HDR Milestones
Understand the progress requirements you must meet throughout your Higher Degree by Research (HDR) candidature
Milestones are requirements you must meet at specific times throughout your Higher Degree by Research studies. Some have deadlines within your first few weeks of candidature, so you need to start completing them soon after beginning your candidature. Some are set by the University, and others by your faculty or school.
The milestones set by the University are listed in ‘Schedule 1: University Milestones and Activities’ on page 16 of the Progress, Planning and Review for Higher Degree by Research Students Policy (pdf, 460KB).
The milestones set by your faculty or school will vary depending on your degree, year of enrolment, and stage of candidature. Your lead supervisor will be able to confirm those that apply to you.
Once you have completed each milestone, follow the instructions in your RECS record or your Progress Plan (as applicable) to sign it off and provide any evidence required. This record of progress will then be assessed at each of your Progress Evaluation Meetings (PEMs).
Between eight and 11 months after your start date – you will attend your first Progress Evaluation Meeting (PEM). This is known as your Confirmation PEM, because it is how the University confirms you have met all the requirements of your initial probation period.
The milestones listed here are to be completed within your first year of candidature and form part of your probation requirements. They must be completed before your Confirmation PEM – even if they are not listed in RECS or have a later due date listed in RECS.
Within your first month of candidature, you must complete University-level HDR orientation and attend an initial meeting with your lead supervisor to discuss your research goals.
Within your first three months of candidature if you are studying full time, or within your first six months if you are studying part time. You must complete this self-assessed milestone which requires you to:
You must complete each of these online HDR training modules (as well as any others mandated by your faculty or school) within the timelines indicated below.
Module | Completion timeframe |
---|---|
Work Health and Safety (WHS) Induction | Within your first six weeks of candidature |
Responsible Research Practice | Within your first six weeks of candidature |
Consent matters | Within your first three months of candidature |
Research Data Management | Within your first three months of candidature |
Self-enrol in each module by logging in to Canvas and selecting ‘Courses’ from the left-hand menu, then ‘All courses’, then ‘Browse more courses’ and searching for the name of a module. When you find it, select ‘Join course’, and that module will appear on your dashboard.
When you successfully complete each module, download or screenshot the completion notification and upload it to your RECS record as evidence when you sign off on this milestone.
If your research involves humans or live animals – whether through experimentation, investigation, behavioural observation, surveys, interviews or focus groups – you will also be required to complete one or more of the following research integrity and ethics training modules.
For more information about the requirements of research involving humans or live animals, see the Research integrity and ethics intranet page or contact the human ethics team or the animal ethics team, as applicable.
Within your first three months of candidature (and then annually throughout your candidature), you must complete a Declaration of External Interests (DEI) form to disclose any external interests that might result in a potential, perceived or actual conflict of interests and document how you would manage any such conflict.
The link to this form will be posted to the RECS noticeboard when it becomes available each research period.
You will receive a confirmation email when your DEI form has been processed. You must download or screenshot this email and upload it to your RECS record as evidence when you sign off on this milestone.
For more information on declaring external interests and submitting your form, please refer to these FAQs (pdf, 193KB) and this User Manual (pdf, 11.2MB).
Within your first six months of candidature if you are studying full time, or within your first 12 months if you are studying part time, you must initiate a meeting with your lead supervisor to discuss your research idea, draft your research plan and your data management plan, and identify any requirements for ethics approval, intellectual property and/or confidentiality agreements, and/or training activities.
You must then add any actions arising as goals in RECS or to your Progress Plan (if you began your HDR degree before 1 January 2021).
You must submit a piece of written work (either a literature review or a research proposal, as agreed with your lead supervisor) through your faculty or school’s Canvas site to be passed through the University’s plagiarism-detection software and then meet with your lead supervisor to discuss the results. The aim is to review your current methods of integrating scholarly evidence into your writing and identify any development required, to prevent potentially serious breaches of academic integrity later in your candidature.
On your faculty or school’s HDR integrity page, as listed below, follow the prompts to complete the integrity check (note that some faculties/schools use the term ‘milestone check’ or similar).
Upon completion, you will receive a submission receipt and a report from the plagiarism-detection software. Forward these to your supervisor and arrange a meeting to discuss them.
Before your Confirmation PEM, you must draft a research data management plan (RDMP) outlining how you will manage your research data both during and after your project, including storing, accessing, handling, retaining, preserving and sharing it.
This enhances the research process and prevents issues such as data integrity loss or research participant privacy breaches. The University’s Research Data Management Policy (pdf, 450KB) requires an RDMP to support all research projects using University resources.
The University’s Researcher Dashboard (DashR) is the central online location where all researchers register and maintain their RDMPs. Even if you are working on a research project that already has an RDMP and a DashR record, you must still create your own RDMP and DashR record in collaboration with your supervisor.
In addition to your required milestones, you may create goals specific to your own project and add them to your RECS record or to your Progress Plan (as applicable), to help you plan your research. Your progress against these goals will not be formally assessed.
There are two ways to add goals to your RECS record: you can create and add a goal by selecting ‘My project’, then ‘Milestones and goals’, then ‘Add goal’ and following the prompts or you or your supervisor can add an outcome of a supervision meeting as a goal.