Index
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What is a research paper?
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How to write a research paper?
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Summary
What is a research paper?
A research paper is a piece of writing that documents academic experiments, innovations, or algorithms related to your professional background. This is not subjective to any one topic or industry; the use of the research paper is vivid and can be used in all sectors to present the work.
It is written to make the world aware of the results of your experiment or innovation, which hasn’t been done by anyone yet or further addition to already existing analogies. The form of a research paper can be either in the form of a hard copy or in the form of a soft copy on the internet.
How to write a research paper?
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Choose a topic
A topic is a must for a research paper. To present a persuasive paper, keep your topic not too broad but narrow. Covering a broad topic involves diversified elements, which will take much work to cover all at once. You might as well miss some vital elements of a broad topic, but if your topic is narrow, it’ll be easy to cover all the elements and explain in detail about them.
Additionally, if your topic is broad, it seems like a general overview; the research paper’s topic should be narrowed down to a particular aspect, concept or idea and make it specific and manageable.
For example, the topic to be covered is Artificial Intelligence. In that case, it should be narrowed down to changes or improvements brought by Artificial Intelligence or how Artificial Intelligence will affect human employment or human skills or human intelligence.
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Question your topic
Questioning your topic will help you to filtrate your topic and will brief you with more follow-up questions that should be addressed along the topic of a research paper. While questioning the topic yourself, post your question on social platforms like Reddit, Stack Overflow, and Slack.
Talk to professors, professionals, and students and ask them questions about your topic. Questioning will help you to know if the solution you will cover through your research paper is needed in the present world. Are people looking for the solution because your research paper will only make sense if it can be generalized?
It is necessary to look for a generalized topic because conducting extensive research and publishing it for a small group of people would make no sense; it should be for a large group of people worldwide so that your research paper can get views and be valued.
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Be patient and positive.
Publishing a research paper takes a long time; it can be several months or even years, with 6 to 12 months of coursework. A research paper involves a detailed and thorough analysis of several concepts, so it takes time to complete research on your topic.
A person writing a research paper also needs to stay positive while writing it because there will be moments when your progress will get stuck, or you cannot find a solution to a specific problem; that’s where staying positive works.
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Research your topic well
Start with finding credible sources for the topic, whether primary or secondary. The author of the research paper itself usually conducts primary sources. Tools like questionnaires and online surveys are used to conduct primary research. Primary research takes a lot of time and resources to be conducted; it requires training in data collection methods and is expensive.
While secondary data involves less time to collect, it is less expensive and can be quickly done by anyone without expertise; a candidate collects data from other publishers and websites, so the data’s accuracy needs to be checked thoroughly before using it.
Additionally, use websites with “.org” extensions and try to avoid “.com” websites to research your topic. “.com” websites are commercially oriented, while “.org” contains data written to supply hundred per cent factual data and truth.
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Draw up a good outline
Before beginning, be ready with a default outline or a format. It helps with clarity of the topic and research steps. The following elements are included in the research paper:
- A title page
- An abstract
- Conclusion
- An introduction
- A methodology section
- Findings and results
- Discussions
- Reference
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Use recent resources
Always use the latest resources rather than the old ones. Using updated or latest sources will provide data tuned with present trends and preferences so that it will be accepted by a more significant proportion of the population. Additionally, using old resources might provide you with incorrect data concerning the current data.
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Title and affiliation
The title of your paper should be limited to 5-15 words. The title should be as relevant as it can to the matter inside. With relatability in check, the data should not contain any abbreviation and should be catchy to grab the viewer’s attention.
Affiliation contains the name of a research scholar; if there is more than one person involved, then the person’s name, with maximum effort, should be written. It also contains the names of people who guided you and your contact information.
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Writing an abstract
Begin briefly introducing the topic and the problem you hope to answer in your research. State the goal of your research and the research questions you hope to address. Provide a synopsis of your research methodologies, including any experimental or theoretical approaches. Describe the conclusions of your investigation, including any relevant data or statistical analysis. Discuss your research’s consequences and how it adds to the engineering discipline—finally, remark on the significance of your research and any suggestions for future research.
Always keep your abstract brief and to the point. Depending on the length of your abstract, it should be 250-300 words or less.
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Format of the body
The body part of your paper involves subparts: an introduction, literature review, methodology, findings/results, and discussion; These elements should be presented in sequence.
The introduction involves basics like what you intend to do in your research and explain them in brief.
The literature review examines scholarly articles, books, and other sources pertinent to a specific study area. We must take care of the endnote and footnotes during the literature review. A footnote is a note at the bottom of the page that provides additional information to the reader and refers to a specific section of the text. The author uses endnotes to provide credit or reference to the text and appear at the end of an article or book. Footnotes appear in the page’s footer.
The methodology section deals with the research process of the topic, the experiments involved in your paper, and the literature review conducted for the experimentation. This section also presents charts, tables and formulas to understand the reader better.
As the name suggests, finding and results involve all results a researcher achieves. It should be explained in detail how these findings will affect us, its pros and cons. Limitations can be mentioned, and measures to address those shortcomings can also be a part of this section.
The discussion head contains suggestions, outcomes, limitations of the topic and results. If you are working under a good and experienced guide, it can be easy and precise for you to write, but if you are flying solo and it is your first time, it can be tricky. Therefore, it is not a compulsory section. If you have any solid suggestions, then go for it.
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Things to remember while writing the body
Each paragraph in your research paper should follow a strict pattern. It is not to limit your creativity but to make your work more understandable. Every paragraph in the body of your paper should have its own “thesis” or topic sentence. This is the paragraph’s point and what the remainder of it will be about.
The proof used to support the topic sentence and its analysis follows. This is where you mention a book, an article, or research and explain how it relates to your writing. You can also share your ideas but back them up with trustworthy sources.
Topic sentences are optional in all research papers; skilled writers know how to write around them without explicitly using them. However, a beginner can get away with one at the beginning of each paragraph. Each paragraph in the body of your essay should have a transitional sentence that moves the reader from one paragraph to the next.
- Conclusion
Here, you are going to summarize the topic. Explain why your issue is important to them. What happens if the problem persists, and how can it be fixed? The end of a research report is an excellent chance to revisit your initial thesis statement. Thesis statements are heavily addressed in the initial sections of a paper. Still, they can be even more powerful when reintroduced at the end after you’ve provided all of your evidence. List the study’s limitations, if there are any, differences between expected and actual results.
- Proofreading
Your findings and results will eventually be read by thousands of people involving different professionals. Before publishing your content, make sure to eliminate all the grammatical errors, unwanted phrases, and sentences. Use proofreading tools to do it faster and better.
- Reference
If you have used other authors/publishers’ resources, remember to mention citations of their names and what part of the resource is used. Mentioning them in reference will avoid plagiarism and copyright issues. References have different formats American psychological association (APA), MLA, and HARVARD. You can use any format.
Summary
Remember, if you don’t publish it, you don’t do it. Take it easy; it is a lengthy and hectic process, so rushing through the steps is unnecessary.
Understand the format properly before starting, and divide the whole research paper into headings. Now take these as a step-by-step process; when at a certain step, think of something other than the next step and its difficulties; work and focus on your current step. This way, the chance of making mistakes will be reduced, and there will be no pressure on the whole research paper process.
Choose a narrow topic. To be more concise, question your topic, and do systematic research. Now that you have all the raw data, process it to get the results you are looking for, and make an excellent outline to present the data. Present a conclusion of results or findings, proofread it to eliminate errors, and remember to add people and their resources under the reference head.
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