http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/ - you might find this blog interesting on what is and isn't acceptable.

Pranee Liamputtong - Performing Qualitative Cross-Cultural Research - from what I remember this does discuss these areas and as you asked for a textbook, this is the best one I can think of.

Can you get a couple of examples of ones done by students - good, bad and indifferent - and get them to mark them and discuss their reasons? Or get them to design a matrix for keeping notes on the sources? Don't envy you at all...

Is it a permanent post? If so these are things I've been asked about:
On research - REF submission, plans for generating grant income and impact, next research project
Teaching - teaching areas, potentially specifics on modules if something is specified (show you have ideas about content but also teaching and assessment strategies), pastoral care (current obsession is the first year experience & transition from school), the university's 2012 agenda (see what they're promising new students), possibly learning technologies depending on the university, internationalisation & challenges
General - why here (talk about the fit - possible collaboration with existing staff etc), current issues in HE

If you do a general research talk rather than present a specific paper (i've been asked for both), don't just describe your PhD, try to show that you have a feasible future research plan.

Academics, even if they have 'permanent' posts, are constantly assessed on their performance against a series of research metrics (and these get changed mid-process to add to the uncertainty and stress). You are only as good as your current cv. It doesn't matter if you had a great record, if you hit a fallow research period at the wrong point in the REF cycle you've got a good chance of losing your job in the current climate. There's no time to waste on 'unproductive' research - if it doesn't pretty much guarantee high impact publications and funding forget it unless you have a desire to reacquaint yourself with the Job Centre. (There was an article in the Times Higher Educational Supplement last week about academics only finally getting to do the research they wanted after retirement).
On a more positive note after mining their PhD thesis for publications, many people are desperate to start a completely different project as they can't face continuing down the same track. Some people actually discover something that is commercially useful and abandon research for entrepreneurship. And quite a lot of people get their PhD and walk away very rapidly, having decided that there has to be better and saner ways of making a living than research!

Hazyjane's answer is excellent - just wanted to support it. If you are at all shaky on stats, data analysis etc get the necessary training at this stage. If not you can end up wasting an awful lot of time later, if errors in your analysis emerge and there's no easy fix so you have to repeat work. And although support from statisticians is great, make sure you understand the maths behind their advice, as it's you who will have to defend it in your viva.

When you say it's a structured PhD, does that mean there are taught elements? If so, is there any way you could complete some of those credits to get you back into the swing of successfully completing tasks? Or are there small tasks needing to be done that would be easy wins, that you could do to help you regain a sense that you're getting somewhere?

Have you tried putting the references into scholar google? It will bring up any copies that the authors have stored as open access. Increasingly I'm finding more and more authors do this. Alternatively if you go to a major city library, the interlibrary loan charges are likely to be less than buying each article from the publisher.

Traveller - there's a good range of perspectives here. Social sciences are sort of midway between humanities and sciences - it's less common to self-fund than in the humanities, but doesn't have the stigma necessarily that it seems to have in the sciences. Are you geographically mobile? If so, and you meet the eligibilty requirements, I'd suggest having a go at applying to as many ESRC doctoral training centres as you can find feasible supervision for the Spring deadlines.
One downside no-one's mentioned yet but as you say you might want to try for academic jobs, I think it's relevant, is the ability to do the extra stuff that makes you more competitive for posts while juggling the need to bring in money. You need to get teaching experience, publish and present at conferences. People often manage the thesis but not the extras. Also, it's quite rare to go straight into academic employment afterwards and if you're already in debt or struggling, it's even tougher to try and piece together a living doing hourly paid teaching to keep a foot in the door while publishing madly. These might be things worth considering.

Hi Hope,

The ESRC doesn't set that requirement - they require a 2:1 for basic eligibility if I remember correctly. But the competition is so high that in practice Doctoral TRaining Centres are looking for more than that. Certainly, the one I work for warned us last year that applicants without either a 1st or a Masters distinction had very little chance of being shortlisted, because the numbers of applicants with those grades was so high. The pathways that are less competitive tend to be tied to either quantitative methods or language-based area studies - there might be more of a chance of getting through with lower marks but a strong proposal with good supervisor fit.

