Hi community,

I am writing to look for advice.

I am five month into my PhD program, and am currently doing literature review. I have recently found a study that has already done that we intended to do. My goal was to develop a mobile phone based system for road assessment; however, I came across a study that has done exactly what I intended to do and they have achieved a significant job as several road agencies are starting to use their system.

I believe there is still some research need to be done even though other people have developed a good system. however, I don't see how to make my research novel, and I might be addressing issues that people have already addressed. Papers may get knocked back because of lack of novelty

What should I do?

Don't panic. Seriously. This happens all the time. It is somewhat lucky that you found it now and not during your viva or when you submit a paper, as you can work around it. By finding the paper you now know that the technology works and instead of developing it from scratch yourself, you can instead look to develop it further. You might find that they used a very narrow approach or that their method limitations or that you can improve on it in some way. Your novelty will then be doing it slightly differently to how they have done it.

I would talk with your supervisors about it and discuss what you can do. This happens all the time and there is always a way to make your work novel.