how to conduct research for a research paper

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Research: Where to Begin

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Research isn't something that only scientists and professors do. Any time you use sources to investigate claims or reach new conclusions, you are performing research. Research happens in virtually all fields, so it’s vitally important to know how to conduct research and navigate through source material regardless of your professional or academic role.

Choosing and Narrowing Your Research Topic

Before beginning the process of looking for sources, it’s important to choose a research topic that is specific enough to explore in-depth. If your focus is too broad, it will be difficult to find sources that back up what you’re trying to say.

If your instructor gives you the flexibility to choose your own research topic, you might begin by brainstorming  a list of topics that interest you ( click here to visit an OWL page that can help you get started brainstorming or prewriting ). Once you find something that grabs your attention, the next step is to narrow your topic to a manageable scope. Some ways to narrow your focus are by sub-topic, demographic, or time period.

For example, suppose that you want to research cancer treatments. Cancer treatment is a fairly broad topic, so you would be wise to at least consider narrowing your scope. For example, you could focus on a sub-topic of cancer treatment, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy. However, these are still broad topics, so you might also narrow your topic to a narrower sub-topic or even examine how these topics relate to a specific demographic or time period. In the end, you might decide to research how radiation therapy for women over fifty has changed in the past twenty years. In sum, having a specific idea of what you want to research helps you find a topic that feels more manageable.

Writing Your Research Question

Writing your research topic as a question helps you focus your topic in a clear and concise way. It ensure that your topic is arguable. While not all research papers have to offer an explicit argument, many do.

For the above example, you might phrase your research question like this: "How has radiation therapy changed in the past twenty years for women over fifty?" Of course, phrasing this topic as a question assumes that the research has, in fact, changed. Reading your sources (or, to begin with, at least summaries and abstracts of those sources) will help you formulate a research question that makes sense.

Knowing What Types of Sources You Need

Depending on the type of research you’re doing, you may need to use different types of sources. Research is usually divided into scholarly and popular, and primary and secondary. For more information on specific details about these types of sources, visit our "Where to Begin" page in our "Evaluating Sources" subsection.  This subsection contains additional pages that explore various kinds of sources (like, e.g., internet sources) in more detail.

Asking Productive Questions

Before you begin your research, you should ask yourself questions that help narrow your search parameters.

What kind of information are you looking for?

Different types of research will require different sources. It’s important to know what kinds of sources your research demands. Ask whether you need facts or opinions, news reports, research studies, statistics and data, personal reflections, archival research, etc. Restricting yourself to only the most relevant kinds of sources will make the research process seem less daunting.

Where do you need to look for your research?

Your research topic will also dictate where you find your sources. This extends beyond simply whether you use the internet or a print source. For example, if you are searching for information on a current event, a well-regarded newspaper like the  New York Times  or  Wall Street Journal  could  be a useful source. If you are searching for statistics on some aspect of the U.S. population, then you might want to start with government documents, such as census reports. While much high-level academic research relies mainly on the sorts of academic journal articles and scholarly books that can be found in university libraries, depending the nature of your research project, you may need to look elsewhere.

How much information do you need?

Different research projects require different numbers of sources. For example, if you need to address both sides of a controversial issue, you may need to find more sources than if you were pursuing a non-controversial topic. Be sure to speak with your instructor if you are unclear on how many sources you will be expected to use.

How timely does your research need to be?

Depending on your research topic, the timeliness of your source may or may not matter. For example, if you are looking into recent changes in a specific scientific field, you would want the most up-to-date research. However, if you were researching the War of 1812, you might benefit from finding primary sources written during that time period.

• How to write a research paper

Last updated

11 January 2024

Reviewed by

With proper planning, knowledge, and framework, completing a research paper can be a fulfilling and exciting experience. 

Though it might initially sound slightly intimidating, this guide will help you embrace the challenge. 

By documenting your findings, you can inspire others and make a difference in your field. Here's how you can make your research paper unique and comprehensive.

• What is a research paper?

Research papers allow you to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of a particular topic. These papers are usually lengthier and more detailed than typical essays, requiring deeper insight into the chosen topic.

To write a research paper, you must first choose a topic that interests you and is relevant to the field of study. Once you’ve selected your topic, gathering as many relevant resources as possible, including books, scholarly articles, credible websites, and other academic materials, is essential. You must then read and analyze these sources, summarizing their key points and identifying gaps in the current research.

You can formulate your ideas and opinions once you thoroughly understand the existing research. To get there might involve conducting original research, gathering data, or analyzing existing data sets. It could also involve presenting an original argument or interpretation of the existing research.

Writing a successful research paper involves presenting your findings clearly and engagingly, which might involve using charts, graphs, or other visual aids to present your data and using concise language to explain your findings. You must also ensure your paper adheres to relevant academic formatting guidelines, including proper citations and references.

Overall, writing a research paper requires a significant amount of time, effort, and attention to detail. However, it is also an enriching experience that allows you to delve deeply into a subject that interests you and contribute to the existing body of knowledge in your chosen field.

• How long should a research paper be?

Research papers are deep dives into a topic. Therefore, they tend to be longer pieces of work than essays or opinion pieces. 

However, a suitable length depends on the complexity of the topic and your level of expertise. For instance, are you a first-year college student or an experienced professional? 

Also, remember that the best research papers provide valuable information for the benefit of others. Therefore, the quality of information matters most, not necessarily the length. Being concise is valuable.

Following these best practice steps will help keep your process simple and productive:

1. Gaining a deep understanding of any expectations

Before diving into your intended topic or beginning the research phase, take some time to orient yourself. Suppose there’s a specific topic assigned to you. In that case, it’s essential to deeply understand the question and organize your planning and approach in response. Pay attention to the key requirements and ensure you align your writing accordingly. 

This preparation step entails

Deeply understanding the task or assignment

Being clear about the expected format and length

Familiarizing yourself with the citation and referencing requirements 

Understanding any defined limits for your research contribution

Where applicable, speaking to your professor or research supervisor for further clarification

2. Choose your research topic

Select a research topic that aligns with both your interests and available resources. Ideally, focus on a field where you possess significant experience and analytical skills. In crafting your research paper, it's crucial to go beyond summarizing existing data and contribute fresh insights to the chosen area.

Consider narrowing your focus to a specific aspect of the topic. For example, if exploring the link between technology and mental health, delve into how social media use during the pandemic impacts the well-being of college students. Conducting interviews and surveys with students could provide firsthand data and unique perspectives, adding substantial value to the existing knowledge.

When finalizing your topic, adhere to legal and ethical norms in the relevant area (this ensures the integrity of your research, protects participants' rights, upholds intellectual property standards, and ensures transparency and accountability). Following these principles not only maintains the credibility of your work but also builds trust within your academic or professional community.

For instance, in writing about medical research, consider legal and ethical norms , including patient confidentiality laws and informed consent requirements. Similarly, if analyzing user data on social media platforms, be mindful of data privacy regulations, ensuring compliance with laws governing personal information collection and use. Aligning with legal and ethical standards not only avoids potential issues but also underscores the responsible conduct of your research.

3. Gather preliminary research

Once you’ve landed on your topic, it’s time to explore it further. You’ll want to discover more about available resources and existing research relevant to your assignment at this stage. 

This exploratory phase is vital as you may discover issues with your original idea or realize you have insufficient resources to explore the topic effectively. This key bit of groundwork allows you to redirect your research topic in a different, more feasible, or more relevant direction if necessary. 

Spending ample time at this stage ensures you gather everything you need, learn as much as you can about the topic, and discover gaps where the topic has yet to be sufficiently covered, offering an opportunity to research it further. 

4. Define your research question

To produce a well-structured and focused paper, it is imperative to formulate a clear and precise research question that will guide your work. Your research question must be informed by the existing literature and tailored to the scope and objectives of your project. By refining your focus, you can produce a thoughtful and engaging paper that effectively communicates your ideas to your readers.

5. Write a thesis statement

A thesis statement is a one-to-two-sentence summary of your research paper's main argument or direction. It serves as an overall guide to summarize the overall intent of the research paper for you and anyone wanting to know more about the research.

A strong thesis statement is:

Concise and clear: Explain your case in simple sentences (avoid covering multiple ideas). It might help to think of this section as an elevator pitch.

Specific: Ensure that there is no ambiguity in your statement and that your summary covers the points argued in the paper.

Debatable: A thesis statement puts forward a specific argument––it is not merely a statement but a debatable point that can be analyzed and discussed.

Here are three thesis statement examples from different disciplines:

Psychology thesis example: "We're studying adults aged 25-40 to see if taking short breaks for mindfulness can help with stress. Our goal is to find practical ways to manage anxiety better."

Environmental science thesis example: "This research paper looks into how having more city parks might make the air cleaner and keep people healthier. I want to find out if more green spaces means breathing fewer carcinogens in big cities."

UX research thesis example: "This study focuses on improving mobile banking for older adults using ethnographic research, eye-tracking analysis, and interactive prototyping. We investigate the usefulness of eye-tracking analysis with older individuals, aiming to spark debate and offer fresh perspectives on UX design and digital inclusivity for the aging population."

6. Conduct in-depth research

A research paper doesn’t just include research that you’ve uncovered from other papers and studies but your fresh insights, too. You will seek to become an expert on your topic––understanding the nuances in the current leading theories. You will analyze existing research and add your thinking and discoveries.  It's crucial to conduct well-designed research that is rigorous, robust, and based on reliable sources. Suppose a research paper lacks evidence or is biased. In that case, it won't benefit the academic community or the general public. Therefore, examining the topic thoroughly and furthering its understanding through high-quality research is essential. That usually means conducting new research. Depending on the area under investigation, you may conduct surveys, interviews, diary studies , or observational research to uncover new insights or bolster current claims.

7. Determine supporting evidence

Not every piece of research you’ve discovered will be relevant to your research paper. It’s important to categorize the most meaningful evidence to include alongside your discoveries. It's important to include evidence that doesn't support your claims to avoid exclusion bias and ensure a fair research paper.

8. Write a research paper outline

Before diving in and writing the whole paper, start with an outline. It will help you to see if more research is needed, and it will provide a framework by which to write a more compelling paper. Your supervisor may even request an outline to approve before beginning to write the first draft of the full paper. An outline will include your topic, thesis statement, key headings, short summaries of the research, and your arguments.

9. Write your first draft

Once you feel confident about your outline and sources, it’s time to write your first draft. While penning a long piece of content can be intimidating, if you’ve laid the groundwork, you will have a structure to help you move steadily through each section. To keep up motivation and inspiration, it’s often best to keep the pace quick. Stopping for long periods can interrupt your flow and make jumping back in harder than writing when things are fresh in your mind.

10. Cite your sources correctly

It's always a good practice to give credit where it's due, and the same goes for citing any works that have influenced your paper. Building your arguments on credible references adds value and authenticity to your research. In the formatting guidelines section, you’ll find an overview of different citation styles (MLA, CMOS, or APA), which will help you meet any publishing or academic requirements and strengthen your paper's credibility. It is essential to follow the guidelines provided by your school or the publication you are submitting to ensure the accuracy and relevance of your citations.

11. Ensure your work is original

It is crucial to ensure the originality of your paper, as plagiarism can lead to serious consequences. To avoid plagiarism, you should use proper paraphrasing and quoting techniques. Paraphrasing is rewriting a text in your own words while maintaining the original meaning. Quoting involves directly citing the source. Giving credit to the original author or source is essential whenever you borrow their ideas or words. You can also use plagiarism detection tools such as Scribbr or Grammarly to check the originality of your paper. These tools compare your draft writing to a vast database of online sources. If you find any accidental plagiarism, you should correct it immediately by rephrasing or citing the source.

12. Revise, edit, and proofread

One of the essential qualities of excellent writers is their ability to understand the importance of editing and proofreading. Even though it's tempting to call it a day once you've finished your writing, editing your work can significantly improve its quality. It's natural to overlook the weaker areas when you've just finished writing a paper. Therefore, it's best to take a break of a day or two, or even up to a week, to refresh your mind. This way, you can return to your work with a new perspective. After some breathing room, you can spot any inconsistencies, spelling and grammar errors, typos, or missing citations and correct them. 

• The best research paper format 

The format of your research paper should align with the requirements set forth by your college, school, or target publication. 

There is no one “best” format, per se. Depending on the stated requirements, you may need to include the following elements:

Title page: The title page of a research paper typically includes the title, author's name, and institutional affiliation and may include additional information such as a course name or instructor's name. 

Table of contents: Include a table of contents to make it easy for readers to find specific sections of your paper.

Abstract: The abstract is a summary of the purpose of the paper.

Methods : In this section, describe the research methods used. This may include collecting data , conducting interviews, or doing field research .

Results: Summarize the conclusions you drew from your research in this section.

Discussion: In this section, discuss the implications of your research . Be sure to mention any significant limitations to your approach and suggest areas for further research.

Tables, charts, and illustrations: Use tables, charts, and illustrations to help convey your research findings and make them easier to understand.

Works cited or reference page: Include a works cited or reference page to give credit to the sources that you used to conduct your research.

Bibliography: Provide a list of all the sources you consulted while conducting your research.

Dedication and acknowledgments : Optionally, you may include a dedication and acknowledgments section to thank individuals who helped you with your research.

• General style and formatting guidelines

Formatting your research paper means you can submit it to your college, journal, or other publications in compliance with their criteria.

Research papers tend to follow the American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), or Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) guidelines.

Here’s how each style guide is typically used:

Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS):

CMOS is a versatile style guide used for various types of writing. It's known for its flexibility and use in the humanities. CMOS provides guidelines for citations, formatting, and overall writing style. It allows for both footnotes and in-text citations, giving writers options based on their preferences or publication requirements.

American Psychological Association (APA):

APA is common in the social sciences. It’s hailed for its clarity and emphasis on precision. It has specific rules for citing sources, creating references, and formatting papers. APA style uses in-text citations with an accompanying reference list. It's designed to convey information efficiently and is widely used in academic and scientific writing.

Modern Language Association (MLA):

MLA is widely used in the humanities, especially literature and language studies. It emphasizes the author-page format for in-text citations and provides guidelines for creating a "Works Cited" page. MLA is known for its focus on the author's name and the literary works cited. It’s frequently used in disciplines that prioritize literary analysis and critical thinking.

To confirm you're using the latest style guide, check the official website or publisher's site for updates, consult academic resources, and verify the guide's publication date. Online platforms and educational resources may also provide summaries and alerts about any revisions or additions to the style guide.

Citing sources

When working on your research paper, it's important to cite the sources you used properly. Your citation style will guide you through this process. Generally, there are three parts to citing sources in your research paper: 

First, provide a brief citation in the body of your essay. This is also known as a parenthetical or in-text citation. 

Second, include a full citation in the Reference list at the end of your paper. Different types of citations include in-text citations, footnotes, and reference lists. 

In-text citations include the author's surname and the date of the citation. 

Footnotes appear at the bottom of each page of your research paper. They may also be summarized within a reference list at the end of the paper. 

A reference list includes all of the research used within the paper at the end of the document. It should include the author, date, paper title, and publisher listed in the order that aligns with your citation style.

10 research paper writing tips:

Following some best practices is essential to writing a research paper that contributes to your field of study and creates a positive impact.

These tactics will help you structure your argument effectively and ensure your work benefits others:

Clear and precise language:  Ensure your language is unambiguous. Use academic language appropriately, but keep it simple. Also, provide clear takeaways for your audience.

Effective idea separation:  Organize the vast amount of information and sources in your paper with paragraphs and titles. Create easily digestible sections for your readers to navigate through.

Compelling intro:  Craft an engaging introduction that captures your reader's interest. Hook your audience and motivate them to continue reading.

Thorough revision and editing:  Take the time to review and edit your paper comprehensively. Use tools like Grammarly to detect and correct small, overlooked errors.

Thesis precision:  Develop a clear and concise thesis statement that guides your paper. Ensure that your thesis aligns with your research's overall purpose and contribution.

Logical flow of ideas:  Maintain a logical progression throughout the paper. Use transitions effectively to connect different sections and maintain coherence.

Critical evaluation of sources:  Evaluate and critically assess the relevance and reliability of your sources. Ensure that your research is based on credible and up-to-date information.

Thematic consistency:  Maintain a consistent theme throughout the paper. Ensure that all sections contribute cohesively to the overall argument.

Relevant supporting evidence:  Provide concise and relevant evidence to support your arguments. Avoid unnecessary details that may distract from the main points.

Embrace counterarguments:  Acknowledge and address opposing views to strengthen your position. Show that you have considered alternative arguments in your field.

7 research tips 

If you want your paper to not only be well-written but also contribute to the progress of human knowledge, consider these tips to take your paper to the next level:

Selecting the appropriate topic: The topic you select should align with your area of expertise, comply with the requirements of your project, and have sufficient resources for a comprehensive investigation.

Use academic databases: Academic databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and JSTOR offer a wealth of research papers that can help you discover everything you need to know about your chosen topic.

Critically evaluate sources: It is important not to accept research findings at face value. Instead, it is crucial to critically analyze the information to avoid jumping to conclusions or overlooking important details. A well-written research paper requires a critical analysis with thorough reasoning to support claims.

Diversify your sources: Expand your research horizons by exploring a variety of sources beyond the standard databases. Utilize books, conference proceedings, and interviews to gather diverse perspectives and enrich your understanding of the topic.

Take detailed notes: Detailed note-taking is crucial during research and can help you form the outline and body of your paper.

