Monday 4 June 2012

Writing the thesis of a project work


After a long gap, I would like to post on my blog again.  This post is about documentation of the carried research work.  Many of the M.pharmacy second year may have completed their research work in lab  and currently may have started documenting the research work which is called a thesis.  In any Industrial scenario, there are two things one, which is the technical or practical work that is done on the floor and the other is documentation of work that is carried out.  Documenting the work whether it is production, quality analysis or a research work is equally important of doing the work.  This documentation helps in ways in regulatory point of view as well as to the company.  Documentation in industrial scenario is a different issue where the head of QA department will be an in-charge.  I shall discuss about this in my upcoming posts.  Right now, I would like to discuss about documentation of a research work. Every university will have their own guidelines for submitting the research work.  But I would like to discuss about the general aspects of making a thesis look effective.

Brief overview of thesis book:
Generally, a thesis starts with title of work, student name, university name, guide name and finally the college name.  The next page consists of declaration stating that the work has been performed on your own and not replicated from anywhere.  The next pages are declaration from guide and principal of the college.  It will look good if an Abstract of the work (brief overview) is included in next page.  The next page is the abbreviations that are used followed by contents.  The contents include Aim, scope and objective, Introduction, Drug and excipients profile, Literature review, Experimental investigations, Experimental results, Results and discussion, Summary, conclusion and future recommendation, finally bibliography.

It is a common tendency to cut, copy, and paste in the introduction part from different sources of net or from a review or research article.  This is plagiarism which is absolutely not acceptable and considered as crime in foreign countries. It is the stealing of one’s ideas and method of writing.  It will not help in any way.  There are many arguments on it.  I would like to say only one thing regarding this issue.  Avoiding plagiarism gives honor to the author and also helps in generating new ideas besides helping you in understanding the theory and concepts.  Visit www.pharminfo.net for more information on plagiarism.

Drug & Excipients profile, Literature review can be easily written.  In the literature review, ensure that most relevant work is cited. (Give preference to drug and later concept like increase in bioavailability, sustained release etc.)

Experimental investigations include the materials and methods used along with the source of chemicals. Applying statistical ANOVA to the results will always help.  Different software (graph pad prism is one of it) is available to carry out ANOVA.  Dissolution graphs (time vs % dissolved, first order or zero order graphs) should be present neatly using excel.  Drug- excipient compatibility (IR graphs) interpretation is important.  See the wave number at which peak appeared and write the shift that appeared when combined with the excipient.  Interpretation of results of dissolution profiles, rate graphs, IR peaks with proper reasonable thinking gives good appearance to the thesis and also helps in improving knowledge.   This will help in designing the power point and also improves your subject knowledge to confidently face the Viva and interviews.  I do not know whether this helps or not.  But I presented my views in my own words.   

All the Best!!!
   

No comments:

Post a Comment