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15 Best Free Web Tools to Organize Your Research

How to stay organized when researching and writing papers

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Organizing research is important not only for your own sanity, but because when it comes time to unfold the data and put it to use, you want the process to go as smoothly as possible. This is where research organizers come in.

There are lots of free web-based organizers that you can use for any purpose. Maybe you're collecting interviews for a news story, digging up newspaper archives for a history project, or writing a research paper over a science topic. Research organizers are also helpful for staying productive and preparing for tests.

Regardless of the topic, when you have multiple sources of information and lots to comb through later, optimizing your workflow with a dedicated organizer is essential.

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Many of these tools provide unique features, so you might decide to use multiple resources simultaneously in whatever way suits your particular needs.

Research and Study

You need a place to gather the information you're finding. To avoid a cluttered space when collecting and organizing data, you can use a tool dedicated to research.

• Pocket : Save web pages to your online account to reference them again later. It's much tidier than bookmarks, and it can all be retrieved from the web or the Pocket mobile app .
• Mendeley : Organize papers and references, and generate citations and bibliographies.
• Quizlet : Learn vocabulary with these free online flashcards .
• Wikipedia : Find information on millions of different topics.
• Quora : This is a question and answer website where you can ask the community for help with any question.
• SparkNotes : Free online study guides on a wide variety of subjects, anything from famous literary works of the past century to the present day. 
• Zotero : Collect, manage, and cite your research sources. Lets you organize data into collections and search through them by adding tags to every source. This is a computer program, but there's a browser extension that helps you send data to it.
• Google Scholar : A simple way to search for scholarly literature on any subject.
• Diigo : Collect, share, and interact with information from anywhere on the web. It's all accessible through the browser extension and saved to your online account.
• GoConqr : Create flashcards, mind maps, notes, quizzes, and more to bridge the gap between your research and studying.

Writing Tools

Writing is the other half of a research paper, so you need somewhere useful to go to jot down notes, record information you might use in the final paper, create drafts, track sources, and finalize the paper.

• Web Page Sticky Notes : For Chrome users, this tool lets you place sticky notes on any web page as you do your research. There are tons of settings you can customize, they're backed up to your Google Drive account, and they're visible not only on each page you created them on but also on a single page from the extension's settings.
• Google Docs or Word Online : These are online word processors where you can write the entire research paper, organize lists, paste URLs, store off-hand notes, and more.
• Google Keep : This note-taking app and website catalogs notes within labels that make sense for your research. Access them from the web on any computer or from your mobile device. It supports collaborations, custom colors, images, drawings, and reminders.
• Yahoo Notepad : If you use Yahoo Mail , the notes area of your account is a great place to store text-based snippets for easy recall when you need them.
• Notion : Workflows, notes, and more, in a space where you can collaborate with others.

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9 Organizing Research: Taking and Keeping Effective Notes

Once you’ve located the right primary and secondary sources, it’s time to glean all the information you can from them. In this chapter, you’ll first get some tips on taking and organizing notes. The second part addresses how to approach the sort of intermediary assignments (such as book reviews) that are often part of a history course.

Honing your own strategy for organizing your primary and secondary research is a pathway to less stress and better paper success. Moreover, if you can find the method that helps you best organize your notes, these methods can be applied to research you do for any of your classes.

Before the personal computing revolution, most historians labored through archives and primary documents and wrote down their notes on index cards, and then found innovative ways to organize them for their purposes. When doing secondary research, historians often utilized (and many still do) pen and paper for taking notes on secondary sources. With the advent of digital photography and useful note-taking tools like OneNote, some of these older methods have been phased out – though some persist. And, most importantly, once you start using some of the newer techniques below, you may find that you are a little “old school,” and might opt to integrate some of the older techniques with newer technology.

Whether you choose to use a low-tech method of taking and organizing your notes or an app that will help you organize your research, here are a few pointers for good note-taking.

