PhD with no prior research experience, how? I am an IT post graduate (with no thesis but project) from IT industry and I have practical experience of about 10 years in the industry. I want to carry a PhD research in a subject related to IT field. Practically and theoretically, I know the subject very well, but I don’t have any prior real research experience or any publications. But I have studied some theoretical subjects on research methodologies, statistics etc. during my university learning. But I found that most the universities have “research experience” as prerequisite or requirements to start or to be eligible for PhD research.

So, what can I do to fulfill that? (Off-course other than doing another research just to be eligible). Any ideas or suggestions?

Is there any chance of getting accepted without prior research experience? Should I keep on trying(esp in US and Australia)?

I have seen some doing PhD after their undergrad. I have master degree and I am confident that I will be able to manage things with in those 3-4 years as it’s not that I don’t research at all. It’s just that I don’t have something to show now.

Any suggestions?
Yes, In the UK, you can get accepted to a Ph.D. based on Bs.c. or Msc diploma, with no publication records. 

I can answer this, because computer science is my field, and saw many people like you doing research here in the UK. 

Background Work 

Ok so you want to do a Ph.D. with a postgraduate degree which is on the practical side of things. That is totally fine; however you need to do some work before finding a supervisor. In essence there are three types of supervisors in the field of computer science: 

Know it All: There are number of impressive supervisors, that know both the theoretical and practical side of computer science. These supervisors publications on both theory and practice (e.g., code generation, language design). This is the best kind of supervisors to have because they can bridge between theory and practice; and can navigate you through both theory and practice.

Theory-Oriented: They use Latex to create their papers/journals/books. They have no idea what so ever about the practical stuff. God forbid you ask them about JVM internals. They can still be useful, because you are covered the practical stuff; and they can help you through theory. However, they have no appreciation about how hard it is to make something work in practice. Also, they might not the best people to link between theory and practice.

Practical-Oriented: There are much fewer number of supervisors, that for example transferred from electronic engineering into computer science. They know very practical stuff (e.g., embedded system programming, active on developing Erlang application for telecommunication purposes); however for you these are the worst choice. Because, you have the practical background (so don't supervision on practical stuff), but because you need to introduce theory into your research they can't do much in helping you. So you end up wasting number of years just because for example your supervisor don't know game theory.

So overall look for their publications and the track record. How much open-source software they produce. How much theory-oriented paper they publish. These are the things that you will curse yourself later on during Ph.D. if you didn't think it through.