Forty Rules of Proposal and Dissertation Writing

Abstract

Increasing attention is being paid to the integrity of scientific research proposals and dissertations in the fields of medicine and other healthcare or allied medicine fields. Therefore, it is vital for researchers, trainee resident doctors, undergraduate and postgraduate students in any healthcare field to be confident that the research methods and outcomes of their proposals and dissertations be trusted, reproducible and transparent. It appears that the number of unpublished output of dissertations is increasing and often constitute gray literature. [1] In one study, the publishing rates of dissertations in general surgery was low, with only 22% being published in Science Citation Index Expanded journals.[2] This may be due to low overall quality of the proposals and dissertations owing to poor preparation. This has led to failure rates in examinations and often led to prolonging the duration of postgraduate studies. Therefore, preparation of proposals and dissertations is often a challenging process that requires considerable effort and time.[3] Proposal and dissertation writing must continue to update and refine their processes in order to protect against examination failures and publication failures. It is of confidence that identifying these well-articulated 40 rules of proposal and dissertation writing will help to cement the easiness of the proposal and dissertation writing processes among undergraduate and postgraduate students. Although these rules are not exhaustive, the available 40 are based on experiences gathered over the years on supervising undergraduate and postgraduate students in proposal and dissertation writing. The rules could be general or specific.