In this article, I’m going to share with you the step-by-step process that I followed in writing my research papers research If you’re just trying to understand what it takes to write a research paper in that case I would recommend that you watch this entire article because I’m going to start from scratch while for those of you who have completed your research and you want to know how to write a research paper I would recommend that you start from this point and now without further delay let’s get started to start any research pick a research topic.
How to choose a research topic?
Research The first thing that you need to do is choose a research topic so for this one method would be to approach a professor and ask them to give you a research topic on which you can work.
The second would be to go through the different University websites to see the different areas on which professors are working read their research papers and then take that as a base to find your research topic.
The third and the longest route would be that if you have a broad topic in mind you read a lot of review papers and research papers to constantly narrow down the topic until you arrive at a problem statement at a research Gap that no other researcher has been able to overcome and that would be a research topic of course.
- How to conduct research:
Supposed your research could be experimental research or theoretical research but the idea is that at the end of it, you should arrive at a new result that’s novel and it contributes to the research field it makes an impact so to know what are some of the thing things you need to keep in mind while choosing a research advisor all while conducting your research.
- How to write a research paper:
Arrived at a novel result a novel Finding you then start writing a research paper so what is a research paper a research paper is an account of an investigation written by one or more researchers sharing their findings with the research community using a conventional report structure now whenever you will read a research paper.
You’ll realize that most of them follow a similar format a similar pattern which is very easy to follow and understand this is because of the conventional and rhetorical structure of a research paper which we will now understand now what is this rhetorical structure well for every research paper you will see these as the main sections which is the introduction the materials and methods the results and discussion and conclusion and together they are also known as the imrdc structure now in a research paper the information.
Also flows in this manner like the information flows from the introduction to the materials and methods of the results and discussion and then finally to the conclusion and the beauty of this the entire structure is that the introduction and the conclusion section are interconnected with each other and the materials and methods and the results and discussion section they are interconnected with each other how well.
In the introduction section, we first share the motivation of our study and the background of our research field and then we narrow it down to talk about the specific research problem that we are working on on the flip side in the conclusion section we first talk about the findings from that research problem.
Then we broaden it out and talk about what have we achieved that has contributed to that research field in this way the introduction section and the conclusion section are interconnected to each other similarly for every method there is a result that we have gotten from it and for every result there is a method.
How we arrived at it in this way the materials and methods and the results and discussion section is also interconnected with each other so this is the beauty of a research paper and this is the rhetorical structure that makes it so simple and easy to understand now before we talk about the different research paper sections.
- Abstract:
The section that you will see in a research paper is an abstract it’s one of the most important sections of the research paper and based on your abstract the readers decide whether they want to read the rest of your paper or not an abstract is also a summary of your entire research article.
It includes the four important sections that we just discussed which are the introduction the materials and methods the results and discussion and the conclusion but the catch here is that an abstract has a word limit of 250 to 300 words so you need to include all this information but in a concise manner now.
- Introduction:
Now after the abstract the next section is the introduction section and this is also an important section because this is also something that researchers read so you must make a good first impression in an abstract we try to share what is the the rationale behind taking up the study or what is the motivation to write this paper
So we first start with the background of our study where we can share either some historical data some key terms or give definitions once we have shared the background of a study we then move on to existing evidence the literature surveys what have other researchers done in this field so far once we’ve established.
We then come to the next part which is the research Gap what is the research Gap is some of the issues that the existing researchers have not been able to overcome so far once you define the research Gap we come to the objective.
What is the objective the objective is basically, what are we planning to do in our research study to overcome that Research gap to fulfill that research Gap then finally comes the scope and the scope sets the boundary of our research so what are some of the things we are planning to investigate not investigate you need to very clearly state it here in the introduction?
- Materials & Methods:
The section next is the materials and Method section and here you need to explain to your audience the step-by-step process that you followed to arrive at your final result and your finding to achieve that objective so here first we start by sharing the list of materials.
That we’ve used to conduct our experiments then we share the step-by-step procedure that we followed to arrive at the final product the final result and then we also share some of the equipment tools or instruments that we’ve used to measure or analyze the data now this is one of the easiest sections to write but one thing that you need to remember here.
Your experiments need to be reliable what does that mean it means the way you’re writing these experiments and how you’ve conducted them should be so transparent that if somebody tries to replicate your experiments repeat your experiments they should arrive at the same results as you this shows the reliability of your research paper and improves your credibility as an author.
Results & Discussion:
The third section is the results and discussion section and the purpose of this section is to share the results Share the findings that have helped us in overcoming that research Gap so here first, we start by sharing the data now the data can be in the form of visuals.
charts graph figures illustrations after that, we share the results where we explain what that data means or what we analyze from that data for example, think that we have a graph of x is equal to Y so the graph itself of X is equal to Y is your data but when you say for the equal value of x there is an equal value of y offers an equal increase in X
There is an equal increase in y which is where you are attaching an explanation to what that data means and that is called as result finally comes the discussion discussion is where you attach your meaning to that result in terms of the current research scenario and what it means for the current research problem that we are working on so in this way, we prepare the data results and discussion of this section.
Conclusion:
Section and the purpose of this section is to remind our audiences to why we started this research in the first place and finally, what have we achieved out of so we start this section by reiterating the objective of our study.
Reviewing the key findings of our work after that we also share the broader applications and broader implications of our study and how we exactly our study has made a contribution to that research field then finally we close this section by sharing some recommendations for future work and how this study can be taken forward.
- References:
The last section that you will see in a research paper is the references section and here you give due credit to all the sources all the literature that you’ve referred to either while conducting your own research or while writing this paper so you will neatly list down all the sources using the citation style that is followed by the journal and once you’ve done that you will be sending your paper for publication so guys.
I hope this article has given you a good understanding of how to write a research paper but if you wish to learn research writing in detail and make sure that you’re able to get your papers published then you.