Stay up on trends: Keep abreast of the latest developments in your field by regularly checking for recent publications. Subscribe to newsletters, follow relevant journals, and attend conferences to stay informed about emerging trends and advancements. 

Engage in peer review: Seek feedback from peers or mentors to ensure the rigor and validity of your research . Peer review helps identify potential weaknesses in your methodology and strengthens the overall credibility of your findings.

• The real-world impact of research papers

Writing a research paper is more than an academic or business exercise. The experience provides an opportunity to explore a subject in-depth, broaden one's understanding, and arrive at meaningful conclusions. With careful planning, dedication, and hard work, writing a research paper can be a fulfilling and enriching experience contributing to advancing knowledge.

How do I publish my research paper? 

Many academics wish to publish their research papers. While challenging, your paper might get traction if it covers new and well-written information. To publish your research paper, find a target publication, thoroughly read their guidelines, format your paper accordingly, and send it to them per their instructions. You may need to include a cover letter, too. After submission, your paper may be peer-reviewed by experts to assess its legitimacy, quality, originality, and methodology. Following review, you will be informed by the publication whether they have accepted or rejected your paper. 

What is a good opening sentence for a research paper? 

Beginning your research paper with a compelling introduction can ensure readers are interested in going further. A relevant quote, a compelling statistic, or a bold argument can start the paper and hook your reader. Remember, though, that the most important aspect of a research paper is the quality of the information––not necessarily your ability to storytell, so ensure anything you write aligns with your goals.

Research paper vs. a research proposal—what’s the difference?

While some may confuse research papers and proposals, they are different documents. 

A research proposal comes before a research paper. It is a detailed document that outlines an intended area of exploration. It includes the research topic, methodology, timeline, sources, and potential conclusions. Research proposals are often required when seeking approval to conduct research. 

A research paper is a summary of research findings. A research paper follows a structured format to present those findings and construct an argument or conclusion.

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How to Properly and Effectively Conduct Research in Five Steps

Researching is a valuable skill that can help you in school, work, and beyond. This blog post breaks down the research process into five easy-to-follow steps to teach you how to conduct research properly and effectively.

Conducting Research: Table of Contents

What is Research?

Steps to Conducting Research

In an age where misinformation is rampant, knowing how to correctly conduct research is a skill that will set you apart from others. This blog post goes over what research is and breaks down the process into five straightforward steps.

What Is Research?

The word research is derived from the Middle French word “recerche,” which means “to seek.” That term came from the Old French word “recerchier,” meaning “search.” But what exactly is being sought during research? Knowledge and information.

Research is the methodical process of collecting and analyzing data to expand your knowledge, so you can have enough information to answer a question or describe, explain, or predict an issue or observation.

Research is important because it helps you see the world as it really is (facts) and not as you or others think it is (opinions).

The meaning of research may sound quite heavy and significant, but that’s because it is. Proper research guides you to weed out wrong information. Today, having that skill is vital. Below, we’ll teach you how to do research in five easy-to-follow steps.

It’s essential to note that there are different types of research:

• Exploratory research identifies a problem or question.
• Constructive research examines hypotheses and offers solutions.
• Empirical research tests the feasibility of a solution using data.

That being said, the research process may differ based on the purpose of the project. Take the measures below as a general guideline, and be prepared to make changes or take additional steps.

Also, keep in mind that conducting proper research is not easy. You should start with a mindset of being ready to use a lot of time and effort to obtain the information you need.

1. Prepare for Research

Preparing for research is an extensive step in itself. You must:

• Choose a topic or carefully analyze the assignment given to you.
• Craft a research question and hypothesis.
• Plan out your research.
• Create a research log.
• Transform your hypothesis into a working thesis.

2. Understand and Evaluate Sources

Once you have meticulously prepared for research, you should have a thorough understanding of the different types of sources. Doing this helps you learn which types would best fit your research project.

• Primary sources provide direct knowledge and evidence based on your research question.
• Secondary sources provide descriptions or interpretations of primary sources.
• Tertiary sources provide summaries of the primary or secondary sources without providing additional insights.

The data and information you’re seeking can be found in various mediums. The following list shows the types most commonly used in academic research and writing:

• Academic journals
• Books and textbooks
• Government and legal documents

The information you need doesn’t always have to come in the form of printed materials. It can also be found in:

• Multimedia (like radio and television podcasts, or recorded public meetings)
• Social media

Evaluate Your Sources

You must evaluate your sources to ensure that they are credible and authoritative. The information you find on websites, blogs, and social media is not as reliable as that found in academic journals, for example. Always verify the information you find, and then verify again!

To evaluate sources, you should:

• Find out as much as you can about the source
• Determine the intended audience
• Ask yourself if it is fact, opinion, or propaganda
• Analyze the evidence used
• Check how timely the source is
• Cross-check the information

3. Use the Library, Internet, and Conduct Field Research

So, where can you find all these sources? The library is a good place to start because the library staff may be able to guide you in the right direction as to where you should begin your research. If you’re a student, your school library can provide access to:

• Reference works
• Encyclopedias
• Almanacs and atlases
• Catalogs and databases
• And countless books

The internet does provide easy and fast access to all sorts of data, including incorrect information. That’s why it’s important to verify everything you find there. However, the internet is also home to reliable and credible information.

You can find trustworthy sources online, including scholarly works on Google Scholar , for example. Government sites, like the Library of Congress, provide online collections of articles. There are also many websites for reputable publications, such as the New York Times . Make sure to include the latest information on the specific topic.

Lastly, you can also conduct research by collecting data yourself. You can do this in the form of interviews, observations, opinion surveys, and more.

Don’t Forget

Update your working bibliography as you conduct your research, and keep track of everything in your research log!

4. Think Critically and Takes Notes

When you’re researching, it’s important to read everything through a critical lens—don’t just accept what you see at face value. Always ask yourself questions like:

What’s the main idea?

What are the supporting ideas?

Who is the intended audience?

What’s the purpose?

Is there anything else I need to know that was left out?

Take as many notes as you can and look up anything confusing or unclear.

5. Decide on How To Integrate Sources Into Your Research Paper

Now that you have all the information you need, it’s time to figure out how you are going to integrate sources into your research paper.

Are you going to quote your sources directly? Doing so can help you establish credibility, but be sure to limit this, as your research paper should be mainly your ideas and findings (based on theoretical framework). You can also paraphrase or summarize your sources, but make sure to precede them with the author of the source.

If you’re using visuals in your research project, make sure to include them seamlessly. Ensure that there’s a purpose for the visual content (it can demonstrate something better than words alone can). Add the visual immediately after an explanation of it, and take some time to clarify why it’s relevant to the research project.

The most important part of this step is that you do not plagiarize! Always cite your sources. The only information that need not be cited is:

• Common knowledge
• Your findings from field research

Research Takes Time

The truth is that if you want to conduct proper research, you must be willing to dedicate a significant amount of time to it. And properly conducted research is essential to a well-written and credible research paper.

In other words, there are no cutting corners when it comes to research. However, as an advanced, multilingual writing assistant, LanguageTool can take care of the grammar, spelling, and punctuation aspects of your research project. It can help you in paraphrasing sentences to align with the formality required for an academic paper while also ensuring simplicity, conciseness, and fluency when necessary.

LanguageTool lets you focus on the most important aspects of writing a research paper—research and writing—while it focuses on correcting all types of errors. Its advanced technology can also help you avoid plagiarism through paraphrasing. In this case, it’s imperative that if you use this feature, you still include the source in the references or works cited page.

LanguageTool is free to use! Give it a try.

Lunsford, Andrea A. The Everyday Writer with Exercises , 2010.

Types of Sources - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University. “Types of Sources - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University,” n.d. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/research_overview/sources.html.

General Guidelines - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University. “General Guidelines - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University,” n.d. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/conducting_research/evaluating_sources_of_information/general_guidelines.html.

Ryan, Eoghan. “Types of Sources Explained | Examples & Tips.” Scribbr, May 19, 2022. https://www.scribbr.com/working-with-sources/types-of-sources/.

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How To Write A Research Paper

Step-By-Step Tutorial With Examples + FREE Template

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Expert Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | March 2024

For many students, crafting a strong research paper from scratch can feel like a daunting task – and rightly so! In this post, we’ll unpack what a research paper is, what it needs to do , and how to write one – in three easy steps. 🙂 

Overview: Writing A Research Paper

What (exactly) is a research paper.

• How to write a research paper
• Stage 1 : Topic & literature search
• Stage 2 : Structure & outline
• Stage 3 : Iterative writing
• Key takeaways

Let’s start by asking the most important question, “ What is a research paper? ”.

Simply put, a research paper is a scholarly written work where the writer (that’s you!) answers a specific question (this is called a research question ) through evidence-based arguments . Evidence-based is the keyword here. In other words, a research paper is different from an essay or other writing assignments that draw from the writer’s personal opinions or experiences. With a research paper, it’s all about building your arguments based on evidence (we’ll talk more about that evidence a little later).

Now, it’s worth noting that there are many different types of research papers , including analytical papers (the type I just described), argumentative papers, and interpretative papers. Here, we’ll focus on analytical papers , as these are some of the most common – but if you’re keen to learn about other types of research papers, be sure to check out the rest of the blog .

With that basic foundation laid, let’s get down to business and look at how to write a research paper .

Overview: The 3-Stage Process

While there are, of course, many potential approaches you can take to write a research paper, there are typically three stages to the writing process. So, in this tutorial, we’ll present a straightforward three-step process that we use when working with students at Grad Coach.

These three steps are:

• Finding a research topic and reviewing the existing literature
• Developing a provisional structure and outline for your paper, and
• Writing up your initial draft and then refining it iteratively

Let’s dig into each of these.

Need a helping hand?

Step 1: Find a topic and review the literature

As we mentioned earlier, in a research paper, you, as the researcher, will try to answer a question . More specifically, that’s called a research question , and it sets the direction of your entire paper. What’s important to understand though is that you’ll need to answer that research question with the help of high-quality sources – for example, journal articles, government reports, case studies, and so on. We’ll circle back to this in a minute.

The first stage of the research process is deciding on what your research question will be and then reviewing the existing literature (in other words, past studies and papers) to see what they say about that specific research question. In some cases, your professor may provide you with a predetermined research question (or set of questions). However, in many cases, you’ll need to find your own research question within a certain topic area.

Finding a strong research question hinges on identifying a meaningful research gap – in other words, an area that’s lacking in existing research. There’s a lot to unpack here, so if you wanna learn more, check out the plain-language explainer video below.

Once you’ve figured out which question (or questions) you’ll attempt to answer in your research paper, you’ll need to do a deep dive into the existing literature – this is called a “ literature search ”. Again, there are many ways to go about this, but your most likely starting point will be Google Scholar .

If you’re new to Google Scholar, think of it as Google for the academic world. You can start by simply entering a few different keywords that are relevant to your research question and it will then present a host of articles for you to review. What you want to pay close attention to here is the number of citations for each paper – the more citations a paper has, the more credible it is (generally speaking – there are some exceptions, of course).

Ideally, what you’re looking for are well-cited papers that are highly relevant to your topic. That said, keep in mind that citations are a cumulative metric , so older papers will often have more citations than newer papers – just because they’ve been around for longer. So, don’t fixate on this metric in isolation – relevance and recency are also very important.

Beyond Google Scholar, you’ll also definitely want to check out academic databases and aggregators such as Science Direct, PubMed, JStor and so on. These will often overlap with the results that you find in Google Scholar, but they can also reveal some hidden gems – so, be sure to check them out.

Once you’ve worked your way through all the literature, you’ll want to catalogue all this information in some sort of spreadsheet so that you can easily recall who said what, when and within what context. If you’d like, we’ve got a free literature spreadsheet that helps you do exactly that.

Step 2: Develop a structure and outline

With your research question pinned down and your literature digested and catalogued, it’s time to move on to planning your actual research paper .

It might sound obvious, but it’s really important to have some sort of rough outline in place before you start writing your paper. So often, we see students eagerly rushing into the writing phase, only to land up with a disjointed research paper that rambles on in multiple

Now, the secret here is to not get caught up in the fine details . Realistically, all you need at this stage is a bullet-point list that describes (in broad strokes) what you’ll discuss and in what order. It’s also useful to remember that you’re not glued to this outline – in all likelihood, you’ll chop and change some sections once you start writing, and that’s perfectly okay. What’s important is that you have some sort of roadmap in place from the start.

At this stage you might be wondering, “ But how should I structure my research paper? ”. Well, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here, but in general, a research paper will consist of a few relatively standardised components:

• Introduction
• Literature review
• Methodology

Let’s take a look at each of these.

First up is the introduction section . As the name suggests, the purpose of the introduction is to set the scene for your research paper. There are usually (at least) four ingredients that go into this section – these are the background to the topic, the research problem and resultant research question , and the justification or rationale. If you’re interested, the video below unpacks the introduction section in more detail. 

The next section of your research paper will typically be your literature review . Remember all that literature you worked through earlier? Well, this is where you’ll present your interpretation of all that content . You’ll do this by writing about recent trends, developments, and arguments within the literature – but more specifically, those that are relevant to your research question . The literature review can oftentimes seem a little daunting, even to seasoned researchers, so be sure to check out our extensive collection of literature review content here .

With the introduction and lit review out of the way, the next section of your paper is the research methodology . In a nutshell, the methodology section should describe to your reader what you did (beyond just reviewing the existing literature) to answer your research question. For example, what data did you collect, how did you collect that data, how did you analyse that data and so on? For each choice, you’ll also need to justify why you chose to do it that way, and what the strengths and weaknesses of your approach were.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that for some research papers, this aspect of the project may be a lot simpler . For example, you may only need to draw on secondary sources (in other words, existing data sets). In some cases, you may just be asked to draw your conclusions from the literature search itself (in other words, there may be no data analysis at all). But, if you are required to collect and analyse data, you’ll need to pay a lot of attention to the methodology section. The video below provides an example of what the methodology section might look like.

By this stage of your paper, you will have explained what your research question is, what the existing literature has to say about that question, and how you analysed additional data to try to answer your question. So, the natural next step is to present your analysis of that data . This section is usually called the “results” or “analysis” section and this is where you’ll showcase your findings.

Depending on your school’s requirements, you may need to present and interpret the data in one section – or you might split the presentation and the interpretation into two sections. In the latter case, your “results” section will just describe the data, and the “discussion” is where you’ll interpret that data and explicitly link your analysis back to your research question. If you’re not sure which approach to take, check in with your professor or take a look at past papers to see what the norms are for your programme.

Alright – once you’ve presented and discussed your results, it’s time to wrap it up . This usually takes the form of the “ conclusion ” section. In the conclusion, you’ll need to highlight the key takeaways from your study and close the loop by explicitly answering your research question. Again, the exact requirements here will vary depending on your programme (and you may not even need a conclusion section at all) – so be sure to check with your professor if you’re unsure.

Step 3: Write and refine

Finally, it’s time to get writing. All too often though, students hit a brick wall right about here… So, how do you avoid this happening to you?

Well, there’s a lot to be said when it comes to writing a research paper (or any sort of academic piece), but we’ll share three practical tips to help you get started.

First and foremost , it’s essential to approach your writing as an iterative process. In other words, you need to start with a really messy first draft and then polish it over multiple rounds of editing. Don’t waste your time trying to write a perfect research paper in one go. Instead, take the pressure off yourself by adopting an iterative approach.

Secondly , it’s important to always lean towards critical writing , rather than descriptive writing. What does this mean? Well, at the simplest level, descriptive writing focuses on the “ what ”, while critical writing digs into the “ so what ” – in other words, the implications . If you’re not familiar with these two types of writing, don’t worry! You can find a plain-language explanation here.

Last but not least, you’ll need to get your referencing right. Specifically, you’ll need to provide credible, correctly formatted citations for the statements you make. We see students making referencing mistakes all the time and it costs them dearly. The good news is that you can easily avoid this by using a simple reference manager . If you don’t have one, check out our video about Mendeley, an easy (and free) reference management tool that you can start using today.

Recap: Key Takeaways

We’ve covered a lot of ground here. To recap, the three steps to writing a high-quality research paper are:

• To choose a research question and review the literature
• To plan your paper structure and draft an outline
• To take an iterative approach to writing, focusing on critical writing and strong referencing

Remember, this is just a b ig-picture overview of the research paper development process and there’s a lot more nuance to unpack. So, be sure to grab a copy of our free research paper template to learn more about how to write a research paper.

You Might Also Like:

Can you help me with a full paper template for this Abstract:

Background: Energy and sports drinks have gained popularity among diverse demographic groups, including adolescents, athletes, workers, and college students. While often used interchangeably, these beverages serve distinct purposes, with energy drinks aiming to boost energy and cognitive performance, and sports drinks designed to prevent dehydration and replenish electrolytes and carbohydrates lost during physical exertion.

Objective: To assess the nutritional quality of energy and sports drinks in Egypt.

Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study assessed the nutrient contents, including energy, sugar, electrolytes, vitamins, and caffeine, of sports and energy drinks available in major supermarkets in Cairo, Alexandria, and Giza, Egypt. Data collection involved photographing all relevant product labels and recording nutritional information. Descriptive statistics and appropriate statistical tests were employed to analyze and compare the nutritional values of energy and sports drinks.

Results: The study analyzed 38 sports drinks and 42 energy drinks. Sports drinks were significantly more expensive than energy drinks, with higher net content and elevated magnesium, potassium, and vitamin C. Energy drinks contained higher concentrations of caffeine, sugars, and vitamins B2, B3, and B6.