Principles of note-taking

• If you are going low-tech, choose a method that prevents a loss of any notes. Perhaps use one spiral notebook, or an accordion folder, that will keep everything for your project in one space. If you end up taking notes away from your notebook or folder, replace them—or tape them onto blank pages if you are using a notebook—as soon as possible.
• If you are going high-tech, pick one application and stick with it. Using a cloud-based app, including one that you can download to your smart phone, will allow you to keep adding to your notes even if you find yourself with time to take notes unexpectedly.
• When taking notes, whether you’re using 3X5 note cards or using an app described below, write down the author and a shortened title for the publication, along with the page number on EVERY card. We can’t emphasize this point enough; writing down the bibliographic information the first time and repeatedly will save you loads of time later when you are writing your paper and must cite all key information.
• Include keywords or “tags” that capture why you thought to take down this information in a consistent place on each note card (and when using the apps described below). If you are writing a paper about why Martin Luther King, Jr., became a successful Civil Rights movement leader, for example, you may have a few theories as you read his speeches or how those around him described his leadership. Those theories—religious beliefs, choice of lieutenants, understanding of Gandhi—might become the tags you put on each note card.
• Note-taking applications can help organize tags for you, but if you are going low tech, a good idea is to put tags on the left side of a note card, and bibliographic info on the right side.

Organizing research- applications that can help

Using images in research.

• If you are in an archive: make your first picture one that includes the formal collection name, the box number, the folder name and call numbe r and anything else that would help you relocate this information if you or someone else needed to. Do this BEFORE you start taking photos of what is in the folder.
• If you are photographing a book or something you may need to return to the library: take a picture of all the front matter (the title page, the page behind the title with all the publication information, maybe even the table of contents).

Once you have recorded where you find it, resist the urge to rename these photographs. By renaming them, they may be re-ordered and you might forget where you found them. Instead, use tags for your own purposes, and carefully name and date the folder into which the photographs were automatically sorted. There is one free, open-source program, Tropy , which is designed to help organize photos taken in archives, as well as tag, annotate, and organize them. It was developed and is supported by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It is free to download, and you can find it here: https://tropy.org/ ; it is not, however, cloud-based, so you should back up your photos. In other cases, if an archive doesn’t allow photography (this is highly unlikely if you’ve made the trip to the archive), you might have a laptop on hand so that you can transcribe crucial documents.

Using note or project-organizing apps

When you have the time to sit down and begin taking notes on your primary sources, you can annotate your photos in Tropy. Alternatively, OneNote, which is cloud-based, can serve as a way to organize your research. OneNote allows you to create separate “Notebooks” for various projects, but this doesn’t preclude you from searching for terms or tags across projects if the need ever arises. Within each project you can start new tabs, say, for each different collection that you have documents from, or you can start new tabs for different themes that you are investigating. Just as in Tropy, as you go through taking notes on your documents you can create your own “tags” and place them wherever you want in the notes.

Another powerful, free tool to help organize research, especially secondary research though not exclusively, is Zotero found @ https://www.zotero.org/ . Once downloaded, you can begin to save sources (and their URL) that you find on the internet to Zotero. You can create main folders for each major project that you have and then subfolders for various themes if you would like. Just like the other software mentioned, you can create notes and tags about each source, and Zotero can also be used to create bibliographies in the precise format that you will be using. Obviously, this function is super useful when doing a long-term, expansive project like a thesis or dissertation.

How History is Made: A Student’s Guide to Reading, Writing, and Thinking in the Discipline Copyright © 2022 by Stephanie Cole; Kimberly Breuer; Scott W. Palmer; and Brandon Blakeslee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Organize Research: Notes, PDF Files, & Documents

Topics covered ✅.

• How to organize research papers and PDF files
• How to organize research projects
• Organizing research notes
• Organizing research notes software
• Organizing research tools
• Research organizer template
• How to organize research material

If you are a busy college student, creator, or blogger your life can get really cluttered. But the messiness in our lives can extend much farther than just a dorm room or office. As active researchers, we can often struggle to organize research in the form of copious amounts of articles, journals, academic writings, thesis, rough drafts, etc.

