This article provides a detailed guide on how to navigate the challenge of writing a reliable research paper. It talks about recommended steps to be followed and elements to be covered in the paper. It offers tips on selecting a good topic and gathering the right information which can set research up for success. Finally, this article provides some guidelines on citation as well as on how to use free online tools, which can help deliver a sharp and clear final copy. Start writing an A+ research paper now!

How to start a research paper?

Choose a research paper topic that interests and challenges you the most. Your attitude towards the topic may well determine amount of effort, enthusiasm you put into your research. Focus on a limited aspect, narrow it down from “Religion” to “World Religion” to “Buddhism.” Obtain teacher approval for your theme idea and thesis before making full-scale research. It will also help save time and effort.

If you are uncertain as to what is expected of you in completing assignment or project, re-read your assignment sheet carefully or ask your teacher. Select a subject you can manage. Avoid subjects that are too technical, learned, or specialized. Avoid themes that have only a very narrow range of source materials. Be responsible, devoted to paper you write – it is the main key to an excellent grade.

Finding the right topic and making paper stand out

It is essential for students to examine and write about a topic they like and know better. Students who are invested and involved in the subject pay attention to details in making sure that paper is as strong as it could be. Achieving this goal means addressing requirements of each paper section such as research questions, methods, analysis, and discussion, among others. Surf the internet to get inspired by various research paper topics.

One of the initial steps you should perform in making a paper stand out is doing a bit of initial exploring to see what is out there already, think about future outline, thesis or hypothesis. Ask what has already been done about this particular issue in the past. Are there pathways that have not yet been explored, which student should shed light on? Indeed, one can make paper stand out by ensuring that some new or novel insights are explored, no matter how small. This will make research paper not only publishable or presentable at academic venues, but it’ll also receive high grades from professor assessing it.

Narrowing your topic

After going through the necessary amount of information, data and literature available on your desired topic, it is time to narrow the research down. It’s not appropriate if chosen issue is very broad as there may be several important aspects within this very theme. It won’t be a good solution to cover them all in one research paper as it’ll turn out vague or generic.

Pursue the unique pathway that caught your interest, and that’ll occupy a niche as well as advance the value of the conversation regarding the subject. At this stage, you should explain the reasons why your research study is essential and describe in detail the significance of your research.

Find information

For general or background information needed for an outline creation, check out useful URLs, general information online, using search engines, or encyclopedias online such as Britannica. Use search engines or other search tools as a starting point. Pay attention to domain name extensions, .edu (educational institution), .org (non-profit organization) or .gov (government). These sites represent institutions and are more reliable, however, be aware of possible political bias on some government sites.

Be selective of .com (commercial) sites. Many of these sites are excellent; although, a large number of them contain advertisements for products and links to outer irrelevant sources. Network Solutions provides link where you can find out what some of the other extensions stand for. Be wary of millions of personal home pages on the Net. Quality of these personal homepages varies greatly. Learning how to evaluate websites critically and search effectively on the Internet will help you eliminate irrelevant sites and waste less of your time.

The recent arrival of a variety of domain name extensions such as .biz (commercial businesses), .pro, .info (info on products / organizations), .name, .ws (WebSite), .cc (Cocos Island) or .sh (St. Helena) or .tv (Tuvalu) may create some confusion as you won’t tell whether .cc or .sh or .tv site is in reality .com, .edu, .gov, .net, or .org site. Many new extensions have no registration restrictions and are available to anyone who wishes to register a distinct domain name that has not already been taken. For instance, if Books.com is unavailable, you can register as Books.ws or Books.info via a service agent such as Register.com.

If you need books for your research in the Library, use the OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog).

CHECK OUT OTHER PRINT MATERIALS AVAILABLE IN THE LIBRARY:

As you gather your resources, note down full bibliographical information (author, title, place of publication, publisher, date of publication, page numbers, URLs, creation or modification dates on Web pages, and your date of access) on your worksheet, printout, or enter the information on your laptop or desktop computer for later retrieval. If printing from the Internet, set up the browser to print the URL and date of access for every page. Remember that an article without bibliographical information is useless since you cannot cite it as a source.

Make your thesis statement

Most research papers normally require a thesis, even on the step of outline creation. If you are not sure, ask your teacher whether your paper requires it and what they expect to see in your research paper thesis statement. In short, a thesis is the main idea, a central point of your research paper. The arguments you provide in your paper should be based on this central idea, that is why it is so important. Do some critical thinking, write your thesis statement down in one sentence. Your research paper thesis statement is like a declaration of your belief. The main portion of your essay will consist of arguments for support and defend this belief.

