In November 2014, and further amended in February 2015, FINRA announced a comprehensive revision of the equity research rule currently numbered as NASD Rule 2711 and proposed a debt research rule modeled on the equity research rule.  The equity research rule would be numbered FINRA Rule 2241 and the debt research rule would be numbered FINRA Rule 2242.  The amended rule proposals can be found here: SR-FINRA-2014-047 (equity) and SR-FINRA-2014-048 (debt).  The structures of the two rules are very similar but there are important differences.  To guide your analysis of the two rules, here is a link to a line-by-line comparison of the two rules.