research outline example unisa

How to write a Research Proposal: Managing sources

• Components of a research proposal
• Useful videos
• Common mistakes to avoid
• Sage Research Methods LibGuide This link opens in a new window
• Managing sources
• Request a literature search
• Research proposal - examples
• Creating a Gantt chart
• Free Apps for Research
• Academic writing

Avoiding Plagiarism

Below are just some of the ways to protect yourself against unintentional plagiarism:

• If you use a fact, phrase, chart, diagram, table, map, illustration, photograph, theory, abstract, method, steps or lists, or a quotation from someone else’s work, always acknowledge the original source accurately.
• Even if you have put someone else’s ideas into your own words, you must credit the source of those ideas.
• Carefully document and record every single source you read and use. Do not cut corners when it comes to this aspect of your research. Manage your sources by means of a Reference Management Tool .
• When you copy and paste from the Internet , you must also copy the web address of the document and note the date of access .
• When you copy and paste from electronic books, journal articles, theses, dissertations, law reports, you must record the source in full together with its URL ( U niform R esource L ocator or web address) in the database you have used.
• If you suspect you are using something without attributing the original source, copy and paste the passage into Google or another search engine. If your search retrieves close results, it is possible that the passage is not original work.

See Unisa's policy  on  Copyright Infringement and Plagiarism .

Be wise ... Don't plagiarise!

Click  here  for more information on plagiarism.

Reference Management Tools

Reference management tools help you  organise  and  store  your citations.  They assist you to  keep track of your sources  including those that have been exported from other databases.  They also allow you to  generate your bibliography  for your assignment or research project.  

Below are some software products that you can use:

Unisa subscribes to this product on your behalf.  To make use of RefWorks you will first need to create an account.  

Unisa does not subscribe to this product but it can be purchased by an individual and is available in both desktop and web-based versions.

There are various other  free web-based  reference management tools available to you :

Mendeley is a  free  reference management tool and academic social network that allows you to manage your references.  It also helps you discover new trends and statistics in your research area and to connect and collaborate with other researchers.

Zotero is a  free  open source tool that you can use to collect, organise, manage, cite and share research sources.

Please note the copyright restrictions when printing and downloading journal articles.

In terms of the regulations promulgated under the South African  Copyright Act, No 98 of 1978 (as amended), material required for study or research purposes may be photocopied subject to the following conditions:

• Not more than one copy may be made of an article or other contribution appearing in a periodical issue or other collection.
• From other works only a reasonable portion may be photocopied (it is accepted that a “reasonable portion” means not more than 10% of the whole work ).
• No work may be photocopied in its entirety .

Two Useful Tips on Referencing Style

• Please contact your lecturer regarding the  referencing style  you are expected to use for your assignments and research projects.
• The most important thing about referencing is to be  consistent .

Some of the referencing styles you will use in your research by Prof Pat Ngulube (Unisa)

• Referencing styles

Referencing Styles

 APA Referencing Style

The APA style is mostly used in Psychology, Education and other social sciences.

Chicago Referencing style

The Chicago referencing system is used with all subjects and formats including books, newspapers, and other non-scholarly publications and materials that are not intended for publication .

Harvard Referencing Style

The Harvard style is generally used across many subject disciplines.  Please click  here for more information on the Harvard Referencing Style

MLA Refencing Style

The MLA system is mostly used by researchers in Arts and Humanities. However it is especially used in English Language, Literature, Folklore and Lingustic courses.

Vancouver Referencing Style

The  Vancouver system , also known as the "author-number" system, is a way of writing references in academic papers. It is popular in the physical sciences, biological sciences, health and is one of two referencing systems normally used in medicine, the other being the Harvard style.

Turnitin (Tii) is a tool used in the prevention of plagiarism by checking documents for originality .

Unisa has licenses for all the postgraduate students (M and D, Honours and selected fourth year level course students).  These students all get access automatically to Turnitin.