A thesis statement should be provided early in your paper – in the introduction part, or in the second paragraph if your paper is longer. It is impossible to create a thesis statement immediately when you have just started fulfilling your assignment. Before you write a thesis statement together with outline, you should collect, organize and analyze materials and your ideas. You cannot make a finally formulated statement before you have completed your research paper. It’ll naturally change while you develop your ideas.

Stay away from generic, too fuzzy statements and arguments. Use a particular subject. The paper should present something new for audience, make it interesting and educative for your readers. Avoid citing other authors in this section. Present your own ideas in your own words instead of simply copying from other writers.

A THESIS STATEMENT SHOULD DO THE FOLLOWING:

Make sure your thesis is strong. If you have time and opportunity, show it to your instructor, receive some revision comments, work on improvement of weak points. Otherwise, you may estimate it yourself.

YOU MUST CHECK:

A well-prepared thesis means well-shaped ideas. It increases credibility of paper and makes a good impression of its author. More helpful hints about Writing a Research Paper.

Make a research paper outline

A RESEARCH PAPER BASICALLY HAS THE FOLLOWING STRUCTURE:

A research paper outline might be formal or informal. An informal outline (working outline) is a tool helping authors put down and organize their ideas. It is subject to revision, addition and canceling, without paying much attention to form. It helps authors make their key points clear and arrange them.

Sometimes students are asked to submit formal outlines with their research papers. In a formal outline, numbers and letters are used to arrange topics and subtopics. The letters and numbers of the same kind should be placed directly under one another. The topics denoted by their headings and subheadings should be grouped in a logical order.

All points of a research paper outline must relate to the same major topic that you first mentioned in your capital Roman numeral.

Researcher recommends that this study be expanded by using other method to measure perception of presidential tweets such as a random survey of undecided voters
Purpose of an outline is to help you think through your topic carefully and organize it logically before you start writing. A good outline is the most important step in writing an excellent paper. Check your outline to ensure that points covered flow logically from one to the other. Include in your outline an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. You may create the first outline as a draft and edit it while writing a research paper.

Introduction — State your thesis and purpose of your research paper clearly. What is the chief reason you are writing the paper? State also how you plan to approach your issue. Is this a factual report, a book review, a comparison, or an analysis of a problem? Explain briefly the major points you’ll cover in your paper and why readers should be interested in your theme.

Body — This is where you present your arguments to support your thesis statement. This section is divided into many parts, that may vary, depending on your discipline, teachers’ requirements, etc. Usually, the body comprises a literature review, methodology, analysis, results, and discussion.

Conclusion — Restate or reword your thesis / research question. Summarize your arguments. Explain why you have come to this particular conclusion. Why your research is valuable and how acquired results can be used for future researches.

Organize your notes

Organize materials you have gathered according to your outline. Critically analyze your research data. Using the best available sources, check for accuracy and verify that information is factual, up-to-date, and correct. Opposing views should also be noted if they help support your thesis. This is the most important stage in writing a research paper. Here you’ll analyze, synthesize, sort, and digest info you have gathered and hopefully learn something about your topic which is real purpose of doing a research paper in the first place. You must also effectively communicate your thoughts, ideas, insights, and research findings to others through written words as in a report, an essay, a research or term paper, or through spoken words as in an oral or multimedia presentation with audio-visual aids.

Do not include any information that is not relevant to your issue under discussion, and do not include information that you do not understand. Make sure information that you have noted is carefully recorded and in your own words, if possible. Plagiarism is definitely out of question. Document all ideas borrowed or quotes used very accurately. As you classify your notes, jot down detailed bibliographical information for each cited paragraph and have it ready to transfer to your Works Cited page.
Devise your own method to organize your materials. One method may be to mark with a different color ink or use a marker to identify sections in your outline, IA3b – meaning that the item “Accessing WWW” belongs in the following location of your outline:

Group your notes following the outline codes you have assigned to your notes, like, IA2, IA3, IA4, etc. This method will enable you to quickly put all your resources in the right place as you systematize your notes according to your outline.

Knowing what is out there – the literature review

Research act in itself is a cumulative process. This means that one is expected to contribute something to the body of knowledge. And because of this expectation, this is where literature review process becomes so helpful in narrowing down and also providing background information about the topic. Engaging in a literature review helps determine what’s already known about problem that you are interested in exploring. No doubt doing a comprehensive literature review will save you time down the road by having clarity about the specific research questions that you want to explore.

The research question(s)

Research questions and research method that you will use to find answers are important because there are specific criteria that might be satisfied for them to be valid. First, your research questions should be specific in scope and timeframe. In scientific research, for example, research questions lend themselves to being measurable using a wide variety of methodology, be they quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods.