Conclusion: Significant nutritional differences exist between sports and energy drinks, reflecting their intended uses. However, these beverages’ high sugar content and calorie loads raise health concerns. Proper labeling, public awareness, and responsible marketing are essential to guide safe consumption practices in Egypt.

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How to Write and Publish a Research Paper for a Peer-Reviewed Journal

• Open access
• Published: 30 April 2020
• Volume 36 , pages 909–913, ( 2021 )

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• Clara Busse   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0178-1000 1 &
• Ella August   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5151-1036 1 , 2  

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Communicating research findings is an essential step in the research process. Often, peer-reviewed journals are the forum for such communication, yet many researchers are never taught how to write a publishable scientific paper. In this article, we explain the basic structure of a scientific paper and describe the information that should be included in each section. We also identify common pitfalls for each section and recommend strategies to avoid them. Further, we give advice about target journal selection and authorship. In the online resource 1 , we provide an example of a high-quality scientific paper, with annotations identifying the elements we describe in this article.

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How to Choose the Right Journal

The Point Is…to Publish?

Writing and publishing a scientific paper

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Writing a scientific paper is an important component of the research process, yet researchers often receive little formal training in scientific writing. This is especially true in low-resource settings. In this article, we explain why choosing a target journal is important, give advice about authorship, provide a basic structure for writing each section of a scientific paper, and describe common pitfalls and recommendations for each section. In the online resource 1 , we also include an annotated journal article that identifies the key elements and writing approaches that we detail here. Before you begin your research, make sure you have ethical clearance from all relevant ethical review boards.

Select a Target Journal Early in the Writing Process

We recommend that you select a “target journal” early in the writing process; a “target journal” is the journal to which you plan to submit your paper. Each journal has a set of core readers and you should tailor your writing to this readership. For example, if you plan to submit a manuscript about vaping during pregnancy to a pregnancy-focused journal, you will need to explain what vaping is because readers of this journal may not have a background in this topic. However, if you were to submit that same article to a tobacco journal, you would not need to provide as much background information about vaping.

Information about a journal’s core readership can be found on its website, usually in a section called “About this journal” or something similar. For example, the Journal of Cancer Education presents such information on the “Aims and Scope” page of its website, which can be found here: https://www.springer.com/journal/13187/aims-and-scope .

Peer reviewer guidelines from your target journal are an additional resource that can help you tailor your writing to the journal and provide additional advice about crafting an effective article [ 1 ]. These are not always available, but it is worth a quick web search to find out.

Identify Author Roles Early in the Process

Early in the writing process, identify authors, determine the order of authors, and discuss the responsibilities of each author. Standard author responsibilities have been identified by The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) [ 2 ]. To set clear expectations about each team member’s responsibilities and prevent errors in communication, we also suggest outlining more detailed roles, such as who will draft each section of the manuscript, write the abstract, submit the paper electronically, serve as corresponding author, and write the cover letter. It is best to formalize this agreement in writing after discussing it, circulating the document to the author team for approval. We suggest creating a title page on which all authors are listed in the agreed-upon order. It may be necessary to adjust authorship roles and order during the development of the paper. If a new author order is agreed upon, be sure to update the title page in the manuscript draft.

In the case where multiple papers will result from a single study, authors should discuss who will author each paper. Additionally, authors should agree on a deadline for each paper and the lead author should take responsibility for producing an initial draft by this deadline.

Structure of the Introduction Section

The introduction section should be approximately three to five paragraphs in length. Look at examples from your target journal to decide the appropriate length. This section should include the elements shown in Fig.  1 . Begin with a general context, narrowing to the specific focus of the paper. Include five main elements: why your research is important, what is already known about the topic, the “gap” or what is not yet known about the topic, why it is important to learn the new information that your research adds, and the specific research aim(s) that your paper addresses. Your research aim should address the gap you identified. Be sure to add enough background information to enable readers to understand your study. Table 1 provides common introduction section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

The main elements of the introduction section of an original research article. Often, the elements overlap

Methods Section

The purpose of the methods section is twofold: to explain how the study was done in enough detail to enable its replication and to provide enough contextual detail to enable readers to understand and interpret the results. In general, the essential elements of a methods section are the following: a description of the setting and participants, the study design and timing, the recruitment and sampling, the data collection process, the dataset, the dependent and independent variables, the covariates, the analytic approach for each research objective, and the ethical approval. The hallmark of an exemplary methods section is the justification of why each method was used. Table 2 provides common methods section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

Results Section

The focus of the results section should be associations, or lack thereof, rather than statistical tests. Two considerations should guide your writing here. First, the results should present answers to each part of the research aim. Second, return to the methods section to ensure that the analysis and variables for each result have been explained.

Begin the results section by describing the number of participants in the final sample and details such as the number who were approached to participate, the proportion who were eligible and who enrolled, and the number of participants who dropped out. The next part of the results should describe the participant characteristics. After that, you may organize your results by the aim or by putting the most exciting results first. Do not forget to report your non-significant associations. These are still findings.

Tables and figures capture the reader’s attention and efficiently communicate your main findings [ 3 ]. Each table and figure should have a clear message and should complement, rather than repeat, the text. Tables and figures should communicate all salient details necessary for a reader to understand the findings without consulting the text. Include information on comparisons and tests, as well as information about the sample and timing of the study in the title, legend, or in a footnote. Note that figures are often more visually interesting than tables, so if it is feasible to make a figure, make a figure. To avoid confusing the reader, either avoid abbreviations in tables and figures, or define them in a footnote. Note that there should not be citations in the results section and you should not interpret results here. Table 3 provides common results section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

Discussion Section

Opposite the introduction section, the discussion should take the form of a right-side-up triangle beginning with interpretation of your results and moving to general implications (Fig.  2 ). This section typically begins with a restatement of the main findings, which can usually be accomplished with a few carefully-crafted sentences.

Major elements of the discussion section of an original research article. Often, the elements overlap

Next, interpret the meaning or explain the significance of your results, lifting the reader’s gaze from the study’s specific findings to more general applications. Then, compare these study findings with other research. Are these findings in agreement or disagreement with those from other studies? Does this study impart additional nuance to well-accepted theories? Situate your findings within the broader context of scientific literature, then explain the pathways or mechanisms that might give rise to, or explain, the results.

Journals vary in their approach to strengths and limitations sections: some are embedded paragraphs within the discussion section, while some mandate separate section headings. Keep in mind that every study has strengths and limitations. Candidly reporting yours helps readers to correctly interpret your research findings.

The next element of the discussion is a summary of the potential impacts and applications of the research. Should these results be used to optimally design an intervention? Does the work have implications for clinical protocols or public policy? These considerations will help the reader to further grasp the possible impacts of the presented work.

Finally, the discussion should conclude with specific suggestions for future work. Here, you have an opportunity to illuminate specific gaps in the literature that compel further study. Avoid the phrase “future research is necessary” because the recommendation is too general to be helpful to readers. Instead, provide substantive and specific recommendations for future studies. Table 4 provides common discussion section pitfalls and recommendations for addressing them.

Follow the Journal’s Author Guidelines

After you select a target journal, identify the journal’s author guidelines to guide the formatting of your manuscript and references. Author guidelines will often (but not always) include instructions for titles, cover letters, and other components of a manuscript submission. Read the guidelines carefully. If you do not follow the guidelines, your article will be sent back to you.

Finally, do not submit your paper to more than one journal at a time. Even if this is not explicitly stated in the author guidelines of your target journal, it is considered inappropriate and unprofessional.

Your title should invite readers to continue reading beyond the first page [ 4 , 5 ]. It should be informative and interesting. Consider describing the independent and dependent variables, the population and setting, the study design, the timing, and even the main result in your title. Because the focus of the paper can change as you write and revise, we recommend you wait until you have finished writing your paper before composing the title.

Be sure that the title is useful for potential readers searching for your topic. The keywords you select should complement those in your title to maximize the likelihood that a researcher will find your paper through a database search. Avoid using abbreviations in your title unless they are very well known, such as SNP, because it is more likely that someone will use a complete word rather than an abbreviation as a search term to help readers find your paper.

After you have written a complete draft, use the checklist (Fig. 3 ) below to guide your revisions and editing. Additional resources are available on writing the abstract and citing references [ 5 ]. When you feel that your work is ready, ask a trusted colleague or two to read the work and provide informal feedback. The box below provides a checklist that summarizes the key points offered in this article.

Checklist for manuscript quality

Data Availability

Michalek AM (2014) Down the rabbit hole…advice to reviewers. J Cancer Educ 29:4–5

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International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Defining the role of authors and contributors: who is an author? http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authosrs-and-contributors.html . Accessed 15 January, 2020

Vetto JT (2014) Short and sweet: a short course on concise medical writing. J Cancer Educ 29(1):194–195

Brett M, Kording K (2017) Ten simple rules for structuring papers. PLoS ComputBiol. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005619

Lang TA (2017) Writing a better research article. J Public Health Emerg. https://doi.org/10.21037/jphe.2017.11.06

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Ella August is grateful to the Sustainable Sciences Institute for mentoring her in training researchers on writing and publishing their research.

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Busse, C., August, E. How to Write and Publish a Research Paper for a Peer-Reviewed Journal. J Canc Educ 36 , 909–913 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-020-01751-z

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Basic Steps in the Research Process

The following steps outline a simple and effective strategy for writing a research paper. Depending on your familiarity with the topic and the challenges you encounter along the way, you may need to rearrange these steps.

Step 1: Identify and develop your topic

Selecting a topic can be the most challenging part of a research assignment. Since this is the very first step in writing a paper, it is vital that it be done correctly. Here are some tips for selecting a topic:

• Select a topic within the parameters set by the assignment. Many times your instructor will give you clear guidelines as to what you can and cannot write about. Failure to work within these guidelines may result in your proposed paper being deemed unacceptable by your instructor.
• Select a topic of personal interest to you and learn more about it. The research for and writing of a paper will be more enjoyable if you are writing about something that you find interesting.
• Select a topic for which you can find a manageable amount of information. Do a preliminary search of information sources to determine whether existing sources will meet your needs. If you find too much information, you may need to narrow your topic; if you find too little, you may need to broaden your topic.
• Be original. Your instructor reads hundreds of research papers every year, and many of them are on the same topics (topics in the news at the time, controversial issues, subjects for which there is ample and easily accessed information). Stand out from your classmates by selecting an interesting and off-the-beaten-path topic.
• Still can't come up with a topic to write about? See your instructor for advice.

Once you have identified your topic, it may help to state it as a question. For example, if you are interested in finding out about the epidemic of obesity in the American population, you might pose the question "What are the causes of obesity in America ?" By posing your subject as a question you can more easily identify the main concepts or keywords to be used in your research.

Step 2 : Do a preliminary search for information

Before beginning your research in earnest, do a preliminary search to determine whether there is enough information out there for your needs and to set the context of your research. Look up your keywords in the appropriate titles in the library's Reference collection (such as encyclopedias and dictionaries) and in other sources such as our catalog of books, periodical databases, and Internet search engines. Additional background information may be found in your lecture notes, textbooks, and reserve readings. You may find it necessary to adjust the focus of your topic in light of the resources available to you.

Step 3: Locate materials

With the direction of your research now clear to you, you can begin locating material on your topic. There are a number of places you can look for information:

If you are looking for books, do a subject search in One Search . A Keyword search can be performed if the subject search doesn't yield enough information. Print or write down the citation information (author, title,etc.) and the location (call number and collection) of the item(s). Note the circulation status. When you locate the book on the shelf, look at the books located nearby; similar items are always shelved in the same area. The Aleph catalog also indexes the library's audio-visual holdings.

Use the library's  electronic periodical databases  to find magazine and newspaper articles. Choose the databases and formats best suited to your particular topic; ask at the librarian at the Reference Desk if you need help figuring out which database best meets your needs. Many of the articles in the databases are available in full-text format.

Use search engines ( Google ,  Yahoo , etc.) and subject directories to locate materials on the Internet. Check the  Internet Resources  section of the NHCC Library web site for helpful subject links.

Step 4: Evaluate your sources

See the  CARS Checklist for Information Quality   for tips on evaluating the authority and quality of the information you have located. Your instructor expects that you will provide credible, truthful, and reliable information and you have every right to expect that the sources you use are providing the same. This step is especially important when using Internet resources, many of which are regarded as less than reliable.

Step 5: Make notes

Consult the resources you have chosen and note the information that will be useful in your paper. Be sure to document all the sources you consult, even if you there is a chance you may not use that particular source. The author, title, publisher, URL, and other information will be needed later when creating a bibliography.

Step 6: Write your paper

Begin by organizing the information you have collected. The next step is the rough draft, wherein you get your ideas on paper in an unfinished fashion. This step will help you organize your ideas and determine the form your final paper will take. After this, you will revise the draft as many times as you think necessary to create a final product to turn in to your instructor.

Step 7: Cite your sources properly

Give credit where credit is due; cite your sources.

Citing or documenting the sources used in your research serves two purposes: it gives proper credit to the authors of the materials used, and it allows those who are reading your work to duplicate your research and locate the sources that you have listed as references. The  MLA  and the  APA  Styles are two popular citation formats.

Failure to cite your sources properly is plagiarism. Plagiarism is avoidable!

Step 8: Proofread

The final step in the process is to proofread the paper you have created. Read through the text and check for any errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Make sure the sources you used are cited properly. Make sure the message that you want to get across to the reader has been thoroughly stated.

Additional research tips:

• Work from the general to the specific -- find background information first, then use more specific sources.
• Don't forget print sources -- many times print materials are more easily accessed and every bit as helpful as online resources.
• The library has books on the topic of writing research papers at call number area LB 2369.
• If you have questions about the assignment, ask your instructor.
• If you have any questions about finding information in the library, ask the librarian.

Contact Information

Craig larson.

Librarian 763-424-0733 [email protected] Zoom:  myzoom   Available by appointment

Get Started

How to Do Research: A Step-By-Step Guide: Get Started

• Get Started
• 1a. Select a Topic
• 1b. Develop Research Questions
• 1c. Identify Keywords
• 1d. Find Background Information
• 1e. Refine a Topic
• 2a. Search Strategies
• 2d. Articles
• 2e. Videos & Images
• 2f. Databases
• 2g. Websites
• 2h. Grey Literature
• 2i. Open Access Materials
• 3a. Evaluate Sources
• 3b. Primary vs. Secondary
• 3c. Types of Periodicals
• 4a. Take Notes
• 4b. Outline the Paper
• 4c. Incorporate Source Material
• 5a. Avoid Plagiarism
• 5b. Zotero & MyBib
• 5c. MLA Formatting
• 5d. MLA Citation Examples
• 5e. APA Formatting
• 5f. APA Citation Examples
• 5g. Annotated Bibliographies

Research Essentials Video Tutorials

Related guides.

• Elmira College Writing Center Get one-on-one assistance for all types of writing.

Recommended Websites

• Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL)

Research Process Overview

Step 1.  Develop a topic Select a Topic | Develop Research Questions | Identify Keywords | Find Background Information | Refine a Topic

Step 2. Locate information Search Strategies | Books | eBooks | Articles  | Videos & Images | Databases | Websites | Grey Literature

Step 3. Evaluate and analyze information Evaluate Sources | Primary vs Secondary | Types of Periodicals

Step 4. Write, organize, and communicate information Take Notes | Outline the Paper | Incorporate Source Material

Step 5. Cite sources Avoid Plagiarism | Zotero & MyBib | MLA | APA | Chicago Style | Annotated Bibliographies

For research help,  use one of the following options:

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Writing a Research Paper Introduction | Step-by-Step Guide

Published on September 24, 2022 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on March 27, 2023.

The introduction to a research paper is where you set up your topic and approach for the reader. It has several key goals:

• Present your topic and get the reader interested
• Provide background or summarize existing research
• Position your own approach
• Detail your specific research problem and problem statement
• Give an overview of the paper’s structure

The introduction looks slightly different depending on whether your paper presents the results of original empirical research or constructs an argument by engaging with a variety of sources.

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Table of contents

Step 1: introduce your topic, step 2: describe the background, step 3: establish your research problem, step 4: specify your objective(s), step 5: map out your paper, research paper introduction examples, frequently asked questions about the research paper introduction.

The first job of the introduction is to tell the reader what your topic is and why it’s interesting or important. This is generally accomplished with a strong opening hook.

The hook is a striking opening sentence that clearly conveys the relevance of your topic. Think of an interesting fact or statistic, a strong statement, a question, or a brief anecdote that will get the reader wondering about your topic.

For example, the following could be an effective hook for an argumentative paper about the environmental impact of cattle farming:

A more empirical paper investigating the relationship of Instagram use with body image issues in adolescent girls might use the following hook:

Don’t feel that your hook necessarily has to be deeply impressive or creative. Clarity and relevance are still more important than catchiness. The key thing is to guide the reader into your topic and situate your ideas.

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This part of the introduction differs depending on what approach your paper is taking.

In a more argumentative paper, you’ll explore some general background here. In a more empirical paper, this is the place to review previous research and establish how yours fits in.

Argumentative paper: Background information

After you’ve caught your reader’s attention, specify a bit more, providing context and narrowing down your topic.

Provide only the most relevant background information. The introduction isn’t the place to get too in-depth; if more background is essential to your paper, it can appear in the body .

Empirical paper: Describing previous research

For a paper describing original research, you’ll instead provide an overview of the most relevant research that has already been conducted. This is a sort of miniature literature review —a sketch of the current state of research into your topic, boiled down to a few sentences.

This should be informed by genuine engagement with the literature. Your search can be less extensive than in a full literature review, but a clear sense of the relevant research is crucial to inform your own work.

