Higher academic research or doctoral level research can be taken up after completion of post-graduation. Candidates need to put in four to six years of dedicated efforts to earn their doctoral degrees. Scholarships for research programs are limited and several times researchers take up doctoral programs alongside with their employment, also many researchers have to carry on their research from far off places and not get the required facilities and support of their institutions. Without the proper secondary sources and data analysis tools, researchers may often be left groping in the dark. Most of the time researchers have to manage with insufficient secondary data and outdated research methods and tools and fail to keep pace with the challenges of their times. Lack of proper training in research methods is a major impediment, at the doctoral level candidates need to contribute originally in their own subject of specialization and broaden the horizon of knowledge with their known knowledge base, choosing an original topic and avoiding overlapping with other research works is a major concern, the topic of choice has to be practical and supported by real data; data collection especially for empirical research needs to be tactfully addressed, designing and testing the proper research instrument for data collection requires high order research skills. Doctoral level research work needs to be sufficiently detailed and supported by proper citation, references and primary data; a doctoral level thesis is generally around two hundred pages excluding the references. Thesis reports need to be written with adherence to prescribed writing style, many researchers may have problems in expressing themselves adequately in the prescribed language which is generally English and getting their works translated can lead to poor quality write-up. Most researchers would want to make meaningful contribution in their respective fields but gap between research appliers and research institutes leads to wasteful research, while on the other hand pressing problems may remain unaddressed.