If your research question, for example, pertains to how individual voters view women candidates for president, perhaps the best method is by doing field interviews or by conducting a phone survey of these voters using a random sampling method. There are many ways that may help you derive answers to your questions. It is crucial, however, to be aware that each method has an inherent set of strengths and weaknesses.

Research methodology

There exist various research paper methods that you may use while preparing information for your paper. Check the most popular methods and decide which suits you better:

• Survey. Those conducted using a large sample with participants chosen randomly tend to be viewed highly in the realm of peer-reviewed research. However, it is essential to remember that surveys also have weaknesses because participants might not necessarily give their honest opinion (i.e., giving ‘prestige’ or politically correct answers), and they are influenced by many factors in the way that they answer survey questions.
• Field experiments. Giving a specific group certain things while others experience a different situation these experiments are also employed to find answers to the impact of a treatment or a program on a community. Methods such as content analysis, experiments, direct observation, or participant observations are also conventional methods being used by researchers to find answers to research questions. Every student researcher should be familiar with standard research methods available for use and understand strengths and weaknesses that these methods bring to the study.

A note about replication: In writing the methods section of your research paper, it is crucial to be as precise and detailed about the methodology as possible. Other researchers should replicate the method that you employed to see if they can come up with the same findings that you arrived with. Replication is a critical component in the process of validating results and strengthening body that we have accumulated on specific research topics.

Writing the results, analysis, discussion, and conclusion

After collecting data via research methods part, it is time to make sense of information you have. Results, analysis, discussion, and conclusion section help provide a space for you, as researcher, to interpret findings of your study and juxtapose it with previous findings and potential implications for future research work.

• Results. First, it is important to talk about findings of your study. It is helpful to ask the following questions: Were research questions in your research answered? If you created a series of hypothesis statements (or educated guesses), were they supported or rejected? As well, it’ll be helpful if you provide support for your research findings in the form of tables, graphs, statistical figures, and other visual representations to aid reader in trying to understand and make sense of your data and information.
• Analysis. In conducting analysis, you, as a writer and researcher, will play an important role in interpreting findings of your study to readers. Some thoughts must be provided in the following questions, for example: Are your results significant? Did findings support or reject previous research findings? With available evidence, it behooves you as a researcher to provide context and explain significance of information that you uncovered. It involves comparing and contrasting how your findings hold up against previous findings in similar studies.
• Discussion. After laying out findings and doing analysis, it is only fitting to acknowledge some of the major or minor limitations of your study. Doing this part provides a necessary disclosure and a sense of transparency to the reader in terms of potential weakness or weaknesses of your research. Doing this part might even help future researchers design new methods as a way to deal with or solve the limitations of your study.
• Conclusion. This section provides a chance for writer to summarize and tie everything together into a coherent narrative. A summary typically touches on the main points beginning with the main research question, methods employed, results, including findings. Conclusion section gives way for readers to remember the gist of your study. This section is especially helpful when readers don’t have enough time or when they are doing preliminary research and are trying to assess your research paper content quickly.

The process of writing a research paper

Flow and organization are two of the most important elements of writing. This means that your research paper must be structured well in such a way that every content element or sections that you write contribute to an overall message or an overarching theme. Often, it is helpful to write a simple one-sentence thesis statement stating what your research is all about. As you write, thesis statement helps serve as a reminder and as a compass to what are you trying to achieve with research paper.

It is smart to create a comprehensive outline with thesis statement to help with the clarity and article’s organization. For it to be helpful, your outline should indicate the sections that you want to cover in the research paper. For each section, use some bullet point statements to guide and remind you what you should say or what ideas you should express in that particular section. A good outline allows researcher to work in chunks (especially when you have flow in your thinking), and it helps prevent you as a writer from getting overwhelmed by the whole task. It is highly recommended that researchers write in bursts of time, typically two to three hours at a time, to maximize energy and focus.

Remember, as is true in any piece of writing, a good research paper is the one that is finished. Perfection and procrastination are enemy of good in writing process. Be sure to have enough discipline to dedicate time, a regular schedule, for doing the writing regardless of whether you have ‘writer’s block’ or not. This is the only way that you’ll meet deadline and complete project.

Write your first draft

Start with the first topic in your research paper outline. Read all relevant notes you have gathered that have been marked, example, with the Roman numeral I. Summarize, paraphrase or quote directly for each idea you plan to use in your essay. Use a technique that suits you, for example, write summaries, paraphrases or quotations on note cards, or separate sheets of lined paper. Before you know it, you have a well-organized term paper completed exactly as outlined.