Begin by establishing the kinds of research that have been done, and end with limitations or gaps in the research that you intend to respond to.

The next step is to clarify how your own research fits in and what problem it addresses.

Argumentative paper: Emphasize importance

In an argumentative research paper, you can simply state the problem you intend to discuss, and what is original or important about your argument.

Empirical paper: Relate to the literature

In an empirical research paper, try to lead into the problem on the basis of your discussion of the literature. Think in terms of these questions:

• What research gap is your work intended to fill?
• What limitations in previous work does it address?
• What contribution to knowledge does it make?

You can make the connection between your problem and the existing research using phrases like the following.

Now you’ll get into the specifics of what you intend to find out or express in your research paper.

The way you frame your research objectives varies. An argumentative paper presents a thesis statement, while an empirical paper generally poses a research question (sometimes with a hypothesis as to the answer).

Argumentative paper: Thesis statement

The thesis statement expresses the position that the rest of the paper will present evidence and arguments for. It can be presented in one or two sentences, and should state your position clearly and directly, without providing specific arguments for it at this point.

Empirical paper: Research question and hypothesis

The research question is the question you want to answer in an empirical research paper.

Present your research question clearly and directly, with a minimum of discussion at this point. The rest of the paper will be taken up with discussing and investigating this question; here you just need to express it.

A research question can be framed either directly or indirectly.

• This study set out to answer the following question: What effects does daily use of Instagram have on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls?
• We investigated the effects of daily Instagram use on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls.

If your research involved testing hypotheses , these should be stated along with your research question. They are usually presented in the past tense, since the hypothesis will already have been tested by the time you are writing up your paper.

For example, the following hypothesis might respond to the research question above:

The final part of the introduction is often dedicated to a brief overview of the rest of the paper.

In a paper structured using the standard scientific “introduction, methods, results, discussion” format, this isn’t always necessary. But if your paper is structured in a less predictable way, it’s important to describe the shape of it for the reader.

If included, the overview should be concise, direct, and written in the present tense.

• This paper will first discuss several examples of survey-based research into adolescent social media use, then will go on to …
• This paper first discusses several examples of survey-based research into adolescent social media use, then goes on to …

Full examples of research paper introductions are shown in the tabs below: one for an argumentative paper, the other for an empirical paper.

• Argumentative paper
• Empirical paper

Are cows responsible for climate change? A recent study (RIVM, 2019) shows that cattle farmers account for two thirds of agricultural nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands. These emissions result from nitrogen in manure, which can degrade into ammonia and enter the atmosphere. The study’s calculations show that agriculture is the main source of nitrogen pollution, accounting for 46% of the country’s total emissions. By comparison, road traffic and households are responsible for 6.1% each, the industrial sector for 1%. While efforts are being made to mitigate these emissions, policymakers are reluctant to reckon with the scale of the problem. The approach presented here is a radical one, but commensurate with the issue. This paper argues that the Dutch government must stimulate and subsidize livestock farmers, especially cattle farmers, to transition to sustainable vegetable farming. It first establishes the inadequacy of current mitigation measures, then discusses the various advantages of the results proposed, and finally addresses potential objections to the plan on economic grounds.

The rise of social media has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the prevalence of body image issues among women and girls. This correlation has received significant academic attention: Various empirical studies have been conducted into Facebook usage among adolescent girls (Tiggermann & Slater, 2013; Meier & Gray, 2014). These studies have consistently found that the visual and interactive aspects of the platform have the greatest influence on body image issues. Despite this, highly visual social media (HVSM) such as Instagram have yet to be robustly researched. This paper sets out to address this research gap. We investigated the effects of daily Instagram use on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls. It was hypothesized that daily Instagram use would be associated with an increase in body image concerns and a decrease in self-esteem ratings.

The introduction of a research paper includes several key elements:

• A hook to catch the reader’s interest
• Relevant background on the topic
• Details of your research problem

and your problem statement

• A thesis statement or research question
• Sometimes an overview of the paper

Don’t feel that you have to write the introduction first. The introduction is often one of the last parts of the research paper you’ll write, along with the conclusion.

This is because it can be easier to introduce your paper once you’ve already written the body ; you may not have the clearest idea of your arguments until you’ve written them, and things can change during the writing process .

The way you present your research problem in your introduction varies depending on the nature of your research paper . A research paper that presents a sustained argument will usually encapsulate this argument in a thesis statement .

A research paper designed to present the results of empirical research tends to present a research question that it seeks to answer. It may also include a hypothesis —a prediction that will be confirmed or disproved by your research.

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Writing a Research Paper for an Academic Journal: A Five-step Recipe for Perfection

The answer to writing the perfect research paper is as simple as following a step-by-step recipe. Here we bring to you a recipe for effortlessly planning, writing, and publishing your paper as a peer reviewed journal article.

Updated on March 15, 2022

As a young researcher, getting your paper published as a journal article is a huge milestone; but producing it may seem like climbing a mountain compared to, perhaps, the theses, essays, or conference papers you have produced in the past.

You may feel overwhelmed with the thought of carrying innumerable equipment and may feel incapable of completing the task. But, in reality, the answer to writing the perfect research paper is as simple as following a recipe with step-by-step instructions.

In this blog, I aim to bring to you the recipe for effortlessly planning, writing, and publishing your paper as a peer reviewed journal article. I will give you the essential information, key points, and resources to keep in mind before you begin the writing process for your research papers.

Secret ingredient 1: Make notes before you begin the writing process

Because I want you to benefit from this article on a personal level, I am going to give away my secret ingredient for producing a good research paper right at the beginning. The one thing that helps me write literally anything is — cue the drum rolls — making notes.

Yes, making notes is the best way to remember and store all that information, which is definitely going to help you throughout the process of writing your paper. So, please pick up a pen and start making notes for writing your research paper.

Step 1. Choose the right research topic

Although it is important to be passionate and curious about your research article topic, it is not enough. Sometimes the sheer excitement of having an idea may take away your ability to focus on and question the novelty, credibility, and potential impact of your research topic.

On the contrary, the first thing that you should do when you write a journal paper is question the novelty, credibility, and potential impact of your research question.

It is also important to remember that your research, along with the aforementioned points, must be original and relevant: It must benefit and interest the scientific community.

All you have to do is perform a thorough literature search in your research field and have a look at what is currently going on in the field of your topic of interest. This step in academic writing is not as daunting as it may seem and, in fact, is quite beneficial for the following reasons:

• You can determine what is already known about the research topic and the gaps that exist.
• You can determine the credibility and novelty of your research question by comparing it with previously published papers.
• If your research question has already been studied or answered before your first draft, you first save a substantial amount of time by avoiding rejections from journals at a much later stage; and second, you can study and aim to bridge the gaps of previous studies, perhaps, by using a different methodology or a bigger sample size.

So, carefully read as much as you can about what has already been published in your field of research; and when you are doing so, make sure that you make lots of relevant notes as you go along in the process. Remember, your study does not necessarily have to be groundbreaking, but it should definitely extend previous knowledge or refute existing statements on the topic.

Secret ingredient 2: Use a thematic approach while drafting your manuscript

For instance, if you are writing about the association between the level of breast cancer awareness and socioeconomic status, open a new Word or Notes file and create subheadings such as “breast cancer awareness in low- and middle-income countries,” “reasons for lack of awareness,” or “ways to increase awareness.”

Under these subheadings, make notes of the information that you think may be suitable to be included in your paper as you carry out your literature review. Ensure that you make a draft reference list so that you don't miss out on the references.

Step 2: Know your audience

Finding your research topic is not synonymous with communicating it, it is merely a step, albeit an important one; however, there are other crucial steps that follow. One of which is identifying your target audience.

Now that you know what your topic of interest is, you need to ask yourself “Who am I trying to benefit with my research?” A general mistake is assuming that your reader knows everything about your research topic. Drafting a peer reviewed journal article often means that your work may reach a wide and varied audience.

Therefore, it is a good idea to ponder over who you want to reach and why, rather than simply delivering chunks of information, facts, and statistics. Along with considering the above factors, evaluate your reader's level of education, expertise, and scientific field as this may help you design and write your manuscript, tailoring it specifically for your target audience.

Here are a few points that you must consider after you have identified your target audience:

• Shortlist a few target journals: The aims and scope of the journal usually mention their audience. This may help you know your readers and visualize them as you write your manuscript. This will further help you include just the right amount of background and details.
• View your manuscript from the reader's perspective: Try to think about what they might already know or what they would like more details on.
• Include the appropriate amount of jargon: Ensure that your article text is familiar to your target audience and use the correct terminology to make your content more relatable for readers - and journal editors as your paper goes through the peer review process.
• Keep your readers engaged: Write with an aim to fill a knowledge gap or add purpose and value to your reader's intellect. Your manuscript does not necessarily have to be complex, write with a simple yet profound tone, layer (or sub-divide) simple points and build complexity as you go along, rather than stating dry facts.
• Be specific: It is easy to get carried away and forget the essence of your study. Make sure that you stick to your topic and be as specific as you can to your research topic and audience.

Secret ingredient 3: Clearly define your key terms and key concepts

Do not assume that your audience will know your research topic as well as you do, provide compelling details where it is due. This can be tricky. Using the example from “Secret ingredient 2,” you may not need to define breast cancer while writing about breast cancer awareness. However, while talking about the benefits of awareness, such as early presentation of the disease, it is important to explain these benefits, for instance, in terms of superior survival rates.

Step 3: Structure your research paper with care

After determining the topic of your research and your target audience, your overflowing ideas and information need to be structured in a format generally accepted by journals.

Most academic journals conventionally accept original research articles in the following format: Abstract, followed by the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections, also known as the IMRaD, which is a brilliant way of structuring a research paper outline in a simplified and layered format. In brief, these sections comprise the following information:

In closed-access journals, readers have access to the abstract/summary for them to decide if they wish to purchase the research paper. It's an extremely important representative of the entire manuscript.

All information provided in the abstract must be present in the manuscript, it should include a stand-alone summary of the research, the main findings, the abbreviations should be defined separately in this section, and this section should be clear, decluttered, and concise.

Introduction

This section should begin with a background of the study topic, i.e., what is already known, moving on to the knowledge gaps that exist, and finally, end with how the present study aims to fill these gaps, or any hypotheses that the authors may have proposed.

This section describes, with compelling details, the procedures that were followed to answer the research question.

The ultimate factor to consider while producing the methods section is reproducibility; this section should be detailed enough for other researchers to reproduce your study and validate your results. It should include ethical information (ethical board approval, informed consent, etc.) and must be written in the past tense.

This section typically presents the findings of the study, with no explanations or interpretations. Here, the findings are simply stated alongside figures or tables mentioned in the text in the correct sequential order. Because you are describing what you found, this section is also written in the past tense.

Discussion and conclusion

This section begins with a summary of your findings and is meant for you to interpret your results, compare them with previously published papers, and elaborate on whether your findings are comparable or contradictory to previous literature.

This section also contains the strengths and limitations of your study, and the latter can be used to suggest future research. End this section with a conclusion paragraph, briefly summarizing and highlighting the main findings and novelty of your study.

Step 4: Cite credible research sources

Now that you know who and what you are writing for, it's time to begin the writing process for your research paper. Another crucial factor that determines the quality of your manuscript is the detailed information within. The introduction and discussion sections, which make a massive portion of the manuscript, majorly rely on external sources of information that have already been published.

Therefore, it is absolutely indispensable to extract and cite these statements from appropriate, credible, recent, and relevant literature to support your claims. Here are a few pointers to consider while choosing the right sources:

Cite academic journals

These are the best sources to refer to while writing your research paper, because most articles submitted to top journals are rejected, resulting in high-quality articles being filtered-out. In particular, peer reviewed articles are of the highest quality because they undergo a rigorous process of editorial review, along with revisions until they are judged to be satisfactory.

But not just any book, ideally, the credibility of a book can be judged by whether it is published by an academic publisher, is written by multiple authors who are experts in the field of interest, and is carefully reviewed by multiple editors. It can be beneficial to review the background of the author(s) and check their previous publications.

Cite an official online source

Although it may be difficult to judge the trustworthiness of web content, a few factors may help determine its accuracy. These include demographic data obtained from government websites (.gov), educational resources (.edu), websites that cite other pertinent and trustworthy sources, content meant for education and not product promotion, unbiased sources, or sources with backlinks that are up to date. It is best to avoid referring to online sources such as blogs and Wikipedia.

Do not cite the following sources

While citing sources, you should steer clear from encyclopedias, citing review articles instead of directly citing the original work, referring to sources that you have not read, citing research papers solely from one country (be extensively diverse), anything that is not backed up by evidence, and material with considerable grammatical errors.

Although these sources are generally most appropriate and valid, it is your job to critically read and carefully evaluate all sources prior to citing them.

Step 5: Pick the correct journal

Selecting the correct journal is one of the most crucial steps toward getting published, as it not only determines the weightage of your research but also of your career as a researcher. The journals in which you choose to publish your research are part of your portfolio; it directly or indirectly determines many factors, such as funding, professional advancement, and future collaborations.

The best thing you can do for your work is to pick a peer-reviewed journal. Not only will your paper be polished to the highest quality for editors, but you will also be able to address certain gaps that you may have missed out.

Besides, it always helps to have another perspective, and what better than to have it from an experienced peer?

A common mistake that researchers tend to make is leave the task of choosing the target journal after they have written their paper.

Now, I understand that due to certain factors, it can be challenging to decide what journal you want to publish in before you start drafting your paper, therefore, the best time to make this decision is while you are working on writing your manuscript. Having a target journal in mind while writing your paper has a great deal of benefits.

• As the most basic benefit, you can know beforehand if your study meets the aims and scope of your desired journal. It will ensure you're not wasting valuable time for editors or yourself.
• While drafting your manuscript, you could keep in mind the requirements of your target journal, such as the word limit for the main article text and abstract, the maximum number of figures or tables that are allowed, or perhaps, the maximum number of references that you may include.
• Also, if you choose to submit to an open-access journal, you have ample amount of time to figure out the funding.
• Another major benefit is that, as mentioned in the previous section, the aims and scope of the journal will give you a fair idea on your target audience and will help you draft your manuscript appropriately.

It is definitely easier to know that your target journal requires the text to be within 3,500 words than spending weeks writing a manuscript that is around, say, 5,000 words, and then spending a substantial amount of time decluttering. Now, while not all journals have very specific requirements, it always helps to short-list a few journals, if not concretely choose one to publish your paper in.

AJE also offers journal recommendation services if you need professional help with finding a target journal.

Secret ingredient 4: Follow the journal guidelines

Perfectly written manuscripts may get rejected by the journal on account of not adhering to their formatting requirements. You can find the author guidelines/instructions on the home page of every journal. Ensure that as you write your manuscript, you follow the journal guidelines such as the word limit, British or American English, formatting references, line spacing, line/page numbering, and so on.

Our ultimate aim is to instill confidence in young researchers like you and help you become independent as you write and communicate your research. With the help of these easy steps and secret ingredients, you are now ready to prepare your flavorful manuscript and serve your research to editors and ultimately the journal readers with a side of impact and a dash of success.

Lubaina Koti, BS

Scientific Writer

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Conducting Research: How to Conduct Research

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About Research

A common misconception about research is that it is a single, isolated step in writing a paper.

Actually, research is a cyclic process that occurs the entire time you're writing a paper. It can even result in dramatic changes of direction for the work and in the development of a different thesis.

Research Tips

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15 Steps to Good Research

• Define and articulate a research question (formulate a research hypothesis). How to Write a Thesis Statement (Indiana University)
• Identify possible sources of information in many types and formats. Georgetown University Library's Research & Course Guides
• Judge the scope of the project.
• Reevaluate the research question based on the nature and extent of information available and the parameters of the research project.
• Select the most appropriate investigative methods (surveys, interviews, experiments) and research tools (periodical indexes, databases, websites).
• Plan the research project. Writing Anxiety (UNC-Chapel Hill) Strategies for Academic Writing (SUNY Empire State College)
• Retrieve information using a variety of methods (draw on a repertoire of skills).
• Refine the search strategy as necessary.
• Write and organize useful notes and keep track of sources. Taking Notes from Research Reading (University of Toronto) Use a citation manager: Zotero or Refworks
• Evaluate sources using appropriate criteria. Evaluating Internet Sources
• Synthesize, analyze and integrate information sources and prior knowledge. Georgetown University Writing Center
• Revise hypothesis as necessary.
• Use information effectively for a specific purpose.
• Understand such issues as plagiarism, ownership of information (implications of copyright to some extent), and costs of information. Georgetown University Honor Council Copyright Basics (Purdue University) How to Recognize Plagiarism: Tutorials and Tests from Indiana University
• Cite properly and give credit for sources of ideas. MLA Bibliographic Form (7th edition, 2009) MLA Bibliographic Form (8th edition, 2016) Turabian Bibliographic Form: Footnote/Endnote Turabian Bibliographic Form: Parenthetical Reference Use a citation manager: Zotero or Refworks

Adapted from the Association of Colleges and Research Libraries "Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction" , which are more complete and include outcomes. See also the broader "Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education."

College Info Geek

How to Do Research in 7 Simple Steps

C.I.G. is supported in part by its readers. If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Read more here.

It’s 2 am, and you’re on your fifth cup of coffee (or was it your sixth?). You’re crouched at a table in some dark corner of the library surrounded by fifteen open books. Equally as many tabs are open on your laptop, and you still haven’t written a word of the paper that’s due in 7 hours.

