This course acts as a map of research building and is aimed to provide comprehensive details and guidelines to PhD students, especially familiarizing and training them to design and prepare research proposals and technical writings. The course reveals the details about different sources of literature including primary and secondary sources of literature such as chemical abstracts, journal articles, books etc., digital libraries, multiple data bases, Scopus, Science Direct, Agricola etc.,) as well as printed copy sources of literature. The students will learn how to conduct a comprehensive literature survey and compile well-designed review of literature leading to shaping a strong research proposal with quantifiable objectives. Design, structural composition (title, abstract, key words, introduction, material and methods, results/ including tables, figures and graphs, and discussion, conclusion, acknowledgement and references) and importance of technical writings are also focused. Related issues such as plagiarism, impact factor, h-index and i-index are also described. After studying this course, students are expected to be able to conduct a comprehensive and updated literature survey and thus prepare strong research proposals and apply these readings to compile different technical writings (synopsis, thesis, journal articles, short communications, books, patents, monographs and technical reports etc.)

Course Material