Research based Master of Science (M.Sc.) is composed of a well designed experiments in order to substantiate a hypothesis. Therefore, understanding the M.Sc. project is imperative for the postgraduate student to design suitable and more importantly applicable experiments for his or her project. Comprehension of a project can be achieved through literature search and review.
Sufficient, if not extensive, literature search and review throughout a research project is a must in order to gather data and discover the previous works of other researchers on related topics. The type of literatures can ranged from journals, theses, websites, scientific magazines and textbooks. However, one has to appraise the information collected especially from non-established websites because, not all information is valid as it claims.
In a research project, literature search should be the first step. At this stage the objective of literature search and review is to enable a student to construct an outline or plan for his or her project. The outline should be a general and logical sequence intended for the thesis write up. It serves as a guideline throughout the research project. Be prepared that the content of the outline may change along the way as the direction of the project depends largely on the results of each experiment. As a student start to embark in his or her project, the literature search and review will be centered to a more specific area of the study. Some of the minimum aspects that need to be established during a literature search and review are:
• Is the study has been covered by other researchers - if the study has been covered in previous work, then it is advisable to modify or entirely change the project.
• Methodologies used by researches - for illustration purpose, we shall use "Analysis of Carbamazepine in Tablet Formulations" as the topic of interest. There are various methods that can be employed to determine carbamazepine in its formulation. Some may use ultra-violet spectrophotometer while others may use high performance liquid chromatography. Therefore, it is good to match the resources on hand versus those used by the researchers. In most cases, the resources may not need to be exactly as those published in the literature. Adaptation using existing resources can be made but the method may have to be validated.
• The characteristics or problems identified in previous works -the characteristics or problems published by researches in similar field will help a student to a great extent in understanding the topic and therefore will be better equipped in managing the study.
Justine Choy has obtained a Bachelor Degree with Honours in Chemistry and has completed her Master's Degree in the field of Pharmaceutical Technology. Currently, she is holding a managerial post in a R&D laboratory of a local pharmaceutical company.
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