Many things can explain how you got to this point, including procrastination , poor organization , and a messy schedule .

Very often, however, the problem is a lack of research skills .

And it’s not your fault. High school does a poor job of teaching you how to do research, and most college classes do little better. It feels like you’re expected to figure it out through trial and error.

I think we can do better than that, however. In this guide, I’m going to show you the 7-step process for researching everything from a 10-page term paper to a final presentation. Not only will you learn how to do better research; you’ll also learn how to research more efficiently.

What Is Research?

Before we go any further, what  is  research?

At its core, research is an attempt to answer a question. This could be anything from “How can we reduce infant mortality rates?” to “Why does salt make food taste good?”

To answer your question, you consult books, academic papers, newspaper articles, historical records, or anything else that could be helpful. The broad term for these things is “sources.”

And, usually, once you’ve done the research, you present or summarize it in some way. In many cases, this means writing an essay or another type of scholarly paper, but it could also mean giving a presentation or even creating a YouTube video.

Even if you have no interest in academia, research is an extremely useful skill to learn. When you know how to do research, it’s much easier to improve your life and work more effectively . Instead of having to ask someone every time you have a question, research will help you solve problems yourself (and help others in turn).

Note:  Research can also mean conducting surveys, performing experiments, or going on archaeological digs. While these activities are crucial for advancing human knowledge, I won’t be discussing them here. This article focuses on the research you can do with only a library and an internet connection.

The 7 Steps of the Research Process

Research can feel overwhelming, but it’s more manageable when you break it down into steps. In my experience, the research process has seven main steps:

• Find a topic
• Refine your topic
• Find key sources
• Take notes on your sources
• Create your paper or presentation
• Do additional research as necessary
• Cite your sources

Let’s look at each of these steps in more detail.

1. Find a Topic

If you don’t have a topic, your research will be undirected and inefficient. You’ll spend hours reading dozens of sources, all because you didn’t take a few minutes to develop a topic.

How do you come up with a topic? My number one suggestion is to create a mind map.

A mind map is a visual way to generate ideas. Here’s how it works:

• Get a piece of paper and a pen. Make sure the paper isn’t too small — you want lots of room for your ideas.
• Draw an oval in the center of the paper.
• Inside that oval, write a super vague topic. Start with whatever your professor has assigned you.
• Draw lines from the oval towards the edges of the paper.
• Draw smaller ovals connected to each of these lines.
• Inside the smaller ovals, write more specific ideas/topics related to the central one.
• Repeat until you’ve found 3-5 topic ideas.

When I write it out step by step, it sounds kind of strange. But trust me, it works . Anytime I’m stuck on a writing assignment, this method is my go-to. It’s basically magic.

To see what mind mapping looks like in practice, check out this clip:

Want to create a digital mind map like the one Thomas uses in the video? Check out Coggle .

2. Refine Your Topic

Okay, so now you have a list of 3-5 topics. They’re all still pretty general, and you need to narrow them down to one topic that you can research in depth.

To do this, spend 15 minutes doing some general research on each topic. Specifically, take each topic and plug it into your library’s catalog and database search tools.

The details of this process will vary from library to library. This is where consulting a librarian can be super helpful. They can show you how to use the tools I mentioned, as well as point you to some you probably don’t know about.

Furthermore, I suggest you ask your professor for recommendations. In some cases, they may even have created a resource page specifically for your assignment.

Once you’ve found out where to search, type in your topic. I like to use a mixture of the library catalog, a general academic database like EBSCO Host , and a search on Google Scholar .

What exactly are you trying to find? Basically, you’re trying to find a topic with a sufficient quantity and variety of sources.

Ideally, you want something with both journal articles and books, as this demonstrates that lots of scholars are seriously engaging with the topic.

Of course, in some cases (if the topic is very cutting edge, for example), you may be only able to find journal articles. That’s fine, so long as there are enough perspectives available.

Using this technique, you’ll be able to quickly eliminate some topics. Be ruthless. If you’re not finding anything after 15 minutes, move on. And don’t get attached to a topic.

Tip: If you find two topics with equal numbers of sources available, ask your professor to help you break the tie. They can give you insight into which topic is super common (and thus difficult to write about originally), as well as which they find more interesting.

Now that you have your topic, it’s time to narrow down your sources.

3. Find Key Sources

If you’ve picked a good topic, then you probably have lots of sources to work with. This is both a blessing and a curse. A variety of sources shows that there’s something worth saying about your topic, and it also gives you plenty of material to cite.

But this abundance can quickly turn into a nightmare in which you spend hours reading dense, mind-numbing material without getting any closer to actually producing a paper.

How do you keep this from happening? Choose 3–5  key sources and focus on them intently. Sure, you may end up needing more sources, especially if this is a long paper or if the professor requires it. But if you start out trying to read 15 sources, you’re likely to get overwhelmed and frustrated.

Focusing on a few key sources is powerful because it:

• Lets you engage deeply with each source.
• Gives you a variety of perspectives.
• Points you to further resources.
• Keeps you focused.

4. Read and Take Notes

But what do you do with these sources, exactly? You need to read them the right way . Follow these steps to effectively read academic books and articles:

Go through the article and look at the section headings. If any words or terms jump out at you, make note of them. Also, glance at the beginning sentences of each section and paragraph to get an overall idea of the author’s argument.

The goal here isn’t to comprehend deeply, but to prime your mind for effective reading .

Write down any questions you have after skimming the article, as well as any general questions you hope the article can answer. Always keep your topic in mind.

Read Actively

Now, start reading. But don’t just passively go through the information like you’re scrolling through Tumblr. Read with a pen or pencil in hand , underlining any unfamiliar terms or interesting ideas.

Make notes in the margins about other sources or concepts that come to mind. If you’re reading a library book, you can make notes on a separate piece of paper.

Once you’ve finished reading, take a short break. Have a cup of tea or coffee. Go for a walk around the library. Stretch. Just get your mind away from the research for a moment without resorting to distracting, low-density fun .

Now come back to the article and look at the things you underlined or noted. Gather these notes and transfer them to a program like Evernote .

If you need to look up a term, do that, and then add that definition to your notes. Also, make note of any sources the author cites that look helpful.

But what if I’m reading a book?   Won’t this take forever?  No, because you’re not going to read the entire book.

For most research you’ll do in college, reading a whole academic book is overkill . Just skim the table of contents and the book itself to find chapters or sections that look relevant.

Then, read each of those in the same way you would read an article. Also, be sure to glance at the book’s bibliography, which is a goldmine for finding additional sources.

Note: The above method is a variation on the classic SQ3R method , adapted slightly since we’re not interested in taking notes from textbooks .

5. Create Your Paper or Presentation

“You can’t turn in raw research.”

Research is crucial to crafting a great paper or presentation, but it’s also a great way to procrastinate. I had classmates in college who would spend 8 hours researching a 5-page paper. That’s way too much!

At some point, you need to stop researching and start writing (or whatever method you’re using to present your research).

How do you decide when to stop researching? There’s no strict rule, but in general I wouldn’t spend more than 30 minutes per page of the final paper.

So if the final paper is supposed to be 10 pages, don’t spend more than 5 hours researching it.

6. Do Additional Research (As Necessary)

Once you’ve started writing the draft of your paper, you’ll probably find a few gaps. Maybe you realize that one scholar’s argument isn’t relevant to your paper, or that you need more information for a particular section. In this case, you are free to return to researching as necessary.

But again, beware the trap of procrastination masquerading as productivity! Only do as much additional research as you need to answer your question. Don’t get pulled into rabbit holes or dragged off on tangents. Get in there, do your research, and get back to writing .

To keep yourself focused, I suggest keeping a separate document or piece of paper nearby to note points that need additional research.

Every time you encounter such a point, make note of it in the document and then keep writing. Only stop when you can’t get any further without additional research.

It’s much better to get a full draft done first. Otherwise, you risk suffering a cognitive switching penalty , making it harder to regain your focus.

7. Cite Your Sources

Whether you’re creating an oral presentation, essay, or video, you’ll need to cite your sources. Plagiarism is a serious offense, so don’t take any chances.

How to cite your sources depends on the subject and the professor’s expectations. Chicago, MLA, and APA are the most common citation formats to use in college, but there are thousands more.

Luckily, you don’t need to painstakingly type each of your citations by hand or slog through a style manual. Instead, you can use a tool like Zotero to track and generate your citations. To make things even easier, install the Zotero Connector browser extension. It can automatically pull citation information from entries in an online library catalog.

Once you’ve collected all of your sources, Zotero can generate a properly formatted works cited page or bibliography at just the click of a button.

For help setting up and using Zotero, read this guide . If you need further assistance, ask a librarian.

Go Research With Confidence

I hope you now understand how to do research with more confidence. If you follow the procedures I’ve covered in this article, you’ll waste less time, perform more effective research, and ultimately have the material for a winning essay.

Curious about how to use your research to write a great research paper? Check out this guide .

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From ideas to studies: how to get ideas and sharpen them into research questions

Jan p vandenbroucke.

1 Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands

2 Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

3 Department of Medical Statistics and Centre for Global NCDs, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

Neil Pearce

Where do new research questions come from? This is at best only partially taught in courses or textbooks about clinical or epidemiological research. Methods are taught under the assumption that a researcher already knows the research question and knows which methods will fit that question. Similarly, the real complexity of the thought processes that lead to a scientific undertaking is almost never described in published papers. In this paper, we first discuss how to get an idea that is worth researching. We describe sources of new ideas and how to foster a creative attitude by “cultivating your thoughts”. Only a few of these ideas will make it into a study. Next, we describe how to sharpen and focus a research question so that a study becomes feasible and a valid test of the underlying idea. To do this, the idea needs to be “pruned”. Pruning a research question means cutting away anything that is unnecessary, so that only the essence remains. This includes determining both the latent and the stated objectives, specific pruning questions, and the use of specific schemes to structure reasoning. After this, the following steps include preparation of a brief protocol, conduct of a pilot study, and writing a draft of the paper including draft tables. Then you are ready to carry out your research.

Introduction

How do you get an idea for a study? How do you turn your idea into a testable hypothesis, and turn this into an appropriate and feasible study design? This is usually at best only partially taught in epidemiology courses. Most courses and textbooks assume that you know your research question and the general methods that you will need to answer it. Somehow it is assumed that you can readily translate your idea into a specific framework, such as the PICO framework (Patient, Intervention, Control or Comparison, Outcome) 1 or the FINER framework (Feasible, Interesting, Novel, Ethical, and Relevant) 2 or that you can fit it into counterfactual reasoning. 3 However, before describing your project in one of these frameworks, you first need to have an idea for your study and think about it in general terms: why you might do a study and how you might do a study.

This paper considers the complex process of having ideas, keeping track of them, turning them into studies, trying them out in pilot studies, and writing a draft paper before you finally embark on your study.

The paper is intended for novice researchers in clinical or public health epidemiology. It is not intended to be a comprehensive literature review about creativity, nor a sociology or philosophical treatise about why scientists get particular ideas (and not other ideas). It is based on our personal experience of (a combined) 70+ epidemiologic research-years. We have worked on very different topics, mostly on opposite sides of the globe, yet found that our experiences are quite similar. The fact that these issues are rarely covered in epidemiology courses has provided motivation to reflect on our experience.

Getting new ideas

So how do you get an idea? How some juxtaposition of neural patterns in our brain suddenly creates a new idea is a process that we are far from understanding. According to Karl Popper, the origin of new ideas does not matter; the only thing of interest is to devise how to test them. 4 Over the past decades, the literature has been enriched with new ideas about “being creative” in science – as witnessed in the book Innovation Generation by Ness. 5

In the present paper, we will not cover the literature about creativity and discovery in depth, but we will discuss the issues that we consider relevant to epidemiologic research. We will first consider the more general principles.

The real complexity of the thought processes that lead to a scientific undertaking is almost never described in published papers. Immunologist Medawar claimed that in this respect almost all scientific papers may be a fraud – not in the sense that scientists deliberately produce misleading data, but in the sense that the real thought processes that lead to the data and conclusions are not mentioned. 6 Scientists tell us about their real thought processes in memoirs, inaugural, or valedictory lectures – which is why these are so much more interesting than “standard” papers or presentations.

What strikes our minds: regularities or anomalies?

All sciences study a particular “object of knowledge” (eg, “matter”, “life”). Ideas come from experience and previous knowledge or facts about this object of knowledge, although this knowledge is always filtered through the perspective of one or more theories. 7 Epidemiology studies the distribution and determinants of disease in human populations, 8 and epidemiological ideas arise from observing and thinking about populations. 9 These could be clinical populations (ie, clinical experience, sometimes involving just a few patients), exposure-based populations (eg, workers exposed to a particular chemical), or general populations (geographically defined or sociologically defined). Whatever the population we are interested in, ideas come from observing either regularities or anomalies.

The observation of regularities (“induction”) is a common origin of new ideas. 4 , 10 – 13 Philosopher David Hume described “Induction” as: regularly seeing two things happening in succession (like pushing a switch and a light going on) leads to suspicions of causality. As he pointed out, causality can never be proven by the mere observation of “constant conjunctions”, but observing regularities can start our train of thought. 12

An anomaly (or irregularity) strikes our mind, because it defies our expectations. The regularity that we expected was our “hypothesis” (even if it was not really explicitly formulated); the anomaly is a “refutation”. 4 , 13 It forces us to think about other explanations, and these lead to new hypotheses that we then try to test. Thus, scientists do not usually start from hypotheses that are nicely formulated “out of the blue”, but instead start from previous knowledge and experience; when they are challenged by anomalies, scientists seek new explanations. 14

An interesting way to discover anomalies is to enter a new field of research; since you have other background experience than the people already in the field, you see things that they take for granted but that strike you as odd – at the same time, you may also see new explanations for these anomalies. One of the pioneers of clinical epidemiology, Sackett, once wrote that scientists should “retire” from a field as soon as they become “experts”. 15 When you are too long in a field, you will no longer see the anomalies, and you may even obstruct newcomers with new explanations. Of course, there are differences between scientists: some roam across various fields and others stick to a problem area that they explore with increasing depth – then the increasing depth and the new techniques that one needs for advancing one’s thoughts will be like a “new field”.

Taxonomies of discovery

Few researchers have listed the different ways in which one can arrive at new ideas, that is, lists of ways of discovery. We will present two of them – which have very different origins but remarkable similarities. Several examples of studies corresponding to items on these two lists are given in Appendix Examples A1–A10 .

Sources for new ideas about health care evaluation were described by Crombie and Davies in the chapter “Developing the research question” of their book on Research in Health Care that reflects a UK public health experience. 16

• “Review existing practice […] the current organisation and delivery of health care is not as good as it could be […]”
• “Challenge accepted ideas […] much of health care is based on accepted practice rather than research evidence […]” ( Appendix Example A3 )
• “Look for conflicting views […] which indicate either that there is not enough evidence, or that some practitioners are misinformed”
• “Investigate geographical variation […] reflecting on the reasons [for geographical variation] can be a fruitful source of research questions […]” ( Appendix Example A6 )
• “Identify Cinderella topics […] important areas of health care are often overlooked […]”
• “Let loose the imagination […] look for wild or impossible ideas […] free the mind from the constraints of conventional wisdom […].”

A taxonomy for sources of clinical research questions about medical care and clinical problems was proposed by Hulley and Cummings, in the context of clinical research in the US: 2

• “Build on experience;” your own experience, that of close colleagues with whom you can freely discuss your research ideas, and that of a good mentor, because young researchers might not yet have much experience, “An essential strategy for a young investigator is to apprentice himself to an experienced senior scientist who has the time and interest to work with him regularly.”
• ○ By harvesting “the medical literature and attending journal clubs, national and international meetings, seeking informal conversations with other scientists and colleagues”
• ○ “A sceptical attitude about prevailing beliefs can stimulate good research questions”
• ○ Be alert to “careful observation of patients, which has historically been one of the major sources of descriptive studies” ( Appendix Examples A1 and A2 )
• ○ Your experiences in teaching; having to explain something may make you aware of gaps in your knowledge; questions by patients and colleagues may similarly identify things that we do not fully understand or ignore
• “Keep the imagination roaming […]” by a mixture of creativity and tenacity; “put an unresolved question clearly in view and turn on the mental switch that lets the mind run freely toward it”.

A special mention needs to be made about the last categories of both the lists: “Let loose the imagination” and “Keep the imagination roaming”. These are especially important to find innovative solutions. In many situations wherein you cannot do a perfect study and you run a grave danger of potential confounding or bias, it helps to “get deeply immersed”: to understand the problem biologically, clinically, socially, organizationally, and environmentally will help you to think about what is happening, why it is happening, and whether you can find situations in which the potential confounders or biases do not exist or exists in reverse. You should forget formal designs and think out of the box: you will find instances of studies that mutually reinforce each other and may even arrive at formulating new designs or analytic solutions (see Appendix Examples A7–A10 ).

Keeping track of your ideas

It is not only important to have good ideas but also important to develop them. Researchers who work in laboratories have the habit of keeping “lab logs”. They write down briefly the results of an experiment, note why they think it went wrong, and how they will perform the next experiment. This permits them to trace how they changed the experiments or even the content and the direction of their research. We should do the same in epidemiologic and clinical research, particularly in the stage of creating new ideas. Such notes about ideas can include not only hypotheses and views or results by others but also drawing directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) (see “Intermezzo: specific schemes to structure reasoning” section) to make the causal structures of ideas clear.