Kindly note that we currently do NOT have licenses for undergraduate students .

Click on the logo to open the  UNISA Turnitin Student Guide .

Any queries that students or staff members have, may be sent to: [email protected]

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• Last Updated: Apr 30, 2024 1:02 PM
• URL: https://libguides.unisa.ac.za/research_proposal

• Research Degree Students
• Starting your journey

Research proposal and confirmation of candidature

If you are a doctoral student (PhD, PhD by portfolio or Professional Doctorate), your research proposal is due six months from the start of your degree .

If you are a Master of Research student, your research proposal is due three months from the start of your degree.

Successful completion of this milestone leads to confirmation of candidature.

You need to submit your proposal, your completed Statement of Agreement and your Research Induction Plan.

The following resources will help you meet the requirements of this milestone.

Your research proposal will be loosely based on the research outline you prepared for admission to your degree, but will provide a more comprehensive guide to the literature, method, methodology, structure and timeframe of your research.

The research proposal is used to assess your performance so far, and the feasibility of your research program. It is:

• an action plan for candidature and a major reference point for the Reviews of Progress
• aligned with the Statement of Agreement, explaining how you will develop the Research Degree Graduate Qualities.

It is extremely important that your supervisors provide input into the development of your research proposal.

• Provisional enrolment and Confirmation of Candidature
• Preparing your Research Proposal
• Submission and review of your Research Proposal

Provisional enrolment and confirmation of candidature

Your enrolment is provisional until your candidature is confirmed.

Your research proposal and Statement of Agreement must be approved by the Academic Unit or Institute Research Management Committee for confirmation of candidature to occur. This has to happen before you can proceed with your research.

The length of your provisional candidacy is counted as part of the total time to undertake your degree:

• Doctoral students have a maximum of 4 years (FTE) to complete but should aim to complete their degree within a maximum of 3 years (FTE)
• Master of research students have a total of 2 years (FTE) candidacy to complete their degree.

For students in research professional doctorate programs , confirmation of candidature requires the completion of 18 units of the coursework component, approved by the Program Director, within six months (FTE) of commencement.

Australian and New Zealand citizens and permanent residents of Australia (domestic) students, please note that if you exceed your 4-year time limit you are required to pay tuition fees to the University.

See the AB-58 Research Degrees Policy and Procedures  for your degree for more details.

Confirming candidature

The Confirmation of candidature form (editable PDF) is to be completed by the Chair of the Research Proposal Confirmation Panel (or equivalent) and forwarded to Graduate Research, Candidature when finalised.

Preparing your research proposal

Research proposals are normally 10 to 20 pages long, and should contain the following sections:

Statement of the research topic and rationale for the research Research methodology Trial table of contents Brief bibliography

See Guidelines for the Preparation of Research Proposals in Research Degrees  for more information.

University guidelines stipulate that a PhD will make 'a significant original contribution to knowledge and/or the application of knowledge within the field of study' and a Master of research will make 'a contribution to knowledge and/or the application of knowledge within the field of study'.

The University recognises that each research degree student may require specific equipment, e-research infrastructure, laboratory or studio space and funds adequate for the completion of the research program. Expenses may include travel arising from field work, experiments and data collection and the cost of consumables.

You and your supervisor will need to identify these project-specific costs when preparing your research proposal. Where your project is a subset of your supervisor's funded research project, these costs could be allocated from the project's budget. Costs must be presented and negotiated with the executive dean/institute director prior to confirmation of candidacy, and included in the Statement of Agreement which is submitted with the research proposal.

See the Appendix AB-58 AD1 Minimum Resources for Research Degree Students  for more details.

Resources related to finding research information, finding and writing research proposals and referencing are available here

Submission and review of your research proposal

The procedure for approving research proposals varies according to the academic unit, institute, or centre. Consult the academic regulations, your supervisor or your Research Degree Coordinator for details.

