Research Paper
Research paper represents your own thoughts, Interpretation, evaluation, findings or arguments. When you start writing your research paper, just create a new model based on what you know about it and backed up by previously existed information.
A research paper must be designed like this that any reader can identify the purpose of study with supportive arguments, information and validation.
Steps to write a research paper
1. Select a Topic
A very first step is to choose a topic of your interest which has a wide scope to be researched. At the time of selection of your topic, Determine whether sufficient information about the topic is available or not. You should also check whether topic can narrow down to specific enough so that it can be covered appropriately in the paper.
For e.g.: Choose a topic “education”, narrow down it to girl’s education in India.
2. Find out a Research Question
Before starting your research, you have to pen down a research question that describes the view-point and are going to be stated with your validation. Some points are:
- A research statement must be self-explained, it must not be in vague language.
- A research question must not contain words like “In my opinion or I think”.
- A research question itself is a statement, must not be in question form.
- It must express your own idea and viewpoint, not a known fact of statement.
For e.g.: The impact of girl’s education towards the society uplifting in a State.
3. Study Related Material and Collect Information
You must have wide variety of source of information in the form of books, journals, online tutorials, video, newspaper, magazine etc. So devote sufficient time to search about existing material to gain thorough knowledge related to the topic. Note down all important information for later use.
Get all the bibliographic information of searched material so that you can cite the work in your paper. Read the literature and then paraphrase the useful information in your own words to avoid plagiarism.
If you have decided the research question. But after studying sufficient material, you realize that your research question must be different from what you have chosen. It is fine if you change your focus on different question but keep in mind that your findings must answer a new question. A list of do’s while researching:
4. Draft an Initial Outline
Make a first tentative outline in the form of three broad sections:
Introduction: The introduction part helps to describes:
- The objective of the research paper
- Related research which has been done by the earlier researchers
- The major points, you are going to cover in the paper
- Why reader should be fascinated about your findings
Body: This is the biggest part of the paper. It includes:
- Arguments justify your research problem.
- Implementation/solution of the selected problem with valid outcome.
- Evidence to support your findings.
Conclusion: Conclusion plays an important role in writing a research paper as it contains the essence of the complete description of the given research problem. It explains major findings of your research without repeating the matter.
5. Organize Your Research
This step deals with the analysis, synthesize, sort and digest the gathered information in step 3 and solve the purpose of doing the research. It includes:
- Align the explored information with the points identified in the topic.
- The facts describe in the paper must be logically connected and flow in a given directions.
- Identify the gaps where you need more thoughts/information or the data which is no longer needed.
- Don’t include the irrelevant information in the paper
- Document all borrowed data or quotes with proper citation
6. Finalize the Paper
You have an initial draft of the paper with organized information related to your topic. This step covers:
- Organize your paper content to increase the readability of the reader.
- Write the paper in the light of your own thoughts, ideas, implementations, arguments and conclusion.
- Bibliography information of sources of information used in the paper.
7. Review and Revise it
This step is used to revise the contents of the paper to make it logically and syntactically error free documents. This step takes care of:
- Read your paper just to get the essence of the paper and to make sure the desired outcome has achieved
- Check all figures, tables and equations and their numbering used in the paper.
- Rearrange the contents of the paper If required, in order to attain the purpose of the paper
- Use free grammar and plagiarism checker software
- Information about author like name, affiliation, mailed must be on the front page
- At last page, list the complete bibliography information for each of the source used in the paper.
8. Citation and Bibliography
When you start writing a paper, survey of previously done research is carried out by the researcher. It’s author’s responsibility to give credit to the source of fact which you have incorporated into your paper to avoid plagiarism. Sometimes you can skip the citation of commonly known facts such as the capital of India is Delhi.
9. Finishing Touch
Proofread your paper to find out any grammatical or punctuation error and double-check the formatting of the paper. There must not be any statement or passage which is not relevant to the research problem.