The greatest minds kept track of their thoughts. Charles Darwin’s notebooks document his ideas, his observations, his readings, and new theories and facts that struck him. 17 For example, Darwin noted a story that he heard from his father, a medical practitioner. His father recounted that he had been struck by one of his patients’ ways of expressing himself, because he had attended a parent of the patient who had had the same mannerisms – even though the parent had died when the patient was still an infant. Remarks like these still have relevance today when we think about the heredity and evolution of behavior.

The sociologist C Wright Mills carried the description of the process one step further in the appendix of his book on The Sociological Imagination . 18 He encourages young sociologists to set up a file of stacked cards to keep track of “[…] personal experience and professional activities, studies underway and studies planned […]” which “[…] encourages you to capture ‘fringe thoughts’: various ideas which may be by-products of everyday life, stretches of conversations […]”. These notes are continuously reshuffled, regrouped under new headings, and pondered. Mills denounced the habit of most (social) scientists who feel the need to write about their plans only when they are going to apply for a grant. He thought that scientists should continually work with their file of ideas and regularly take stock of how these have evolved.

Such strategies are still relevant today, even if our “logs” are kept in electronic form, particularly because grant writing has become more demanding, hectic, and time-consuming. From such files, new research projects are born: while your ideas gradually develop, you keep wondering what data you might need to prove a certain proposition, and how you might get those data in the easiest way possible. Often, ideas are reshuffled and regrouped under new headings. A new observation, a new piece of literature may make old ones fall into place, or there may suddenly be a new opportunity to work out an old idea.

A complementary advice recently came in a blog from a contemporary sociologist, Aldrich: his advice is to “Write as if you don’t have the data”, that is, to write “[…] the literature review and planning phase of a project, preferably before it has been locked into a specific research design”. 19

The role of emotions

Underlying the discovery process, there are often two emotions: “surprise” and “indignation”. Surprise is the intellectual emotion when we see something happening against expectation: a patient with an unusual exposure, unusual disease manifestation, sudden cure, or sudden ill-understood deterioration; a laboratory result that is an anomaly; and a sudden epidemic of disease in a population. Indignation is the moral emotion: a group of patients is not being treated well because we lack sufficient knowledge, or because we are blundering in organizing health care or in transmitting and applying public health knowledge. Some passion is useful to bring any undertaking to a good end, be it that the passion should be restrained and channeled into polite undertakings, like in a research protocol. While doing the research project, maintaining some of the original passion will help you to find ways to overcome the daily hassles of research, the misadventures, the difficulties of getting others to collaborate, and the difficulties of getting published ( Appendix Example A11 ).

Sharpening the research question: the pruning

Pruning a research question means cutting away anything that is unnecessary, so that only the essence remains.

The initial spark of an idea will usually lead to some rather general research question. Invariably, this is too ambitious, or so all-encompassing that it cannot be researched (at least not within the time frame of a single grant or PhD project). You have to refine your research question into something that is interesting, yet feasible. To do so, you have to know clearly where you are heading. The emphasis on a clear preconceived idea about what you want to attain by your research often comes as a surprise; some people object: “[…] isn’t research about discovery? How can you know in advance what you want to find?”

The social scientist Verschuren proposed the “wristwatch metaphor”. 20 A researcher is not like a beachcomber, who strolls along the beach to see whether anything valuable washed ashore. Rather, a researcher is like someone who has lost her wristwatch on the beach and returns to search for it. She knows what part of the beach to look, she can describe her wristwatch in detail, and once she has found it, she knows that this is the watch she was looking for. Some further background to these ideas can be found in Appendix B .

Charles Medawar wrote in his Advice to a Young Scientist (page 18) 21 that as much as politics is the ‘art of the possible’, research is the ‘art of the soluble’. A research question should be limited to a question that can be solved with the resources at hand. This does not mean that you should preferentially study “trivial” questions with easy solutions. It does mean that you should seek out your particular niche: something specific, something that was overlooked by others, or some new twist to a general question, so that you can make your own contribution.

The concept of “serendipity” is often invoked when thinking of “seeking novelty”: it means finding something that you were not looking for. For a full discussion of the more complex reality that shows how, in reality, “chance favors a prepared mind”, see Appendix C .

Proceed in the inverse order of the paper that you will write

From the aforementioned, we know that we need a precise aim and a soluble research question.

How can we achieve this? The best approach is to “begin at the end”, that is, the conclusion that you hope to support when you eventually publish your research findings, perhaps many years from now. 22 Most medical research papers have a fixed format: introduction, methods, results, discussion. Usually, the discussion has three parts: summary of the results, discussion of the strengths and limitations, and the importance and interpretation of the findings. There you start: you try to imagine what such last lines of the eventual paper might be – in particular what their intent, their message to the reader might be. Another useful strategy would be to imagine what might be written in the separate box “What this paper adds” that many journals nowadays ask to convey the message from the authors clearly and succinctly to the readers.

The “latent” versus the “stated” objective

The pioneer clinical epidemiologist Feinstein wrote that a good research consultant should be like a good clinician, who first wants to learn from the patient: “What is the chief complaint?”, that is, which is the problem that you want to study. Next, “What will you do with the answer?” 22 The latter question is not just about the potential conclusions of the research paper, but more importantly, their meaning. What is the intended effect (or impact) of the findings? He called this the “latent objective”: what do you want to achieve or change by your project; the “stated objective” is different, it is the type of result that the study will deliver. For example, the stated objective can be that you want to do a randomized trial to compare one intervention versus another and that you will look at recurrence of disease. The latent objective might be that you are concerned that one intervention may be harmful to patients, driven by special interests, and that if this is the case it should be abolished.

Rather analogously, the long-time editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine , Edward Huth, proposed in his book about medical publishing the “So-What” and the “Who-Cares” tests: “What may happen if the paper’s message is correct?”; may it change concepts and treatment or stimulate further exciting research? 23 In fact, many funders now require such an “impact statement” as part of the grant application process.

Experienced research consultants know that when trying to discover the latent objective, it is useful to brush aside the detailed protocol and to ask directly what the meaning of the research is. The meaning of the research is often not clearly stated in a formal study protocol that limits itself more or less to “stated aims”. 24 Like a patient who cannot articulate her/his complaints very well, would-be researchers lose themselves in trivial “side issues” or operational details of the protocol. Appendix Examples A2 and A11 explain the importance of elucidating the underlying frustration of the clinician-researcher to clearly guide a research effort.

After initial questions have set the scene and clarified the “latent objective” of a project, the next questions are more operational, translating the latent objective back into a “stated objective”. 22 The stated objective should be a feasible research project. According to Feinstein, one should ask: what maneuver is to be executed (what intervention, deliberate or not, and how is it administered), what groups are to be compared (and why those groups), and what is the outcome that we will study?

In these phases of discussion, one needs to immerse oneself into the problem: one has to understand it biologically and clinically, and how it is dealt with in the daily practice of health care in the setting in which you will do research. Getting deeply immersed in the problem is the only way of arriving at shrewd or new solutions for studies on vexing medical or public health problems ( Appendix Example A9 ). Mere discussion of technical or procedural aspects of a proposed design, data collection, or analysis will usually not lead to new insights.

Specific pruning questions, to ask yourself or others

In initial discussions, one goes back and forth between the general aim (the latent objective), the scientific questions that follow from it, and the possible research designs (with stated objectives). After feeling secure about the “latent” aim, proceed with more specific questions.

• Try to describe exactly the knowledge gap that you want to fill (ie, the watch that you lost at the beach). Is it about etiology, about pathogenesis, about prognosis? What should change for the benefit of a particular group of patients? Try to be as specific as possible. Do your colleagues see these problems and their solutions as you do? – and if not, why don’t they?
• Once you know the point you want to make, describe what table or figure you need to fill the gap in knowledge, that is, what would your results look like? This means drawing a simple table or graph. Are these the data you want? Will these tables convince your colleagues? What objections might they have? Keep in mind that if the research results go against ingrained beliefs, they will be scrutinized mercilessly, so the important aspects of your research should be able to withstand likely objections.
• Thereafter, the questions become more practical: what study design is needed to produce this table, this figure? Can we do this? Do we have the resources or can we find them?

Be self-critical

You should always remain self-critical about the aspects that threaten the validity of your study ( Appendix Example A12 ). 25 If the practical problems are too large, or the research question too unfeasibly grandiose, it might be wise to settle for a less ambitious aim ( Appendix Example A13 ).

Paraphrasing Miettinen, 26 the first decision is whether you should do the study at all. There might be several reasons to decide not to pursue a study. One might be that arriving at a satisfactory design will be impossible, because of biases that you are unable to solve. It serves no purpose to add another study that suffers from the same unsolved problems as previous studies. For example, it does not serve any purpose to do yet another study that shows lower mortality in vegetarians, if you cannot solve the problems of confounding that vegetarians are persons who have different lifestyles in comparison with others. 27 (If, however, you have found a solution – pursue it at all means!) Nevertheless, thinking about the potential problems and ultimate aims of a seemingly impossible question can foster the development of a new study design or a new method of analysis, ( Appendix Examples A2, A9, and A10 ). In the same vein, deciding that you cannot do a study yourself might make you look for collaboration with persons who have the type of data that you do not, for example, in a different population where it is believed that confounding is not so severe or may even be in the opposite direction.

All studies have imperfections, but you need to be aware which ones you can tolerate. 28 In the early stages of an enquiry, an “imperfect” study might still be worthwhile to see whether “there might be something in it”. For example, time trends or ecological comparisons are often seen as poor study designs to assess causality by themselves, but they can be very valuable in helping to develop ideas, as well as providing a “reality check” about the potential credibility of some hypothesis. 29

Conversely, it is pointless to add yet another study, however perfect, showing what is already known very well – unless you have to do it for “political” purposes, say, for convincing decision makers in your own country.

Finally, it is not a good use of your time to chase something completely improbable or futile. For example, at the present state of the debate, it serves no purpose to add another study about the presence or absence of clinical benefits or harms of homeopathy: no one will change his or her mind about the issue. 30 , 31 An exception might be something that is highly improbable, but that if true might lead to completely revolutionary insights – such an idea might be worth pursuing, even if the initial reaction of outsiders might remain incredulousness. Still, you should pursue unlikely hypotheses knowingly, that is, with the right amount of self-criticism – in particular, to make yourself aware when you are in a blind alley.

To keep yourself on the “straight and narrow”, it helps to form a group of people who cover different aspects of the problem you want to study: clinical, biochemical and physiological, and methodological – to discuss the project as equals. Such discussions can not only be tremendous fun but also will invariably lead to more profound and diverse research questions and will help to find solutions for practical as well as theoretical problems. In the right circumstances of a “machtsfreie Dialog” 32 (a communication in which all are equal and that is only based on rational arguments and not on power – which all scientific debates should be), such a circle of colleagues and friends will help you to be self-critical.

Finally, when pursuing one’s research interests, one should be prepared to learn new skills from other fields or collaborate with others from these fields. If one stays only with the techniques and skills that one knows, it might not lead to the desired answers. 33

What if the data already exist? And you are employed to do a particular analysis with an existing protocol?

Even in the circumstance that the data already exist, it greatly helps to not jump into an analysis, but to think for yourself what you would ideally like to do – if there were no constraints. As Aldrich mentioned, 19 also in that circumstance researchers should still

[…] begin their literature review and conceptual modeling as if they had the luxury of a blank slate […]. Writing without data constraints will, I believe, free their imaginations to range widely over the realm of possibilities, before they are brought to earth by practical necessities.

Moreover, this will make clear what compromises one will make by accepting the available data and the existing analysis protocol. Otherwise, one starts an analysis without being sufficiently aware of the limitations of a particular analysis on particular data.

The difference between explanatory and pragmatic research

A useful distinction is between explanatory and pragmatic research: the former is research that aims at discovery and explanation, whereas the latter is intended to evaluate interventions or diagnostic procedures. The first type of research consists of chasing explanations by pursuing different and evolving hypotheses; the second type of research aims at making decisions about actions in future patients. 27 The two opposites differ strongly in their thinking about the types of studies to pursue (eg, observational vs randomized), about the role of prior specification of a research hypothesis, about the need for “sticking to a prespecified protocol”, and about subgroup analyses and multiplicity of analyses. Some of these will be explained in the following subheadings.

The difference between explanatory and pragmatic trials is sometimes thought to mirror the difference between doing randomized trials versus observational research. However, even for randomized trials, a difference exists between “ pragmatic” and “explanatory” trials (coined first by Schwartz and Lellouch). 34 Because it is not always easy to delineate what aspects of a randomized trial are “pragmatic” or “explanatory”, instruments have been crafted to help researchers and evaluators. 35 , 36 Conversely, not all observational studies are explanatory: some are needed for pragmatic decisions (think about adverse effects of drugs and also about diagnostic evaluations where studies should influence practice guidelines) – while other studies aim at explaining how nature works.

Which iterations should you allow yourself? Anticipating the next project

Thinking about a research problem is a strongly iterative process. 2 , 33 , 37 One starts with a broad aim and then tries out several possible ideas about studies that might lead to better understanding or to better solutions.

Likewise, project proposals characteristically go through many iterations. In the early phases of the research, it is commonplace that the study design or even the research question is changed. Specific suggestions about common research problems and their potential solutions were given by Hulley and Cummings, 2 which we reproduce in Appendix D .

The revision of the aims of a project may be profound, in particular in explanatory research (see “The difference between explanatory and pragmatic research” section), in contrast to pragmatic research (see “Shouldn’t you stick to a predefined protocol?” section). The chemist Whitesides wrote: “Often the objectives of a paper when it is finished are different from those used to justify starting the work. Much of good science is opportunistic and revisionist”. 38 Along a similar line, Medawar proposed that to do justice to the real thought processes of a research undertaking, the discussion section of a paper should come at the beginning, since the thought processes of a scientist start with an expectation about particular results. The expectation determines which findings are of interest and why they will be interpreted in a particular way. 6 He added that in real scientific life, scientists get new ideas (ie, new expectations) while doing their research, but “[…] many of them apparently are ashamed to admit, that hypotheses appear in their mind along uncharted byways of thought”. 6

“Seeing something in the data” can be an important part of scientific discovery. This is often decried as “data dredging”, which it is not: one sees something because of one’s background knowledge and thereby there always is some “prior” that exists – even if that was not specified beforehand in the study protocol. 27 , 39 The word “exploratory” is often misused when it is used to characterize a study. True “exploratory” data analysis would only exists if it is mindlessly done, such as a Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) analysis – but even GWAS analyses have specific aims, which becomes clear when results are interpreted and some findings are designated as “important” and others not. As stated by Rothman:

Hypotheses are not generated by data; they are proposed by scientists. The process by which scientists use their imagination to create hypotheses has no formal methodology […]. Any study, whether considered exploratory or not, can serve to refute a hypothesis. 40

Appendix Examples A5 and A7 show how projects changed mid-course because of a new discovery in the data or in the background knowledge about a research topic.

Generally, it is a good habit to think through what the next project might be, once you will have the result of the project you are currently thinking about, so as to know what direction your research might take. 33

Shouldn’t you stick to a predefined protocol?

Different research aims, in particular along the “explanatory” versus “pragmatic” continuum, may lead to different attitudes on the amount of change that protocols may endure while doing research. 27 , 39 For randomized trials, and also for pragmatic observational research, the research question is usually fixed: does a new therapy lead to better outcomes for a particular group of patients in a particular setting? Because findings from randomized trials or pragmatic observational research may lead to millions of patients to adopt or avoid a particular therapy (which means that their well-being or even life depends on the research) researchers are generally not at liberty to change their hypotheses at the last moment – for example, by suddenly declaring an interest in a particular subgroup. They should stick to the predefined protocol. If a change is needed for practical reasons, it should be clearly stated in the resulting publications. This makes thinking about research questions and doing pilot studies beforehand all the more important (see “Pilot Study” section).

In contrast, much epidemiologic and clinical research tries to explain how nature works. This gives greater leeway: exploration of data can lead to new insights. Thus, “sticking to the protocol” is a good rule for randomized trials and pragmatic observational research, but may be counterproductive for explanatory research. 39 , 41 Nevertheless, it is good to keep track of the changes in your thoughts and in the protocol, even if only for yourself. In practice, many situations are intermediate; in particular when using large available data sets, it often happens that one envisages in a protocol what one would do with the data, only to discover upon opening the data files that the data fall short or are more complex than imagined; this is another reason for doing pilot studies, even with large available data sets (see “Pilot Study” section).

How much literature should you read?

If you are setting up a new research project in a new area, do not start by reading too much. You will quickly drown in the ideas of others. Rather, read a few general reviews that identify unanswered problems. Only return to the literature after you have defined your research question and provisionally your study design. Now, the literature suddenly becomes extremely interesting, since you know what types of papers you need. You also know what the potential objections and shortcomings are of the different design options, because you thought about them yourself. The number of relevant papers usually greatly shrinks, see Appendix Example A4 .

Shouldn’t you do a systematic review first?

It is argued that before embarking on a new piece of research, one should first do a systematic review and/or meta-analysis, because this may help to define the gaps in knowledge more precisely, and guide new research – or may show that the question has been solved. This argument is somewhat circular. A systematic review is a piece of research in itself, intended for publication, and requires much time and effort. Like any piece of research, it requires a clear research question. As such it does not “identify gaps”: a systematic review is about a research question which is already specified, but for which more information is needed. Thus, the main function of the advice to first do a systematic review is to know whether the research question that one has in mind has not yet been solved by others. Perusing the literature in depth is absolutely needed, for example, before embarking on a randomized trial or on a major observational study. However, this is not the same as doing a formal systematic review. In-depth scoping of the literature will suffice. If it is found that potentially valuable studies already exist on the research question that one has in mind, then the new study that one is thinking about may be discarded, and a systematic review should be done instead.

