‘Suggest a new research agenda’
What: Suggest possible work that might help advance understanding of an unexplained result.
Use when: your work produced unexpected results that cannot be explained by errors or current theory. There is too much uncertainty for you to determine what caused the result, but it is likely that other readers will find the problem interesting, and would want to hear about possible explanations that could be tested
Why: Uncertainty as framed as an interesting future challenge. Science is as much about asking the right questions as it is about providing answers. If there is so much uncertainty that you cannot provide any answers, then suggesting suitable questions can be a very useful contribution.
How to implement: Show the reader that existing research has not addressed the issue, and suggest possible paths for future research, justifying why they may be of interest. In cases where there are no obvious hypotheses to test, even clearly articulating the gap in knowledge may clearly be of interest to the reader.
How to recognise: Primary claim is that no explanation exists. Warrant may refer to possible explanations that have been tested. Backing may provide review of possible explanations, e.g. from literature. Secondary claim may suggest future research
Suggest a new research agenda is distinguished from Learn-from-my-problems in that the former emphasises future possibilities while the latter emphasises problems with the current analysis. It is important to identify the specific research agenda being suggested.
Examples:
- Statement of a hypothesis
- "the interfacial tension should be a controlling factor for the trapping stability in addition to the pore geometry and connectivity" 2014WR016070.
"The sediment pulse evolved primarily through dispersion rather than translation, which contrasts with prior gravel augmentation experiments conducted in constant-width channels and suggests that width variation and resulting riffle-pool topography enhances pulse dispersion." 2014WR016806.
- Statement of possible future work
- "Further work is needed to understand the internal dynamics of a melting snowpack throughout a snow-covered landscape and its contribution to extreme rain-on-snow floods." 2014WR016877
- "improved validation results that capture specific characteristics of the breakthrough curves would require additional hydraulic measurements." 2014WR016402. The research agenda is to perform additional measurements.
Identification of problem with hypothesised explanation (without it would be Learn-from-my-problems
"Results also highlighted one subcatchment with low certainty in parameter sensitivity, indicating that the model poorly represented some complexities in this subcatchment likely because an important process is missing or poorly characterized in the mechanistic model." 2014WR016147. The research agenda is to improve the mechanistic model.
Implicit statement of possible future work. Whether it is just a statement of a problem (Learn-from-my-problems), or suggestion of a research agenda may be subjective
"Data from the homogeneous samples demonstrated that inversion of the sand tank resistivity data using a common Tikhonov regularization approach was insufficient to recover an accurate conductivity distribution within the tank. ... While changes to in-phase conductivity could be successfully modeled, quadrature conductivity values could not be directly related to TCE oxidation product or MnO4- concentrations at frequencies consistent with field induced polarization surveys, limiting the utility of quadrature conductivity for monitoring ISCO." 2014WR016868. The first statement refers to application of an existing method, such that the research agenda is to find a new method to recover conductivity distribution. The second statement's research agenda is to identify the relationship between quadrature conductivity, oxidation products and concentrations. The third statement is classified as Learn-from-my-problems because of emphasis on utility of method and absence of research agenda.