What is the standard format for a research proposal in engineering sciences? (86)

The short answer: it depends heavily on the journal and field, but here is a general framework.

If your null result is well-powered and the hypothesis was reasonable: Absolutely publish it. Null results in well-designed studies are as valuable as positive results. Journals like PLOS ONE explicitly welcome them.

If your study is underpowered: Be transparent about it. Report effect sizes and confidence intervals, not just p-values. A small, underpowered study with honest reporting is still a contribution.

What kills papers is when limitations are obvious but the authors have not addressed them.

FDR (Benjamini-Hochberg) is widely accepted and preferable to Bonferroni when you have many tests and limited power. The key is to be explicit about which correction you used and why.

On replication: No independent cohort is a genuine limitation but not a dealbreaker for rare disease research, where cohort availability is a known constraint. Many high-quality papers acknowledge this and still get published in good journals. Frame it as future work.

Power analysis: Yes, report it. Showing you are aware of the limitation is better than not mentioning it.

Strongly agree with the point about choosing venues carefully. One paper in NeurIPS > five papers in obscure workshops.

This question comes up a lot. The answer really depends on your specific field and what your committee values.

I think you are conflating two separate problems here. The publish-or-perish culture creates pressure, yes.but the solution is not to criticize researchers who are navigating an unfair system. The real problem is with evaluation committees who treat publication count as a proxy for research quality. Fix the evaluation, and the incentives change.

Also worth noting: open review has been implemented in some fields and has its own problems. It can disadvantage early-career researchers who fear retaliation from senior colleagues they have reviewed critically.

CSIR-UGC NET preparation: past papers are the most important resource. Everything else is secondary.

This is a known issue with XLM-R on code-mixed data. The MuRIL preprint has a section specifically comparing these.

This is a known issue with XLM-R on code-mixed data. The MuRIL preprint has a section specifically comparing these.

For Zotero vs BibTeX management, I moved to Zotero + Better BibTeX 3 years ago and have not looked back.

My workflow:

1. Zotero browser connector captures papers instantly from ArXiv, Google Scholar, ACM DL, IEEE Xplore
2. Better BibTeX generates a clean .bib file that auto-updates whenever I add a paper
3. Overleaf directly pulls from the .bib file via Dropbox sync

One tip: create a Zotero collection per paper/project. When you export the .bib, export only that collection to keep it clean.

This question comes up a lot. The answer really depends on your specific field and what your committee values.

I am in a very similar situation. Would you be willing to share the outline of your PMRF proposal? Not the content.just the section headings and approximate word allocation.

The ethics review situation in Indian universities is actually more complex than most people realize.

There is no uniform national framework equivalent to the US Common Rule. Each institution has its own Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) or Institutional Review Board (IRB).

For anonymous survey research with no identifiable data and no vulnerable populations: most Indian IECs would classify this as exempt, but 'exempt' still needs a formal determination from the IEC.it is not self-certifying.

My practical advice: go to your institution's research ethics office now, describe what you did, and request an exempt determination in writing. Better to have documentation than to discover the issue during thesis review.

Strongly agree with the point about choosing venues carefully. One paper in NeurIPS > five papers in obscure workshops.

I'd push back slightly on the idea that industry collaboration is universally beneficial for academic research. The incentive misalignment is real.

Industry partners want deliverables on a schedule. Academic research is often exploratory and unpredictable. When the two clash, it is usually the researcher who has to compromise.either by rushing results, constraining publication, or steering away from results that are inconvenient for the sponsor.

This doesn't mean industry collaboration is bad. But the terms matter enormously. IP rights, publication rights, and the ability to pursue negative results should be negotiated upfront and protected in writing.

Open access is the right direction but the APCs are prohibitively expensive for many Indian researchers without institutional funding.

+1 to everything said above. My experience was identical.

Overleaf + GitHub integration is underrated. You get version control and collaboration in one place.

The Fulbright SoP is very different from a typical PhD SoP. It needs to focus on cultural exchange and diplomacy, not just research.

Strongly agree with the point about choosing venues carefully. One paper in NeurIPS > five papers in obscure workshops.

Respectfully, I think this framing misses the systemic dimension. Individual researchers cannot solve a collective action problem. If you submit to open-access journals and your colleague submits to Nature, your colleague gets the promotion. Until evaluation criteria change at the institutional level.which requires policy intervention.individual choices have minimal impact.

As a senior faculty member (25 years in the system), I want to offer a different perspective. Yes, the pressures are real. But I have also seen the other side: students who produce excellent work, publish honestly, and build reputations over time. The system is imperfect but not entirely broken.

What has actually helped my students: choosing venues carefully (a few strong papers rather than many weak ones), developing genuine collaborations rather than transactional coauthorships.

This question comes up a lot. The answer really depends on your specific field and what your committee values.

As a senior faculty member (25 years in the system), I want to offer a different perspective. Yes, the pressures are real. But I have also seen the other side: students who produce excellent work, publish honestly, and build reputations over time. The system is imperfect but not entirely broken.

What has actually helped my students: choosing venues carefully (a few strong papers rather than many weak ones), developing genuine collaborations rather than transactional coauthorships.

I found that writing a paper abstract first (before the paper) and then reverse-engineering the paper from the abstract helped with clarity enormously.

I found that writing a paper abstract first (before the paper) and then reverse-engineering the paper from the abstract helped with clarity enormously.

Open access is the right direction but the APCs are prohibitively expensive for many Indian researchers without institutional funding.

The Fulbright SoP is very different from a typical PhD SoP. It needs to focus on cultural exchange and diplomacy, not just research.

I found that writing a paper abstract first (before the paper) and then reverse-engineering the paper from the abstract helped with clarity enormously.