Announcing FindAPhD PROJECT: The First Fully-Automated PhD Originality Checker

Back in 2001 we took PhD listings online as FindAPhD became the world’s largest database of PhD projects and programmes. Now, we’re ready to take the next step in our journey and announce the newest feature of FindAPhD.com:

Our new FindAPhD Potential Research Originality Justification, Evaluation and Calculation Thingy (PROJECT) is the first tool for comprehensively checking the originality of a doctoral research topic before a student proposes it or a university advertises it.

FindAPhD PROJECT uses a sophisticated algorithm to rapidly check existing research outputs. It then employs a combination of AI and machine learning to evaluate the current likelihood of another researcher working on the proposed topic now, or in the near future.

We’ve been testing an early version of the PROJECT software ahead of its launch and results so far are very impressive. For example, inputting the following project idea ‘The significance of pickles in late-Victorian stage melodrama’ instantly returns a 0.6% likelihood of anyone else researching the same or similar topic. This is clearly a very promising research area.

On the other hand, punching in potential research questions such as ‘seriously, what does Brexit mean?’ and ‘can someone fix the trains?’ confirms that plenty of people are already working on these issues and there’s really no point involving experts.

PROJECT isn’t just set to revolutionise PhD proposals. We envisage a range of other uses for this software. For example, funding bodies could easily use our algorithm to identify new priority areas for studentship allocations. The days of the AHRC systematically overlooking the importance of preserved cucumbers to the development of nineteenth-century culture could soon be a thing of the past.

In future we hope to see PROJECT take on an even bigger role in the PhD process: as a replacement for the traditional doctoral exam. Viva voce examinations are complex, potentially expensive and just a teeny bit terrifying. It would clearly be far better if students simply walked into a room at the end of their PhD and watched as someone pressed a button to determine whether they’d made an ‘original contribution to knowledge’. We’re working on a little fanfare noise and one of those sad little ‘wap wap wap’ sounds for the software to play, depending on the student’s result.

We’ll be ready to launch FindAPhD PROJECT very soon. In the meantime, you can check out some real PhD projects over at FindAPhD.com.