DEFINING "ORIGINALITY"

from Francis (1976):

  • setting down a piece of new information in writing for the first time

  • continuing a previously original piece of work

  • carrying out original worked designed by the supervisor

  • providing a single original technique, observation, or result in an otherwise unoriginal but competent piece of work

  • having many original ideas, methods and interpretations all performed by others under the direction of the postgraduate

  • showing originality in testing somebody else's idea

from Phillips (1992):

  • carrying out empirical work that has not been done before

  • making a synthesis that has not been made before

  • using already known material bur with a new interpretation

  • trying out something in this country that has previously only been done in other countries

  • taking a particular technique and applying it in a new area

  • bringing new evidence to bear on an old issue

  • being cross-disciplinary and using different methodologies

  • looking at areas that people in the discipline have not looked at before

  • adding to knowledge in a way that has not previously been done before

quoted in E.M. Phillips and D.S. Pugh, ""How to Get a PhD" (5th edn), Open University Press, 2010

 

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