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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 Erika Mancini, Reader in Biomedical Structural Biology, University of Sussex</b>

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So in my field of study, which is biomedical structural biology, we use both research plans, and protocols. So typically, for every project in my lab, we would have a research plan, and that would consist in firstly identifying a problem, a research question, and then formulating a hypothesis, which is either a verifiable or falsifiable, and we would set out to look for research methodologies, which would answer that question, and we could verify or not that hypothesis. 

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So to do that, we would then come up with a series of objectives, which these methodologies would be part of, and we would try to answer them, with the best technology available. So an important part of a research plan is also to directly determine people involved in that particular task, and also to cost the research plan appropriately, so that it can be done.

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<b>Dr Pete Etchells, Reader in Psychology and Science Communication, Bath Spa University</b>

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I do use research plans to a certain extent. I use what are called pre-registration documents. So what we try to do there is before we do any testing, or do any data analysis, we come up with a clear hypothesis, a clear rationale, and then very precisely describe the methods that we intend to use, and the data analysis methods that we intend to use, before we do anything else.
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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>Dr Erika Mancini:</b> Over the course of my career, I have fundamentally changed the way I think about research plans. During the early stages, during my PhD, during my postdoctoral work, I was particularly focused on establishing the objectives, finding the correct methodologies, and perhaps, just focusing on the experiments. So things that I didn't particularly think about, as part of research plans were timelines, and contingency plans. 

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And for example, timing was an important issue. So I found myself perhaps taking longer than I thought I would on a particular piece of work. Now, as a more established researcher, I understand that there are many more important aspects to a research plan, so for example timeliness being one of them. So I think that I have a much more mature approach to research plans. 
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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>Dr Erika Mancini:</b> A research plan can help minimising the downstream problems. For example, having a really good timeline, I was just saying, is important in order to make sure that your research, for example, doesn't become redundant, or that you are scooped by the competition, so to say. For example, in one particular instance, I remember there was a particular research project for which we built a research plan, and we included various back-up plans. 

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We had a part, which was the mainstream part, but we also included some techniques, which could act as a back-up plan. In that case, when our competitors were ahead of the game and submitted a paper, which was in direct competition to ours, we were able to quickly go to technique number B, and that way we were able to publish back to back with the competitors, and that minimised the damage. 

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<b>Dr Pete Etchells:</b> I don't have any specific situations where I've had a problem where a research plan has resolved that. What I actually think is that in using pre-registration documents, it heads off problems at the start, so it really forces you to think about the types of data that you're going to be collecting, and what you're going to do with that data, and how you're going to analyse it later on, where I think normally, a lot of psychologists would think about those sorts of issues while they're actually trying to analyse the data, and that's when issues do come up. Using pre-registration documents really allows you to think about all of that stuff first, so you can head off any real issues at the pass. 