions vary widely in their practices, so too do the expectations of hiring committees. Do your homework: Learn about the culture of the department and the experiences of previous faculty hires.

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