Internal funding schemes - it depends. General scholarship schemes are likely to put a lot of weight on academic grades - again it's the level of competition. There is so little social science funding available for PhDs nowadays. Grants attached to particular research projects might be more interested in specific skills e.g. languages though.

I would suggest that you tell him no you cannot write a business case for him, and make an appointment to see whoever is in charge of graduate research students in your School or to speak by phone if that's easier. Explain the situation and see if you can swap to your second supervisor, who appears from your posts to be unproblematic. I think perhaps due to the communications problems you describe, you are possibly over-reacting to some things e.g. most students would be really keen to contribute to an article this early or to potentially get some funding, but writing a business case for a grant seems unreasonable by any standard. Similarly, if the research interests and methods are as poor a match as you suggest, the second supervisor may well be a better fit (bear in mind you are unlikely to ever get the perfect supervisor and staying reasonably local means you at least have the opportunity to attend research seminars and training, which your long distance option would largely preclude).

Have you any idea how problematic the vast majority of proposals are from even really good students? Frankly it's been a massive eyeopener for me, since I started getting asked to look at applications with a view to supervising them. If an applicant isn't applying for funding, there's often no opportunity to work with them to make the topic feasible - our application system makes it impossible and I know at some universities (oxford and cambridge for examples in my subject) applicants are forbidden to contact prospective supervisors. You have to say yes or no based on whether you think the supporting documentation suggests the person has the ability or reject everyone not applying for funding. It's hardly surprising the proposals aren't great when you think about the process of writing and rewriting that funding applicants go through for the research councils where you define your own project. I applied for ESRC funding and it took three months of intensive work on the proposal before it was deemed good enough to enter the competition, but this gave me a headstart over my self-funded fellow students, who had to start off with that process when they enrolled. Very few proposals remain the same or even that close to the original version. I suppose the true spirit of the consumer knows best, means a supervisor should let the student waste their tuition fees finding out what they'd proposed wasn't feasible, but it doesn't strike me as very ethical (particularly given universities have increasingly strict upper limits on how long someone can be registered for).

In the OP's case, that's why I asked whether the issue was access or ethics because these are good examples of things applicants very rarely have enough knowledge about to make sensible decisions in proposals, and it often comes as a terrible shock to practitioners embarking on PhDs, when they discover their employer won't give them access. Medical doctors are apparently a nightmare on this front according to our annual ethics training session the other week. It appears in this case to be a very strange set-up though - I just wanted to check that there wasn't some horrendous misunderstanding going on.

Could I ask something? Why does your supervisor think your research proposal is not viable? If he's mentioned ethical approval or patient access then I would start listening hard. I know of two PhD projects where I work that have collapsed recently because the NHS would not give permission for patient access for qualitative work. Both ended up have to do quantitative analysis on anonymised patient data instead. Anecdotally I've heard from colleagues that access is easier to get as part of a larger funded project with academics on board than it is as a lone student. Just possibly you're misinterpreting well-meaning attempts to help as exploitation.

I would also add a large caveat to the general notion that self-funders call the shots as consumers. You're paying for expert advice on your project. It seems potentially rather self-defeating to reject that advice to me at least.

Well if you have nothing published, how else are they going to be able to judge the quality of your current research? They need to assess candidates fairly and if they have publications from others, they need a similar length writing sample from you. Your conclusion is probably asked for as it summarises your thesis's contribution to knowledge. I think if you want a chance at the job, then you need to send it, whether you feel comfortable or not.

It is a bit unusual in answer to your first question but after a few frights with this myself (from people elsewhere) I've learnt that superficially similar projects are often very different in reality. You can't really do anything about it, but it might help to think that you're ahead and so the more likely to publish first etc. If the high-flying academic is like the high-fliers I've encountered, your supervisors might not even know about his plans - high-fliers don't tend to consult... I think it would be fine to send an email introducing yourself & your project, and asking to be added to the email list for the new group so that you could attend any seminars etc. That way you're not asking for anything major but get the info and can see how the land lies.