The following steps are typically involved in research proposal development and review:

Step 1 - Development

Work with your supervisors to complete a Research Induction Plan (usually at the end of the first 2 weeks), outlining the negotiated timeframe for getting the research proposal approved, including lodgement of drafts and return of comments by the supervisor.

Complete your Statement of Agreement (usually at the end of the first month), and work on the proposal itself.

Step 2 - Submission

Following approval by your supervisors, submit copies of your written research proposal, your Research Induction Plan and your Statement of Agreement to the Research Degree Coordinator.

If a timely research proposal cannot be lodged you must request permission to extend the timeframe - at least one month in advance and normally for a maximum of three months .

• Application for Extension to Research Proposal (Online Form)

Step 3 - Assessment

A panel reviews your proposal and makes a determination that either:

• the proposal is accepted and the Statement of Agreement is appropriate for supporting the research project and timelines OR
• amendments are required for the proposal and/or Statement of Agreement to be accepted and candidature to be confirmed OR
• the research proposal and/or Statement of Agreement should not be approved and the research degree student may be suspended OR
• the research proposal and/or Statement of Agreement should not be approved and the research degree student should be transferred to another program.

Step 4 - Notification

The research proposal, Research Induction Plan and Statement of Agreement, along with a recommendation from the review panel regarding confirmation of your candidature, goes to the Dean of Graduate Studies. You are advised of the outcome via your student email.

• If the research proposal is accepted , date of confirmation of candidacy is reported to Graduate Research, Candidature.
• If the research proposal is not considered acceptable , it is returned to you with written information indicating why it was not acceptable. You will have to make revisions in conjunction with your supervisor and re-lodge the proposal for further consideration in a given timeframe. You may need to submit an extension to lodge research proposal form:

If you do not have your research proposal approved within the maximum time allowed, your candidature will be suspended, but you may apply for readmission. Refer to the academic regulations for details.

FTE = Full Time Equivalence

If you are doing a Doctor of Philosophy (by Portfolio of Publications), you will submit a research statement. Enrolment and re-enrolment conditions still apply. See the academic regulations.

EDGEx is your one stop shop for continuous skill development resources.

How Can You Create a Well Planned Research Paper Outline

You are staring at the blank document, meaning to start writing your research paper . After months of experiments and procuring results, your PI asked you to write the paper to publish it in a reputed journal. You spoke to your peers and a few seniors and received a few tips on writing a research paper, but you still can’t plan on how to begin!

Writing a research paper is a very common issue among researchers and is often looked upon as a time consuming hurdle. Researchers usually look up to this task as an impending threat, avoiding and procrastinating until they cannot delay it anymore. Seeking advice from internet and seniors they manage to write a paper which goes in for quite a few revisions. Making researchers lose their sense of understanding with respect to their research work and findings. In this article, we would like to discuss how to create a structured research paper outline which will assist a researcher in writing their research paper effectively!

Publication is an important component of research studies in a university for academic promotion and in obtaining funding to support research. However, the primary reason is to provide the data and hypotheses to scientific community to advance the understanding in a specific domain. A scientific paper is a formal record of a research process. It documents research protocols, methods, results, conclusion, and discussion from a research hypothesis .

Table of Contents

What Is a Research Paper Outline?

A research paper outline is a basic format for writing an academic research paper. It follows the IMRAD format (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion). However, this format varies depending on the type of research manuscript. A research paper outline consists of following sections to simplify the paper for readers. These sections help researchers build an effective paper outline.

1. Title Page

The title page provides important information which helps the editors, reviewers, and readers identify the manuscript and the authors at a glance. It also provides an overview of the field of research the research paper belongs to. The title should strike a balance between precise and detailed. Other generic details include author’s given name, affiliation, keywords that will provide indexing, details of the corresponding author etc. are added to the title page.

2. Abstract

Abstract is the most important section of the manuscript and will help the researcher create a detailed research paper outline . To be more precise, an abstract is like an advertisement to the researcher’s work and it influences the editor in deciding whether to submit the manuscript to reviewers or not. Writing an abstract is a challenging task. Researchers can write an exemplary abstract by selecting the content carefully and being concise.

