======= Date Modified 04 Nov 2011 17:21:14 =======
======= Date Modified 04 Nov 2011 17:19:27 =======
Hello all , i am a Ph.D student From a developing country , where i cant access research papers due to resources constraints. I am not sure weather the research topic i am pursuing for my Ph.D Thesis is unique and not done before as full text are not available to me .I checked with google search but still i am not satisfied, secondly is there any thing i can do to copywrite my topic so noone else can do or choose the same? What should i do to check this any one help plz?

Unfortunately, there is no easy way of checking. That is the nature of research; you have to go through all the relevant material and determine if your idea has been done and if so can you still add to that topic. Also, it is possible that your project has not been published as a PhD thesis yet, but that someone is currently working on it and will finish before you. Depending on your field, you would then have to rework your material so that it remained a considerable contribution.

I'm sorry that you have resource constraints, but I imagine it would be very difficult to do in depth research if you can't access relevant journals? Or do you mean you will have access provided you begin a PhD? At this point I would go with your project and if it turns out later that someone has done it you can amend your proposal. Good luck :)

+ 1 to what Lughna said both re the indeterminate nature of research topics and access to journals/research materials. Searching Google is not going to give you comprehensive results - google scholar is a better bet to start with but you need access to journals and journal databases - proquest may be helpful to ascertain PhD dissertations in your field/topic but there is (as perviously said) the chance that someone will submit 'tomorrow'. Keeping up to date with research in your field is the only way to address this so gaining access is vital.

good luck