Intermezzo: specific schemes to structure reasoning

Specific schemes have been proposed to guide our reasoning between the stage of delineation of the “gap in knowledge” and the stage of proposing the research design.

The acronym FINER (feasible, interesting, novel, ethical, and relevant) was coined by Hulley and Cummings 2 and denotes the different aspects that one should consider to judge a budding research proposal. These words are a good checklist for an in-depth self-scrutiny of your research. The central aspects are the feasibility and whether the possible answers are exciting (and/or much needed).

The PICO format (Patient, Intervention, Control or Comparison, Outcome) is advocated by the evidence-based medicine and Cochrane movements and is very useful for clinical therapeutic research, particularly randomized controlled trials (RCTs). 1 , 42 Questions about therapeutic interventions are highly specific, for example, a particular chemotherapeutic scheme (the intervention) is proposed to study survival (the outcome) among young women with a particular form of stage III breast cancer (the patients). This framework is less useful, and becomes a bit pointless, for etiologic research about generalizable questions such as: “Does smoking cause lung cancer?” which applies to all humans and to different types of smoking. Of course, all research will be done in particular population, with particular smoking habits, but this does not necessarily define the research question. Some of the first investigations about smoking and lung cancer were done in male doctors aged ≥35 years in the UK 43 – this was a very convenient group to research, but being a male doctor in the UK is not part of the research question.

The PICO format is thus most applicable for pragmatic research. A much more detailed and elaborate scheme for pragmatic research was proposed by the US Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) which has published Methodology Standards, including “Standards for Formulating Research Questions”. While we would not agree with all six standards, junior investigators may find the structure useful as they think through their options – especially for pragmatic research questions. 44

Counterfactual reasoning 3 emphasizes those aspects of the “ideal randomized trial” that should be mimicked by an observational study. A key question is whether your study is addressing a hypothesis that could in theory be studied in a randomized trial. For example, if the research question is “does smoking cause lung cancer?”, then this is a question that could in theory (but not in practice) be addressed by randomizing study participants to be smokers or nonsmokers. In this situation, it may be useful to design your observational study with the intention of obtaining the same answer that would have been obtained if you had been able to do a randomized trial.

However, the aims of explanatory observational research are different from those of randomized trials. 27 Explanatory research about disease etiology may involve “states” like being female, being old, being obese, having hypertension, having a high serum cholesterol, carrying the BrCa1 gene, and so on, as causes of disease. None of these causes are interventions. In contrast, RCTs focus on what to do to change particular causes: which interventions are feasible and work? For example, being female might expose a person to job discrimination; the intervention might be to have women on the appointment committee or to use some kind of positive discrimination. Likewise, the gene for phenylketonuria leads to disease, but the intervention is to change the diet. For carriers of BRCa1 genes, different strategies can be evaluated in RCTs to evaluate their effectiveness in preventing premature death due to breast cancer: frequent screening, prophylactic mastectomy, hormone treatment, and so on – which may have different effects. For obesity or hypertension or hypercholesterolemia, different types of interventions are possible – with potentially different effects and different adverse effects.

The interventionist outlook, that is, trying to mimic an RCT, can be very useful, for some type of observational studies, for example, about the adverse effects of drugs. It helps to make certain that one can mimic an “intervention” (ie, patients starting to use particular drugs) that is specific and consistent in groups of patients that are comparable (more technically, exchangeable – meaning that the results of the investigation would not change if the persons exposed and nonexposed were swapped). These conditions can be met in a credible way, if there are competing drugs for a similar indication, so that there is an active drug comparator: the interventions (use of different drugs in different patients) will be well defined, and the patients on the different drugs will tend to be comparable. This works particularly well if you are focusing on adverse drug effects that were unknown or unpredictable at the time of prescription. 45 , 46 For example, you may obtain more valid findings in a study that compares the adverse effects of two different beta agonists for asthma care (ie, two different drugs within the same class), than to design a study which compares patients who are prescribed beta agonists with patients who are prescribed other asthma medication, or no medication at all – because the latter might be a highly different group of patients. 47

As mentioned, there are some important studies about causes of diseases where a randomized trial is not feasible, even in theory. In particular, there are various “states” which are major causes of disease (obesity, cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes, etc). These states strongly affect the risks of disease and death, but cannot be randomized. For example, it is difficult to conceive of randomizing study participants to be obese or not obese; however, we could randomize them for the reduction of obesity, for example, through exercise, but such a study would assess the effects of a particular intervention, not of obesity itself. Still, it remains important to estimate the overall effects of obesity, that is, to answer the question “would this group of people have had different health status, on the average, if they had not been obese”. In this situation, the concept of “interventions” is not relevant to designing your study (at least in the way that the term “intervention” is commonly used). What is more relevant is simply to focus on the counterfactual contrast which is being assessed (eg, a body mass index [BMI] of 35 versus a BMI of 25), without specifying how this contrast came about.

A technique that has gone hand in hand with counterfactual reasoning in epidemiology is drawing DAGs; several introductions to DAG theory can be found in epidemiologic textbooks. 3 , 48 DAGs can be useful in the brainstorming phase of a study, after the general research question has been defined. At this stage, a general structure for the study is envisaged and the complexity of the causal processes needs clarification. A DAG can be extremely useful for illustrating the context in which a causal question is being asked, the assumptions that will be involved in the analyses (eg, whether a particular risk factor is a confounder, a mediator, or a col-lider), and help us question the validity of our reasoning. 49 Using DAGs helps us also decide which variables we need to collect information on and how they should be measured and defined. Given that DAGs root in causal thinking, their construction is, of necessity, subjective.

Preparation: pilot study, protocol, and advance writing

Doing a pilot study and collecting ancillary information about feasibility.

May I now start? is a question heard after lengthy deliberations about the research question and the potential studies that follow from it. Such deliberations almost invariably produce a lot of enthusiasm and exhilaration – because they are fun. The researcher wants to begin collecting data or start the analysis. However, Crombie and Davies, in their chapter about “Developing the research question” state emphatically: “Don’t rush into a study”. 16 Separate from doing a pilot study, which is about the procedures of your study, you may also need to collect ancillary information before actually starting your study.

Pilot study

Even if you think you are totally certain of what you want, you should first do a pilot study, based on a brief protocol. 2 , 22 That initial protocol should be easy to write. You have already discussed the aim and design of your study. Write them down. You expect a particular type of information that is essential and that will tell the essence of your message (a particular 2-by-2 or X-by-Y table, a particular graph), which you can describe.

Pilot studies are not done to know the likely direction of the results; instead, the aim is to see whether you will be able to perform the procedures of your study – and ultimately whether that really is the study you want to do. 50 The aim is to save yourself from embarrassment: data that very surprisingly do not turn out to be what you expected, questionnaires that are misunderstood or do not deliver the answers that you need or that are not returned, laboratories that do not produce, patients who do not show up, heads of other departments who block access to their patients or materials, or yourself who needs more time to manage the complexity of the undertaking.

We have never heard of someone who was sorry for having done a pilot. Conversely, we know many persons who found out at much personal embarrassment and institutional cost that their project was unfeasible. In intermediate cases, the pilot may show the need to change questionnaires or procedures before the study goes ahead.

In principle, a pilot study should be exactly like your final study and test out all your procedures on a small number of persons. Often, it is better to approach the task piecemeal and pilot different aspects of the research one by one.

A tough question is how to do pilot studies and pilot analyses when ethical or institutional review board approval is necessary for some of the actions in a pilot study. One solution might be to avoid piloting some procedures; for example, try parts of the procedure – for example, you may not be able to randomize in a pilot, but you may be able to try out data collection procedures and forms. There is a degree of circularity about piloting, also in obtaining funding, as one may need funding for the pilot. In practice, the best step might be to ask the ethics committee or review board of your institute which aspects of the research can be piloted and under what conditions.

In Appendix E , several questions that you might ask in pilot studies are listed. They may lead to profound reassessments of your research – particularly if you are piloting the collection of new data, but also if the research involves analyses of existing data.

Ancillary information

It may be necessary to collect additional information about event rates or standard deviations of measurements to calculate the statistical precision that might be obtained. Also, sometimes you need other ways of “testing the water” like procedures to streamlining data collection from different centers in order to know whether the study is feasible. Depending on the study size and importance, such activities may become studies in themselves and actually take a lot of time and money.

Advance writing of paper: before full data collection and/or analysis

Whitesides’ advice is:

The key to efficient use of your and my time is that we start exchanging outlines and proposals as early in a project as possible. Do not, under any circumstances, wait until the collection of data is ‘complete’ before starting to write an outline. 38

After the pilot study, you have a firm grasp of all elements that are necessary for a scientific paper: introduction, materials and methods, results, and discussion. In the introduction, you explain why you have done this research. Almost always, an introduction comprises three ideas: what is the general problem? what is the particular research question? what study will you perform to answer that question? This is followed by the materials and methods section. They have been extensively discussed and have been fine-tuned in the study protocol and the pilot study. Thereafter come the results sections. By now, you know what tables or figures you want and how you can obtain them, but not what the final numbers will look like. You will also have an idea about the auxiliary tables that you might need to explain your data to others (such as a table with the baseline characteristics or an additional table with a subgroup analysis). You can now draft the layouts of all these tables. Visualizing the presentation of your results in advance is the “bare minimum” of writing in advance.

Finally, the discussion section. Can you write a discussion before you know the final data? Of course you can; you even must think ahead. In principle, there are only three possible outcomes: the study can give the results that you hoped for; it can show the inverse; or something indeterminate in between. In all instances, you can imagine how you will react. One possibility is that you are disappointed by the results of your study, and you will tend to find excuses for why it did not produce the results you hoped for. What excuses might your produce? The other possibility is that it does show what you wanted; then you may have to imagine how others will react and what their objections might be. If the results are indeterminate, everybody might be disappointed, and you will need to explain the failure of your research to give clear-cut results. When you detect a specific weakness by imagining this situation, you may wish to change aspects of your study.

As we explain in Appendix F , there is no need to write a very extensive paper as a first draft – on the contrary, it might be more useful to write a short paper, which has the advantage that others will more readily read it and comment on it.

Never be afraid to discuss your study at all stages extensively with others, not only your immediate research colleagues but also semi-outsiders and also in this advance-writing stage. If you know, or are told by others, that a particular direction of your results might not be believed and therefore draw criticism because of some potential deficiency in your study, why not remedy it at this stage? Looking at what you have written, or by discussing potential results with others, you will be able to imagine more clearly what your readers and critical colleagues might object to.

Writing a paper beforehand is the ultimate test of whether the research project is what you wanted, whether your reasoning flows logically, or whether you forgot something. The initial draft will be a yardstick for yourself and for others – whatever happens during the course of your research. This will help you to surmount surprise happenings: you have written down where you started and why, and therefore you will also know very securely when and why you have to take a detour – or even a U-turn.

Writing is difficult and time-consuming. Writing a paper can easily take 5–10 revisions, which might span a full year (inclusive of the time it takes your supervisor or your colleagues to produce comments). During the writing, you will often be obliged to go back to the data and do additional or different analyses. Since your paper will need many revisions, and this will take such a long time, why not take a head-start at the beginning of your data collection? It will save frustration and lost time at the end of your project.

Many guidelines and advices exist about writing, both about the substance (how to use words and phrases) and about the process. All beginning researchers should have a look at some books and papers about writing, and seasoned researchers can still profit from rereading them. Several reporting guidelines exist for several types of studies (RCTs, observational, diagnostic research, etc). They are often very detailed, in describing what should be in title, abstract, and so on. Although they should not be mechanically adhered to, 28 they help writing. In Appendix F , we have collected some wisdom that we particularly liked; several books on writing are listed, as well as reporting guidelines that help researchers to craft papers that are readable and contain all the information that is necessary and useful to others.

Now you can start “your research”

After the piloting and after having written your paper, you are ready to start your data collection, your analysis, or whatever is needed to “do your research”.

The work that is needed before you can start to “do your research” will take a great deal of time and effort. What will you have achieved after setting up a piece of research following the lengthy and involved precepts of this paper? You will have specified a limited research question that you will solve. You will add one little shining stone to the large mosaic of science. At the time that you do the study, you may still be too close to see its effect on the overall picture. That will come over the years.

Further reading

Some texts that we mention in the paper might be especially worthwhile for further reading; see Appendix G .

Acknowledgments

We thank Miguel Hernán, Stuart Pocock, and Bianca De Stavola for their informative comments on an earlier draft manuscript, as well as two anonymous reviewers of Clinical Epidemiology . The Centre for Global NCDs is supported by the Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund (097834/Z/11/B). This work was also supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013 / ERC grant agreement number 668954).

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

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Home » How to Publish a Research Paper – Step by Step Guide

How to Publish a Research Paper – Step by Step Guide

Table of Contents

Publishing a research paper is an important step for researchers to disseminate their findings to a wider audience and contribute to the advancement of knowledge in their field. Whether you are a graduate student, a postdoctoral fellow, or an established researcher, publishing a paper requires careful planning, rigorous research, and clear writing. In this process, you will need to identify a research question , conduct a thorough literature review , design a methodology, analyze data, and draw conclusions. Additionally, you will need to consider the appropriate journals or conferences to submit your work to and adhere to their guidelines for formatting and submission. In this article, we will discuss some ways to publish your Research Paper.

How to Publish a Research Paper

To Publish a Research Paper follow the guide below:

• Conduct original research : Conduct thorough research on a specific topic or problem. Collect data, analyze it, and draw conclusions based on your findings.
• Write the paper : Write a detailed paper describing your research. It should include an abstract, introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion.
• Choose a suitable journal or conference : Look for a journal or conference that specializes in your research area. You can check their submission guidelines to ensure your paper meets their requirements.
• Prepare your submission: Follow the guidelines and prepare your submission, including the paper, abstract, cover letter, and any other required documents.
• Submit the paper: Submit your paper online through the journal or conference website. Make sure you meet the submission deadline.
• Peer-review process : Your paper will be reviewed by experts in the field who will provide feedback on the quality of your research, methodology, and conclusions.
• Revisions : Based on the feedback you receive, revise your paper and resubmit it.
• Acceptance : Once your paper is accepted, you will receive a notification from the journal or conference. You may need to make final revisions before the paper is published.
• Publication : Your paper will be published online or in print. You can also promote your work through social media or other channels to increase its visibility.

How to Choose Journal for Research Paper Publication

Here are some steps to follow to help you select an appropriate journal:

• Identify your research topic and audience : Your research topic and intended audience should guide your choice of journal. Identify the key journals in your field of research and read the scope and aim of the journal to determine if your paper is a good fit.
• Analyze the journal’s impact and reputation : Check the impact factor and ranking of the journal, as well as its acceptance rate and citation frequency. A high-impact journal can give your paper more visibility and credibility.
• Consider the journal’s publication policies : Look for the journal’s publication policies such as the word count limit, formatting requirements, open access options, and submission fees. Make sure that you can comply with the requirements and that the journal is in line with your publication goals.
• Look at recent publications : Review recent issues of the journal to evaluate whether your paper would fit in with the journal’s current content and style.
• Seek advice from colleagues and mentors: Ask for recommendations and suggestions from your colleagues and mentors in your field, especially those who have experience publishing in the same or similar journals.
• Be prepared to make changes : Be prepared to revise your paper according to the requirements and guidelines of the chosen journal. It is also important to be open to feedback from the editor and reviewers.