After you have completed draft, it is worthy to remind everyone that a first draft is never perfect. You would go through at least three reviews and iterations making sure it follows thesis before it can be ready for submission. Consider asking somebody, a friend, or a professional to read your draft and help you identify some gaps or passages that reader has difficulty understanding. Also, be sure you put the draft aside, get some fresh air or do something else for a few hours before going back and reading it again.

After the draft – reviewing your work

Here are some useful tips that every student should follow while working on research paper draft. It is better to check all aspects twice and submit an excellent paper for grading.

Read your paper for any content errors. Double-check facts and figures. Arrange and rearrange ideas to follow your outline format. Reorganize your outline if necessary, but always keep your paper’s purpose and your readers in mind.

CHECKLIST ONE:

CHECKLIST TWO:

USE “THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE” BY WILLIAM STRUNK

For an excellent source on English composition, check out this classic book by William Strunk, Jr. on the Elements of Style. Contents include Elementary Rules of Usage, Elementary Principles of Composition, Words & Expressions Commonly Misused, An Approach to Style with a List of Reminders: Place yourself in the background, Revise and rewrite, Avoid fancy words, Be clear, Do not inject opinion, Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity, and much more. Details of The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. partially available online.

APPLY CORRECT CITATION AND FORMATTING

There is also a particular formatting style you must follow. It depends on the field of your studies or requirements of your University supervisor. There are several formatting styles typically used. The most commonly used are APA style and MLA style. However, there are such style guides as, Harvard, Chicago Manual of Style, American Medical Association (AMA) Style, APSA (American Political Science Association), ASA (American Sociological Association), IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and more. Check informative style guides before completing formatting.

APA (American Psychological Association) style is mostly used to cite sources within social sciences field. The detailed information is in Publication Manual of American Psychological Association, (6th ed., 2nd printing).

MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used for liberal arts and humanities. The most recent printed guide on it is MLA Handbook (8th ed.). Instead of providing individual recommendations for each publishing format (printed, online, e-books, etc.), this edition recommends a single universal set of guidelines, which writers can apply to any kind of source. Also, remember to use parenthetical citations for MLA research paper format correctly.

Tools for research paper help

After you’ve done your review and did a few rounds of iterations for your research report, it is time to subject your paper to copy editing. Thanks to artificial intelligence-driven (AI) sites, copy editing is no longer such an expensive and onerous task. And professional copy editing can be done free of charge with the set of tools that can be found online.

Grammar checkers offer a chance to scan paper and find spelling mistakes, lexical or grammar issues. Even if paper’s content is good, misspelled words and errors in tenses may result in a low grade that will be very disappointing.

Plagiarism checkers provide excellent service such as text scan to make sure that your paper did not miss any crucial citation or did not fail to give credit to specific quotations and passages. Plagiarism is a plague that must be avoided at all costs. Researchers must take great care in giving credit where credit is due. Doing otherwise may lead to not only failing grades but also ruined careers and reputations.

Citation generators. Writing the research report, researchers should follow certain conventions of citing other people’s work in final paper of the study. The most common citation styles include American Psychological Society (APA), Harvard Citation, Chicago Manual of Style, and a few others that can be easily generated with help of free tools. Use it to transform one citation style to another. This is especially helpful if you are trying to submit your research report for peer-review or publication consideration with various publication outlets prescribing different citation styles.

Title page generators. A title page is the first thing your professor sees upon grading research paper. So, it should be formatted perfectly. Many college students find it difficult to memorize all indents, title case letters, and spaces that are specific for each standard. Use a generator to create title pages and format your citations in APA, MLA, Chicago and other styles.

When you have a research report ready, it is time to submit it for publication consideration or for peer-review for a potential presentation at a conference. It is important for researcher to read and follow carefully prescribed editorial guidelines of publication that you are submitting it to. Not following guidelines could prove detrimental — rejection of otherwise solid research work.

Some words of encouragement

Writing a research paper need not be a daunting and frustrating task. There is a set formula that a student or researcher follows to succeed with this scholarly endeavor. The best place to start with this process is to think about the topics that you are passionate about. Being invested and motivated in subject goes a long way in producing a strong quality research paper.

Next is to conduct a thorough literature review to see what’s already been done in the area that you are interested in doing research. This process helps you narrow your scope and will help set you up for success in finding the niche contribution that you want to achieve in doing the research. Finally, it is important to create a guiding thesis statement and an outline where you may work in chunks without losing the big picture and with a clear understanding as to how each element of paper contributes to flow and a strong organization of your final document.