It gets pretty exhausting.

But where do you even begin?

What's the best way to organize research?

We believe we have created the best recipe for organizing your research and you will never go back to your old ways.

1. Note-taking and Mind mapping – How to Hack Your Mind

First, start by organizing your notes into categories. You can do this on a sticky note or on a mind map.

Even though you may feel like a middle school kid using colorful sticky paper, sticky notes are proven to be one of the most effective ways to organize research.

You'll want to do some research before you begin writing.

Use sticky notes to organize the information you find, and write down any thoughts or ideas that come up as you read or listen.

Also, sticky notes are great if you want to jot down quick notes during a lecture or discussion with friends about the topic at hand.

You can write down important points and make connections between them on sticky notes.

An option similar to this is creating a mind map.

If you are a very visual learner, this style of research may appeal to you because you can visually see where you will be taking this research into categories and subcategories.

Plus it’s fun making them!

2. The Hard Part – Research & Writing

You should be familiar with the different types of sources that you can use when writing a research paper.

5 Examples of Sources

Here are a few examples of sources:

• Primary sources (original documents like letters or speeches)
• Secondary sources (articles, books, etc.)
• Audio files (podcasts, interviews, etc.)
• Online databases (Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, LexisNexis)
• Tertiary sources (reviews of other people's research and analysis of your topics

Bibliographies

When conducting research for your essay, be sure to use academic sources only!

Academic sources are those written by experts in their field who have been published in peer-reviewed journals or books and are therefore considered credible resources for learning more about any given topic.

Academic sources will always include citations at the end of each paragraph (or chapter) so that readers can easily identify where they can go if they'd like to learn more about the topic being discussed in each section of the text.

You can use secondary sources for information about your topic, but make sure that they are academically-reputable sources.

Primary sources are also great for finding information, but they provide only one side of the story and should be used with caution.

Overall, try to use a variety of sources as this will strengthen the argument you are defending.

We recommend putting a lot of emphasis on option five (tertiary sources) because it is something that we were not previously familiar with and we believe it should become more known as it is super helpful.

Tertiary sources are those that have been compiled by other people, such as academic journals and published books.

They can be great resources for getting more background information on a topic, but they aren't original works of scholarship—so be sure to cite them accordingly!

Quick Bibliographies

As you organize research, there’s no need to get bogged down in how you structure or create your bibliography.

For starters, here’s a simple list of tools for quick bibliographies:

• Bibliography.com

3. Putting Your Thoughts On Paper

One of the hardest parts is the beginning of the writing process. You should always keep in mind your thesis statement when you write.

It's easy to get carried away with details and forget what you're trying to say—but if you can keep your thesis statement in mind, it will help you stay focused on the main point of your work.

The writing process is a great way to get started with your research because it helps you organize your thoughts before writing them down into sentences and paragraphs.

You'll be able to take notes faster because everything is already written down for you!

Moving on, an excellent strategy that works best for me is just word vomiting onto a page to get a basis of everything you want to say, and then after that is done, organize and clean up what was written.

This is especially useful if you have collected all the data and you just don't know how to put your thoughts into actual words.

Claim My Free Research Organizer Template

This free research organizer template comes pre-built with folders, subfolders, aesthetic formatting, and much more.

4. The Finishing Touches

If there is anything you should take away from this, it’s to use a reference manager.

Reference managers help ensure that all your citations are correct and up-to-date.

When choosing one, make sure it's compatible with whatever citation style is required by your instructor or institution.

Research doesn't have to be something that you dread or bores you out of your mind.

Being organized can make this process fun and exciting.

So now it's time to put on your thinking cap and get to work.

Talk with a Kahana representative

Fill out your information and a Kahana team representative will reach out to you. Have a simple question?  Search our library of articles

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Home » Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

Table of Contents

Research Paper

Definition:

Research Paper is a written document that presents the author’s original research, analysis, and interpretation of a specific topic or issue.

