1. Do the corrections only based on the examiners’ comments
2. Don’t compare your examiners with others, every examiner has his/her expectation towards students.
3. Create a matrix to easily see every single step required and track your progress, ensure every examiner’s comment is addressed.
4. Get start of your corrections as soon as possible after receive the complete comments that is because some comments may require more time for corrections and maybe you need to argue your case.
5. Check the paperwork of resubmission of your corrected thesis, list down the documentations such as forms to be filled and submit together.
6. After corrections, read thoroughly the entire thesis, ensure the flow has been maintained after the changes made and avoid repetition.

Research methods are the procedures that will be used to collect and analyze data while research design is the overall structure of the research.

Research methods focus on what type of methods are more suitable to collect and analyze the evidence needed while research design focuses on what type of study is planned and what kind of results are expected from the research.

Research methods depend on the research design while research design based on the research question or problem.

Methodological gap: Addresses the conflict with the research methods in the prior studies and offers a new line of research that is different from those research methods

Theoretical gap: Deals with the gaps between theory and early research

Population gap: Relates the population that is not adequately represented or under-researched in the evidence base or prior research

Evidence gap: Deals with research findings contradiction

Empirical gap: Addresses conflicts that no study, to date, has directly attempted to evaluate a subject or topic from an empirical approach

Practical-knowledge gap: Arises when the actual behavior in practice is different from the expected behavior. In this case, research could seek to determine the scope of the conflict and to uncover the reasons for its existence

1. WoS have much better quality compare with Scopus publications. Based on the quality metric and Review process, WoS is very tough to publish (this may not applicable for open access journals).
2. Q1 in WoS doesnt mean its Q1 in Scopus. So dont mistaken that they are the same. Normally articles published in WoS database will be accessible in Scopus database.
3. Articles in Scopus might not even be indexed in WoS.
4. Scopus uses CitrScore as a measure while WoS uses Impact Factor.

Structure that may help you:

Introduction – Use title as an anchor, start with problem and continue with solution.

Background to Problem to Research objectives/ research questions – Start broad related to problem, afterwards statistically narrow to the core: 1. introduce literature, 2. problem statement, 3. research objectives/ research questions. Also, explain the significance of your research and define each keyword clearly.

Literature Review – Include: Theory, hypotheses/ literature review, proposed conceptual model etc.

Methodology – Include research design such as sampling, instrument, validation. Include data collection and analysis.

Improve reading skills

It helps you in developing reading for critical evaluation not just for the purpose of knowledge.

It helps develop reasoning skills as you read any article or book to collect sources for your research paper.

Good writing skills

Writing help you to understand the process of scientific discovery and then how to document that poins.

You will learn the process of citation and acknowledgement. You will be able to differentiate between the citation method that you are using and other citation methods.

Originally in writing is very important when you are writing a scientific research whether it is a research paper, thesis or dissertation. Acknowledging the sources that you have used in your research is important part of research paper writing and it helps you avoid plagiarism.

A sense of achievement

It help you get prestige and good credentials among students and teachers.

some students find writing a research paper a way to achieve all of these things in the academic life.

Writing a research paper all by yourself gives you a sense of individuality and satisfaction that you have created something.

Same skills for future scholarly researches

It gives you a head start to future scholarly works.

The student not only learns the process of research that is selecting a topic, reviewing the literature, collecting data and evaluation of data but it also helps you understand how to find answer of a question scientifically.

Knowledge about your subject area

You know about the topic that you have selected for your research paper and this improves your knowledge about that topic.

It also gives you an idea how to explore different other topics that you are unable to understand from simple lectures from your teacher or text book.

You learn how to build up your knowledge about any topic by exploring synthesizing and evaluating it.

Ensure the followings points when write your abstract:

1. Motivation. Why do we care about your research?
2. Problem statement. What problem are you trying to solve?
3. Approach. How do you find the solution to the problem?
4. Results. What is the solution that you have made (have you answer to the question)?
5. Conclusion. What are the implications of your answer (shortly your research contribution)?

Concerns:

• When discussing limitations in research, explain how they impact your findings because creating their short list or description is not enough. Your research may have many limitations.
• Research limitations in a typical dissertation may relate to to the following points:
  • Formulation of research aims and objectives. You might have formulated research aims and objectives too broadly.
  • Implementation of data collection method. because you do not have an extensive experience in primary data collection.
  • Sample size. Sample size depends on the nature of the research problem. If sample size is too small, statistical test would not be able to identify significant relationships within data set.
  • Lack of previous studies in the research area. Literature review is an important part of any research, because it helps to identify the scope of words that have done so far in research area.
  • Scope of discussion. You can include this point as a limitation of your research regardless of the choice of the research area.

What is a VIVA PRESENTATION?

-An oral exam in which you defend your thesis either Master or PhD.

-It’s a focused discussion giving you the opportunity to present your Master/PhD thesis and and then defend it in front of a panel of academic experts.

-After the thesis is defended, it’s discussed by a small panel. Among those present are the examining professors, but there may also be research assistants, members of the relevant department or even fellow students. Usually VIVA session is a closed session that conducted within a small group of academicians (examiners, PhD/Master candidate, chair, assistant chair, technical team etc.) but for some countries example in majority universities in Japan, VIVA session is an opened session that involve anyone that interested to join as listeners.

-The purpose of this defense is to show examiners how knowledgeable you are on your research topic, that you have internalized what you have learned and know how to apply it. In effect, it shows that you are well prepared to enter into academic discussion.

1. Introduction to the chapter – remind the reader what your research questions were i. in a qualitative study you will restate the research questions; ii. in a quantitative study you will present the hypotheses
2. A transition from Chapter 3 (Important)
3. Provide a brief overview of the research project – Chapter 4 should presented in such a way that one can read it and understand everything about your study, this means that a BRIEF overview of the research project is very important in this chapter.
4. Describe the purpose of the chapter
5. Explain the organization of the chapter
6. Data analyses and Presentation of the Findings – This is the heart of this chapter. The presentation of the findings should be very concise and clear, make sure that you present it in such a way that even a layman can understand it
7. State null hypothesis
8. Present the statistical results in a table
9. Draw statistical conclusions for accepted and rejected hypotheses
10. Draw a preliminary research conclusion
11. Conclusion and Transitions to Chapter 5