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<b><h4>Do you use research plans or protocols in your field of study?</h4></b>

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<b>Dr Peter Hristov, Postdoctoral Research Assistant, University of Liverpool</b>

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Even though in my field of study, and specifically in the university, research plans are not mandatory, I do tend to use some form of research plans. Typically, that would be of larger granularity. So I would set them in terms of milestones, let's say three, six, or 12 months. And then within each month, I would refine details. This way, I'm able to plan for unforeseen circumstances. For example, if I plan for publications, but while doing auxiliary research, something interesting pops up, and I want to publish, I can shift around other things and publish it. 
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<b><h4>Have your thoughts about the importance of research plans changed over time?</h4></b>

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<b>Caroline Morais, PhD Researcher, University of Liverpool</b>

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My thoughts about research plans have slightly changed over time. The very first year, I was very concerned and detailing all the steps of the Gantt charts, because we have to do Gantt charts as well with the research plan, and I could see that it was not in the second year, that was not too important, all these little milestones. It was more important the literature review, the content inside the research plan were more important, than the deadlines exactly. It was too focused on the deadlines. 

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<b>Dr Peter Hristov:</b> I have always seen planning as important, but the process of setting the plan has definitely evolved over time. So for example, when I was an undergraduate student, the narrow scope of my responsibilities was asking for one type of research plan. Then when I moved on to PhD, and I needed to be more independent and set the direction of research, that has changed the research planning procedure again. 

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When I became a PDRA, I had to work with many more people, which again, asked for different research planning procedure. Nowadays, in my field, when I have some experience, I do tend to improvise a little more, but within some bounds as well. So I would say the importance of research plan has not changed for me, even though the procedure of setting the research plans has evolved. 
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<b><h4>Can you provide an example of how having a plan helped you avoid or deal with a potential research problem?</h4></b>

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<b>Caroline Morais:</b> Having a research plan has helped me remember when prompting my supervisors and my team. Every time I looked for the Gantt chart, I remember, OK, now is the time to ask the supervisor to revise my research before sending something to a journal, or to a conference, so that the milestones that I had to do, were all described in the research plan, including the literature review steps, so they quite helped me to maintain the focus on the deadlines and milestones. 

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<b>Dr Peter Hristov:</b> In my current work, I do a lot of collaboration with industry. Industrial partners are mainly focused on profitability, which is natural, and when they need to focus on chasing quarterly targets and the like, communication can get slowed down. So recently, what happened to me is I had to request access to data, but for a number of reasons, this access permission got slowed down. 

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So I had to wait for several months. When I requested the data, I've also planned for the eventuality where I don't get it right away. So in the end, that helped me to really perform some theoretical work while waiting for the results to arrive, and I was able to finally publish this, which really paid off. 