It is typically based on Empirical Evidence, and may involve qualitative or quantitative research methods, or a combination of both. The purpose of a research paper is to contribute new knowledge or insights to a particular field of study, and to demonstrate the author’s understanding of the existing literature and theories related to the topic.

Structure of Research Paper

The structure of a research paper typically follows a standard format, consisting of several sections that convey specific information about the research study. The following is a detailed explanation of the structure of a research paper:

The title page contains the title of the paper, the name(s) of the author(s), and the affiliation(s) of the author(s). It also includes the date of submission and possibly, the name of the journal or conference where the paper is to be published.

The abstract is a brief summary of the research paper, typically ranging from 100 to 250 words. It should include the research question, the methods used, the key findings, and the implications of the results. The abstract should be written in a concise and clear manner to allow readers to quickly grasp the essence of the research.

Introduction

The introduction section of a research paper provides background information about the research problem, the research question, and the research objectives. It also outlines the significance of the research, the research gap that it aims to fill, and the approach taken to address the research question. Finally, the introduction section ends with a clear statement of the research hypothesis or research question.

Literature Review

The literature review section of a research paper provides an overview of the existing literature on the topic of study. It includes a critical analysis and synthesis of the literature, highlighting the key concepts, themes, and debates. The literature review should also demonstrate the research gap and how the current study seeks to address it.

The methods section of a research paper describes the research design, the sample selection, the data collection and analysis procedures, and the statistical methods used to analyze the data. This section should provide sufficient detail for other researchers to replicate the study.

The results section presents the findings of the research, using tables, graphs, and figures to illustrate the data. The findings should be presented in a clear and concise manner, with reference to the research question and hypothesis.

The discussion section of a research paper interprets the findings and discusses their implications for the research question, the literature review, and the field of study. It should also address the limitations of the study and suggest future research directions.

The conclusion section summarizes the main findings of the study, restates the research question and hypothesis, and provides a final reflection on the significance of the research.

The references section provides a list of all the sources cited in the paper, following a specific citation style such as APA, MLA or Chicago.

How to Write Research Paper

You can write Research Paper by the following guide:

• Choose a Topic: The first step is to select a topic that interests you and is relevant to your field of study. Brainstorm ideas and narrow down to a research question that is specific and researchable.
• Conduct a Literature Review: The literature review helps you identify the gap in the existing research and provides a basis for your research question. It also helps you to develop a theoretical framework and research hypothesis.
• Develop a Thesis Statement : The thesis statement is the main argument of your research paper. It should be clear, concise and specific to your research question.
• Plan your Research: Develop a research plan that outlines the methods, data sources, and data analysis procedures. This will help you to collect and analyze data effectively.
• Collect and Analyze Data: Collect data using various methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, or experiments. Analyze data using statistical tools or other qualitative methods.
• Organize your Paper : Organize your paper into sections such as Introduction, Literature Review, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. Ensure that each section is coherent and follows a logical flow.
• Write your Paper : Start by writing the introduction, followed by the literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. Ensure that your writing is clear, concise, and follows the required formatting and citation styles.
• Edit and Proofread your Paper: Review your paper for grammar and spelling errors, and ensure that it is well-structured and easy to read. Ask someone else to review your paper to get feedback and suggestions for improvement.
• Cite your Sources: Ensure that you properly cite all sources used in your research paper. This is essential for giving credit to the original authors and avoiding plagiarism.

Research Paper Example

Note : The below example research paper is for illustrative purposes only and is not an actual research paper. Actual research papers may have different structures, contents, and formats depending on the field of study, research question, data collection and analysis methods, and other factors. Students should always consult with their professors or supervisors for specific guidelines and expectations for their research papers.

