Writing a Transfer Report

When you are rst registered for a research degree leading to a PhD, you will typically be registered as an MPhil student. In order to be eligible for registration for a PhD, you will rst need to demonstrate your ability to undertake research (more details of the process). This is achieved by writing and having examined a transfer report. The transfer report and exam are meant to allow you to demonstrate that you have the ability, initiative and enthusiasm to complete your current project to the level required for a PhD within four years. Although the format of the transfer report is dened by your principal supervisor, you should aim for a report that is no more than 30 pages long, concentrating on a critique of the relevant literature, possibly as an annotated bibliography, together with an outline of the theoretical or experimental work carried out to date, a statement of the problem to be investigated (your contribution) and a plan of how you want to proceed.

Guideline Assessment Criteria

By way of guidance, to pass the exam you must: 1. Demonstrate the ability to review the literature in the area of your project, determine conclusions and justify why your topic is worthy of further study. 2. Dene clearly the aims of your project, identify the key issues and which ones you are addressing, appreciating that they may change as the research progresses. 3. Demonstrate the ability to undertake original research by: Carrying our experiments, whether they be theoretical or experimental, Analysing the results, Drawing conclusions from the work, and Designing and justifying the next set of experiments. 4. Provide a plan to completion of the project to show that you can plan the project on a realistic timescale.

5. Demonstrate your ability to present your results at a conference/seminar, at least within the research centre. 6. If appropriate, publish your results in the open literature in high quality journals. 7. Undertake a critical appraisal of your achievements to date. 8. Demonstrate that you can structure and present your research in both written and oral form.

Structure
An example of the main structure you might use for your transfer report is: 1. Introduction: Brief background to the topic. Motivation for carrying out your research. Expected contribution. Structure and overview of the report. 2. Literature Review A critique of the essential literature for your research. The critique should provide a focus for your motivation and future studies. The review may be in the form of an annotated bibliography. 3. Proposed Method/Approach An outline of your proposed method: theoretical, empirical or both. Motivation for your approach. Proposal for future studies, evaluation and developments of your method. 4. Preliminary Evaluation If appropriate, your report should include details of any preliminary theoretical work or experiments. 2

 You should demonstrate a systematic approach to evaluating your proposed method. 5. Conclusion and Future Work Conclude your proposal and state your expected contribution. Include a plan of the work to be undertaken with dened milestones and completion dates. Note that this is suggested only and not prescriptive. The exact format and nature of the report is left to the principal supervisor to dene, and may be as simple as submitting a number of published papers to support the transfer.

Examples
Two good examples of transfer reports are by Sotiris Moschoyiannis and Hayssam Traboulsi. Although both are longer than desired, they received good comments from the external examiners.