u/HotShrewdness

[social science/education, US]

I've noticed a number of postdocs postings are written broadly to support a range of projects and thus require a research proposal as part of the application. Totally understandable.

As someone whose research has a community focus on a niche ethnic group, I'm not sure how to market this at different institutions. Some are in areas that likely have great nonprofits to partner with, others are hours from my research population.

I'm totally fine with pivoting my research focus a bit based on the needs of where I am located, but I don't want to make up a bunch of uninformed, vague proposals for each institution. I don't need to study the same ethnic group necessarily, just the same phenomenon.

Any tips for writing these types of proposals convincingly?

TDLR; How do I write a convincing, practical research proposal when I don't necessarily know what resources, faculty mentor, and research populations will be available to me?

I recently got back an interdisciplinary manuscript I submitted to a top journal and was happy to get back major revisions (this is my first paper).

I've read through the reviewers' comments and the majority is quite helpful. Things like incorporating more the literature, etc. I understand how to do.

That being said, for major revisions of humanities manuscripts...how far do I go with the revisions? Suggestions like "move this paragraph to this section" I can do easily and it feels low risk. One reviewer philosophized on an idea for an entirely different study (a good idea for the future, but seemingly too many changes for this manuscript).

The larger the changes that I contemplate, the greater the risks seem to be involved. I am limited to adding 1,000 more words to the word count, but I don't think that counts replacing deleted words.

Does 'major revisions' involve 'major repairs' to a manuscript or basically rebuilding the project? In my heart this seems like it should resemble the original study but some of their suggestions seem like massive changes.

Hello!

I'm writing a humanities-qual social science article and two things always trip me up. I'm more social science trained, so doing more of a poetry leaning article is new for me.

1. Why is the research significant and how do we draw larger findings from it?

I fear too much of my thinking is well my findings show small group has X perceptions about blue jellybeans, but how does that translate to anything larger? I struggle with that and my advisor's answer was to read more papers.

2. I struggle knowing how to start the article. I know I can always do a world event type of thing "2026 marked the largest year on record for X, signaling an increasing need to more solutions to support X."

But after a while it's so boring. I've probably read six different articles that start with the same escalating crisis. I may open with a poem excerpt but I'm a little uncomfortable experimenting too much with article formats yet (this is only my second manuscript).

Any advice would be appreciated! This paper is so interdisciplinary that I'm a bit lost and it's going to an interdisciplinary journal so they're open to a bit less traditional of articles.

Thank you for your help!