List of Journals for Research Paper Publications

There are thousands of academic journals covering various fields of research. Here are some of the most popular ones, categorized by field:

General/Multidisciplinary

• Nature: https://www.nature.com/
• Science: https://www.sciencemag.org/
• PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): https://www.pnas.org/
• The Lancet: https://www.thelancet.com/
• JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama

Social Sciences/Humanities

• Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/psp
• Journal of Consumer Research: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/jcr
• Journal of Educational Psychology: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/edu
• Journal of Applied Psychology: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/apl
• Journal of Communication: https://academic.oup.com/joc
• American Journal of Political Science: https://ajps.org/
• Journal of International Business Studies: https://www.jibs.net/
• Journal of Marketing Research: https://www.ama.org/journal-of-marketing-research/

Natural Sciences

• Journal of Biological Chemistry: https://www.jbc.org/
• Cell: https://www.cell.com/
• Science Advances: https://advances.sciencemag.org/
• Chemical Reviews: https://pubs.acs.org/journal/chreay
• Angewandte Chemie: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/15213765
• Physical Review Letters: https://journals.aps.org/prl/
• Journal of Geophysical Research: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/2156531X
• Journal of High Energy Physics: https://link.springer.com/journal/13130

Engineering/Technology

• IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=5962385
• IEEE Transactions on Power Systems: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=59
• IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=42
• IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=87
• Journal of Engineering Mechanics: https://ascelibrary.org/journal/jenmdt
• Journal of Materials Science: https://www.springer.com/journal/10853
• Journal of Chemical Engineering of Japan: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/jcej
• Journal of Mechanical Design: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/mechanicaldesign

Medical/Health Sciences

• New England Journal of Medicine: https://www.nejm.org/
• The BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal): https://www.bmj.com/
• Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama
• Annals of Internal Medicine: https://www.acpjournals.org/journal/aim
• American Journal of Epidemiology: https://academic.oup.com/aje
• Journal of Clinical Oncology: https://ascopubs.org/journal/jco
• Journal of Infectious Diseases: https://academic.oup.com/jid

List of Conferences for Research Paper Publications

There are many conferences that accept research papers for publication. The specific conferences you should consider will depend on your field of research. Here are some suggestions for conferences in a few different fields:

Computer Science and Information Technology:

• IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM): https://www.ieee-infocom.org/
• ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Data Communication: https://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/
• IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP): https://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP/
• ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS): https://www.sigsac.org/ccs/
• ACM Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (CHI): https://chi2022.acm.org/

Engineering:

• IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA): https://www.ieee-icra.org/
• International Conference on Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (ICMAE): http://www.icmae.org/
• International Conference on Civil and Environmental Engineering (ICCEE): http://www.iccee.org/
• International Conference on Materials Science and Engineering (ICMSE): http://www.icmse.org/
• International Conference on Energy and Power Engineering (ICEPE): http://www.icepe.org/

Natural Sciences:

• American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/meetings/national-meeting.html
• American Physical Society March Meeting: https://www.aps.org/meetings/march/
• International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology (ICEST): http://www.icest.org/
• International Conference on Natural Science and Environment (ICNSE): http://www.icnse.org/
• International Conference on Life Science and Biological Engineering (LSBE): http://www.lsbe.org/

Social Sciences:

• Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA): https://www.asanet.org/annual-meeting-2022
• International Conference on Social Science and Humanities (ICSSH): http://www.icssh.org/
• International Conference on Psychology and Behavioral Sciences (ICPBS): http://www.icpbs.org/
• International Conference on Education and Social Science (ICESS): http://www.icess.org/
• International Conference on Management and Information Science (ICMIS): http://www.icmis.org/

How to Publish a Research Paper in Journal

Publishing a research paper in a journal is a crucial step in disseminating scientific knowledge and contributing to the field. Here are the general steps to follow:

• Choose a research topic : Select a topic of your interest and identify a research question or problem that you want to investigate. Conduct a literature review to identify the gaps in the existing knowledge that your research will address.
• Conduct research : Develop a research plan and methodology to collect data and conduct experiments. Collect and analyze data to draw conclusions that address the research question.
• Write a paper: Organize your findings into a well-structured paper with clear and concise language. Your paper should include an introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion. Use academic language and provide references for your sources.
• Choose a journal: Choose a journal that is relevant to your research topic and audience. Consider factors such as impact factor, acceptance rate, and the reputation of the journal.
• Follow journal guidelines : Review the submission guidelines and formatting requirements of the journal. Follow the guidelines carefully to ensure that your paper meets the journal’s requirements.
• Submit your paper : Submit your paper to the journal through the online submission system or by email. Include a cover letter that briefly explains the significance of your research and why it is suitable for the journal.
• Wait for reviews: Your paper will be reviewed by experts in the field. Be prepared to address their comments and make revisions to your paper.
• Revise and resubmit: Make revisions to your paper based on the reviewers’ comments and resubmit it to the journal. If your paper is accepted, congratulations! If not, consider revising and submitting it to another journal.
• Address reviewer comments : Reviewers may provide comments and suggestions for revisions to your paper. Address these comments carefully and thoughtfully to improve the quality of your paper.
• Submit the final version: Once your revisions are complete, submit the final version of your paper to the journal. Be sure to follow any additional formatting guidelines and requirements provided by the journal.
• Publication : If your paper is accepted, it will be published in the journal. Some journals provide online publication while others may publish a print version. Be sure to cite your published paper in future research and communicate your findings to the scientific community.

How to Publish a Research Paper for Students

Here are some steps you can follow to publish a research paper as an Under Graduate or a High School Student:

• Select a topic: Choose a topic that is relevant and interesting to you, and that you have a good understanding of.
• Conduct research : Gather information and data on your chosen topic through research, experiments, surveys, or other means.
• Write the paper : Start with an outline, then write the introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion sections of the paper. Be sure to follow any guidelines provided by your instructor or the journal you plan to submit to.
• Edit and revise: Review your paper for errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Ask a peer or mentor to review your paper and provide feedback for improvement.
• Choose a journal : Look for journals that publish papers in your field of study and that are appropriate for your level of research. Some popular journals for students include PLOS ONE, Nature, and Science.
• Submit the paper: Follow the submission guidelines for the journal you choose, which typically include a cover letter, abstract, and formatting requirements. Be prepared to wait several weeks to months for a response.
• Address feedback : If your paper is accepted with revisions, address the feedback from the reviewers and resubmit your paper. If your paper is rejected, review the feedback and consider revising and resubmitting to a different journal.

How to Publish a Research Paper for Free

Publishing a research paper for free can be challenging, but it is possible. Here are some steps you can take to publish your research paper for free:

• Choose a suitable open-access journal: Look for open-access journals that are relevant to your research area. Open-access journals allow readers to access your paper without charge, so your work will be more widely available.
• Check the journal’s reputation : Before submitting your paper, ensure that the journal is reputable by checking its impact factor, publication history, and editorial board.
• Follow the submission guidelines : Every journal has specific guidelines for submitting papers. Make sure to follow these guidelines carefully to increase the chances of acceptance.
• Submit your paper : Once you have completed your research paper, submit it to the journal following their submission guidelines.
• Wait for the review process: Your paper will undergo a peer-review process, where experts in your field will evaluate your work. Be patient during this process, as it can take several weeks or even months.
• Revise your paper : If your paper is rejected, don’t be discouraged. Revise your paper based on the feedback you receive from the reviewers and submit it to another open-access journal.
• Promote your research: Once your paper is published, promote it on social media and other online platforms. This will increase the visibility of your work and help it reach a wider audience.

Journals and Conferences for Free Research Paper publications

Here are the websites of the open-access journals and conferences mentioned:

Open-Access Journals:

• PLOS ONE – https://journals.plos.org/plosone/
• BMC Research Notes – https://bmcresnotes.biomedcentral.com/
• Frontiers in… – https://www.frontiersin.org/
• Journal of Open Research Software – https://openresearchsoftware.metajnl.com/
• PeerJ – https://peerj.com/

Conferences:

• IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) – https://globecom2022.ieee-globecom.org/
• IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) – https://infocom2022.ieee-infocom.org/
• IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) – https://www.ieee-icdm.org/
• ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Data Communication (SIGCOMM) – https://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/
• ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) – https://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2022/

Importance of Research Paper Publication

Research paper publication is important for several reasons, both for individual researchers and for the scientific community as a whole. Here are some reasons why:

• Advancing scientific knowledge : Research papers provide a platform for researchers to present their findings and contribute to the body of knowledge in their field. These papers often contain novel ideas, experimental data, and analyses that can help to advance scientific understanding.
• Building a research career : Publishing research papers is an essential component of building a successful research career. Researchers are often evaluated based on the number and quality of their publications, and having a strong publication record can increase one’s chances of securing funding, tenure, or a promotion.
• Peer review and quality control: Publication in a peer-reviewed journal means that the research has been scrutinized by other experts in the field. This peer review process helps to ensure the quality and validity of the research findings.
• Recognition and visibility : Publishing a research paper can bring recognition and visibility to the researchers and their work. It can lead to invitations to speak at conferences, collaborations with other researchers, and media coverage.
• Impact on society : Research papers can have a significant impact on society by informing policy decisions, guiding clinical practice, and advancing technological innovation.

Advantages of Research Paper Publication

There are several advantages to publishing a research paper, including:

• Recognition: Publishing a research paper allows researchers to gain recognition for their work, both within their field and in the academic community as a whole. This can lead to new collaborations, invitations to conferences, and other opportunities to share their research with a wider audience.
• Career advancement : A strong publication record can be an important factor in career advancement, particularly in academia. Publishing research papers can help researchers secure funding, grants, and promotions.
• Dissemination of knowledge : Research papers are an important way to share new findings and ideas with the broader scientific community. By publishing their research, scientists can contribute to the collective body of knowledge in their field and help advance scientific understanding.
• Feedback and peer review : Publishing a research paper allows other experts in the field to provide feedback on the research, which can help improve the quality of the work and identify potential flaws or limitations. Peer review also helps ensure that research is accurate and reliable.
• Citation and impact : Published research papers can be cited by other researchers, which can help increase the impact and visibility of the research. High citation rates can also help establish a researcher’s reputation and credibility within their field.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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How to Write A Research Paper From Topic To Final Draft

Navigating the journey of writing a research paper can be daunting but achievable with a structured approach.

contributed

Each step is crucial, from understanding your assignment to submitting a well-crafted document. This guide aims to streamline the process, providing clear directions to enhance your research and writing skills.

Topic Selection

Understanding the assignment.

Start by comprehensively reviewing your assignment to grasp the required scope and objectives. This process, like what writers do when you pay for paper writing, ensures that your chosen topic meets all academic criteria and aligns with the assignment’s goals.

Brainstorming Ideas

Generate potential topics through brainstorming, focusing on areas that spark your interest. Just like when you pay for paper , this initial enthusiasm will fuel your research and writing phases, making the process more engaging.

Preliminary Research

Assess the availability of sources for your potential topics. This step is vital to ensure enough material supports your paper. Narrow your focus based on these findings to refine your topic choice.

Finalizing the Topic

Select a topic that is specific, relevant, and researchable. Confirm this choice with your instructor to ensure it fits the assignment’s requirements.

Conducting Research

Creating a research plan.

Develop a clear plan with set goals and a timeline. This will guide your research activities and help you stay on track, ensuring a thorough investigation of your chosen topic.

Identifying Reliable Sources

To gather credible information, differentiate between primary and secondary sources. Review scholarly materials from academic journals and books and evaluate each source’s credibility.

Note-taking Strategies

Organize your notes effectively using digital tools or index cards. This organization is crucial for managing the information you’ll gather and for later reference during writing.

Managing Citations

Maintain meticulous records of your sources to avoid plagiarism. Use tools like Zotero or EndNote for efficient citation management, ensuring all references are correctly noted.

Developing a Thesis Statement

Defining a thesis statement.

A thesis statement is your research paper’s backbone, outlining the main argument or claim. It sets the direction for your paper and focuses your research.

Crafting a Strong Thesis

Your thesis should be clear, concise, and arguable. Reflect on examples of both strong and weak thesis statements to ensure yours stands firm.

Refining the Thesis Statement

Based on your research findings, revise your thesis as necessary to ensure it remains aligned with your paper’s evolving content.

Creating an Outline

Purpose of an outline.

An outline organizes your thoughts and structures your argument. It is essential to maintain a clear direction and ensure that each part of your paper contributes to your overall thesis – this is something experts pay a lot of attention to when you pay for custom research paper.

Structure of an Outline

To effectively plan the introduction, body, and conclusion sections, use a hierarchical structure with Roman numerals, letters, and numbers.

Detailed Outline Example

I. Introduction 

A. Hook: Interesting fact or statistic 

B. Background information on the topic 

C. Thesis statement: Assertive and clearly defined

II. Body 

A. Main point 1: Supporting evidence and analysis 

B. Main point 2: Further evidence and contrasting viewpoints 

C. Main point 3: Additional analysis and how it supports your thesis

III. Conclusion 

A. Summary of main points 

B. Restatement of the thesis in light of the discussion 

C. Closing thought or call to action

This structure ensures each section contributes towards supporting your thesis statement.

Writing the First Draft

Writing the introduction.

Start with a compelling hook and introduce your thesis and main points. This sets the tone and direction for the entire paper.

Developing Body Paragraphs

To present and analyze your research, follow a structured format within your paragraphs. Use transitions to connect ideas smoothly, maintaining a logical flow.

Writing the Conclusion

Summarize the main points and restate your thesis, reflecting on the implications of your findings. End with a strong closing statement to leave a lasting impression.

Maintaining a Consistent Writing Process

Effective writing involves staying focused and motivated. Set specific goals and adhere to a schedule to manage your workload. Incorporate regular breaks to prevent burnout and continuously revise your work to enhance clarity and coherence. This routine ensures steady progress and high-quality results in your research paper.

Revising and Editing

Self-revision techniques.

Self-revision is a critical step in refining your research paper. Focus on content clarity, coherence, and consistency. Evaluate the logical flow and organization to ensure that every section effectively contributes to your argument. This involves tightening your narrative, sharpening your points, and ensuring clear thesis communication.

Peer Review

The peer review process offers invaluable insights. Having classmates or colleagues review your draft can provide fresh perspectives and important feedback. Be open to receiving constructive criticism and prepared to offer thoughtful feedback on others’ work. This collaborative process can help identify overlooked weaknesses and opportunities to strengthen your argument.

Professional Editing

Consider using professional editing services to ensure your paper meets the highest academic standards. Tools like Grammarly and the Hemingway App can assist in polishing grammar, enhancing readability, and eliminating stylistic errors.

Finalizing the Research Paper

Formatting the paper.

Proper formatting must adhere to specific academic styles like APA, MLA, or Chicago. Ensure your paper’s structure is correct, including the title page, headers, footnotes, and bibliography. 

This not only contributes to the paper’s professionalism but also to its readability and compliance with academic standards.

Proofreading

A thorough final proofread is essential to catch any remaining errors. Effective proofreading strategies include reading aloud and focusing on one type of error at a time, such as punctuation, grammar, or spelling. This detailed review ensures that the final document is polished and free of errors that could distract from the content.

Submitting the Paper

Before submitting, double-check the submission guidelines to ensure your paper complies with all requirements. Submit your work on time and in the correct format to avoid last-minute stress and potential penalties.

In conclusion, embracing thorough research, systematic organization, meticulous revision, and careful proofreading can significantly enhance the quality of your paper. 

Remember, resources online are available to assist you, offering everything from pay-for-research paper services to expert guidance. Following these structured steps, you can develop a strong research paper that effectively communicates your findings and stands out academically.

TeachThought is an organization dedicated to innovation in education through the growth of outstanding teachers.

Building a Wall Around Science: The Effect of U.S.-China Tensions on International Scientific Research

This paper examines the impact of rising U.S.-China geopolitical tensions on three main dimensions of science: STEM trainee mobility between these countries, usage of scientific works between scientists in each country, and scientist productivity in each country. We examine each dimension from a “U.S.” perspective and from a “China” perspective in an effort to provide evidence around the asymmetric effects of isolationism and geopolitical tension on science. Using a differences-in-differences approach in tandem with CV and publication data, we find that between 2016 and 2019 ethnically Chinese graduate students became 16% less likely to attend a U.S.-based Ph.D. program, and that those that did became 4% less likely to stay in the U.S. after graduation. In both instances, these students became more likely to move to a non-U.S. anglophone country instead. Second, we document a sharp decline in Chinese usage of U.S. science as measured by citations, but no such decline in the propensity of U.S. scientists to cite Chinese research. Third, we find that while a decline in Chinese usage of U.S. science does not appear to affect the average productivity of China-based researchers as measured by publications, heightened anti-Chinese sentiment in the U.S. appears to reduce the productivity of ethnically Chinese scientists in the U.S. by 2-6%. Our results do not suggest any clear “winner,” but instead indicate that increasing isolationism and geopolitical tension lead to reduced talent and knowledge flows between the U.S. and China, which are likely to be particularly damaging to international science. The effects on productivity are still small but are likely to only grow as nationalistic and isolationist policies also escalate. The results as a whole strongly suggest the presence of a “chilling effect” for ethnically Chinese scholars in the U.S., affecting both the U.S.’s ability to attract and retain talent as well as the productivity of its ethnically Chinese scientists.

We are grateful to Lee Branstetter, Emilie Feldman, Ina Ganguli, Mae McDonnell, and Natalie Carlson, as well as seminar participants at the Geography of Innovation Conference, Wharton Emerging Markets Conference, Sussex University Department of Economics, and the Chinese Economists Society Conference. We are especially appreciative of Dimensions, which provided us with the data used in this analysis. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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Development co-operation

The OECD designs international standards and guidelines for development co-operation, based on best practices, and monitors their implementation by its members. It works closely with member and partner countries, and other stakeholders (such as the United Nations and other multilateral entities) to help them implement their development commitments. It also invites developing country governments to take an active part in policy dialogue.

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Key messages, charting development co-operation trends and challenges.

The OECD keeps track of key trends and challenges for development co-operation providers and offers practical guidance. It draws from the knowledge and experience of Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members and partners, as well as from independent expertise, with the ultimate goal of advancing reforms in the sector, and achieving impact. Using data, evidence, and peer learning, this work is captured in publications and online tools that are made publicly available.

Making development co-operation more effective and impactful

The OECD works with governments, civil society organisations, multilateral organisations, and others to improve the quality of development co-operation. Through peer reviews and evaluations, it periodically assesses aid programmes and co-operation policies, and offers recommendations to improve their efficiency. The OECD also brings together multiple stakeholders to share good and innovative practices and discuss progress.

Strengthening development co-operation evaluation practices and systems

The OECD helps development co-operation providers evaluate their actions both to better learn from experience and to improve transparency and accountability. Innovative approaches, such as using smart and big data, digital technology and remote sensing, help gather evidence and inform policy decisions. With in-depth analysis and guidance, the Organisation helps providers manage for results by building multi-stakeholder partnerships and adapting to changing contexts and crisis situations. 

Civil society engagement in development co-operation

National and international civil society organisations (CSOs) are key partners in monitoring development co-operation policies and programmes. Development co-operation can also be channelled to or through CSOs: 

Aid is characterized as going to CSOs when it is in the form of core contributions and contributions to programmes, with the funds programmed by the CSOs. 

Aid is characterized as going through CSOs when funds are channeled through these organisations to implement donor-initiated projects. This is also known as earmarked funding.

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