3. Introduction

An introduction is a background statement that provides the context and approach of the research. It describes the problem statement with the assistance of the literature study and elaborates the requirement to update the knowledge gap. It sets the research hypothesis and informs the readers about the big research question.

This section is usually named as “Materials and Methods”, “Experiments” or “Patients and Methods” depending upon the type of journal. This purpose provides complete information on methods used for the research. Researchers should mention clear description of materials and their use in the research work. If the methods used in research are already published, give a brief account and refer to the original publication. However, if the method used is modified from the original method, then researcher should mention the modifications done to the original protocol and validate its accuracy, precision, and repeatability.

It is best to report results as tables and figures wherever possible. Also, avoid duplication of text and ensure that the text summarizes the findings. Report the results with appropriate descriptive statistics. Furthermore, report any unexpected events that could affect the research results, and mention complete account of observations and explanations for missing data (if any).

6. Discussion

The discussion should set the research in context, strengthen its importance and support the research hypothesis. Summarize the main results of the study in one or two paragraphs and show how they logically fit in an overall scheme of studies. Compare the results with other investigations in the field of research and explain the differences.

7. Acknowledgments

Acknowledgements identify and thank the contributors to the study, who are not under the criteria of co-authors. It also includes the recognition of funding agency and universities that award scholarships or fellowships to researchers.

8. Declaration of Competing Interests

Finally, declaring the competing interests is essential to abide by ethical norms of unique research publishing. Competing interests arise when the author has more than one role that may lead to a situation where there is a conflict of interest.

Steps to Write a Research Paper Outline

• Write down all important ideas that occur to you concerning the research paper .
• Answer questions such as – what is the topic of my paper? Why is the topic important? How to formulate the hypothesis? What are the major findings?
• Add context and structure. Group all your ideas into sections – Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion/Conclusion.
• Add relevant questions to each section. It is important to note down the questions. This will help you align your thoughts.
• Expand the ideas based on the questions created in the paper outline.
• After creating a detailed outline, discuss it with your mentors and peers.
• Get enough feedback and decide on the journal you will submit to.
• The process of real writing begins.

Benefits of Creating a Research Paper Outline

As discussed, the research paper subheadings create an outline of what different aspects of research needs elaboration. This provides subtopics on which the researchers brainstorm and reach a conclusion to write. A research paper outline organizes the researcher’s thoughts and gives a clear picture of how to formulate the research protocols and results. It not only helps the researcher to understand the flow of information but also provides relation between the ideas.

A research paper outline helps researcher achieve a smooth transition between topics and ensures that no research point is forgotten. Furthermore, it allows the reader to easily navigate through the research paper and provides a better understanding of the research. The paper outline allows the readers to find relevant information and quotes from different part of the paper.

Research Paper Outline Template

A research paper outline template can help you understand the concept of creating a well planned research paper before beginning to write and walk through your journey of research publishing.

1. Research Title

A. Background i. Support with evidence ii. Support with existing literature studies

B. Thesis Statement i. Link literature with hypothesis ii. Support with evidence iii. Explain the knowledge gap and how this research will help build the gap 4. Body

A. Methods i. Mention materials and protocols used in research ii. Support with evidence

B. Results i. Support with tables and figures ii. Mention appropriate descriptive statistics

C. Discussion i. Support the research with context ii. Support the research hypothesis iii. Compare the results with other investigations in field of research

D. Conclusion i. Support the discussion and research investigation ii. Support with literature studies

E. Acknowledgements i. Identify and thank the contributors ii. Include the funding agency, if any

F. Declaration of Competing Interests

5. References

Download the Research Paper Outline Template!

Have you tried writing a research paper outline ? How did it work for you? Did it help you achieve your research paper writing goal? Do let us know about your experience in the comments below.

Downloadable format shared which is great. 🙂

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