Research Paper Example sample for Students:

Title: The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health among Young Adults

Abstract: This study aims to investigate the impact of social media use on the mental health of young adults. A literature review was conducted to examine the existing research on the topic. A survey was then administered to 200 university students to collect data on their social media use, mental health status, and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. The results showed that social media use is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also found that social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) are significant predictors of mental health problems among young adults.

Introduction: Social media has become an integral part of modern life, particularly among young adults. While social media has many benefits, including increased communication and social connectivity, it has also been associated with negative outcomes, such as addiction, cyberbullying, and mental health problems. This study aims to investigate the impact of social media use on the mental health of young adults.

Literature Review: The literature review highlights the existing research on the impact of social media use on mental health. The review shows that social media use is associated with depression, anxiety, stress, and other mental health problems. The review also identifies the factors that contribute to the negative impact of social media, including social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO.

Methods : A survey was administered to 200 university students to collect data on their social media use, mental health status, and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. The survey included questions on social media use, mental health status (measured using the DASS-21), and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis.

Results : The results showed that social media use is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also found that social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO are significant predictors of mental health problems among young adults.

Discussion : The study’s findings suggest that social media use has a negative impact on the mental health of young adults. The study highlights the need for interventions that address the factors contributing to the negative impact of social media, such as social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO.

Conclusion : In conclusion, social media use has a significant impact on the mental health of young adults. The study’s findings underscore the need for interventions that promote healthy social media use and address the negative outcomes associated with social media use. Future research can explore the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing the negative impact of social media on mental health. Additionally, longitudinal studies can investigate the long-term effects of social media use on mental health.

Limitations : The study has some limitations, including the use of self-report measures and a cross-sectional design. The use of self-report measures may result in biased responses, and a cross-sectional design limits the ability to establish causality.

Implications: The study’s findings have implications for mental health professionals, educators, and policymakers. Mental health professionals can use the findings to develop interventions that address the negative impact of social media use on mental health. Educators can incorporate social media literacy into their curriculum to promote healthy social media use among young adults. Policymakers can use the findings to develop policies that protect young adults from the negative outcomes associated with social media use.

References :

• Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2019). Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study. Preventive medicine reports, 15, 100918.
• Primack, B. A., Shensa, A., Escobar-Viera, C. G., Barrett, E. L., Sidani, J. E., Colditz, J. B., … & James, A. E. (2017). Use of multiple social media platforms and symptoms of depression and anxiety: A nationally-representative study among US young adults. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 1-9.
• Van der Meer, T. G., & Verhoeven, J. W. (2017). Social media and its impact on academic performance of students. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 16, 383-398.

Appendix : The survey used in this study is provided below.

Social Media and Mental Health Survey

• How often do you use social media per day?
• Less than 30 minutes
• 30 minutes to 1 hour
• 1 to 2 hours
• 2 to 4 hours
• More than 4 hours
• Which social media platforms do you use?
• Others (Please specify)
• How often do you experience the following on social media?
• Social comparison (comparing yourself to others)
• Cyberbullying
• Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
• Have you ever experienced any of the following mental health problems in the past month?
• Do you think social media use has a positive or negative impact on your mental health?
• Very positive
• Somewhat positive
• Somewhat negative
• Very negative
• In your opinion, which factors contribute to the negative impact of social media on mental health?
• Social comparison
• In your opinion, what interventions could be effective in reducing the negative impact of social media on mental health?
• Education on healthy social media use
• Counseling for mental health problems caused by social media
• Social media detox programs
• Regulation of social media use

Thank you for your participation!

Applications of Research Paper

Research papers have several applications in various fields, including:

• Advancing knowledge: Research papers contribute to the advancement of knowledge by generating new insights, theories, and findings that can inform future research and practice. They help to answer important questions, clarify existing knowledge, and identify areas that require further investigation.
• Informing policy: Research papers can inform policy decisions by providing evidence-based recommendations for policymakers. They can help to identify gaps in current policies, evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, and inform the development of new policies and regulations.
• Improving practice: Research papers can improve practice by providing evidence-based guidance for professionals in various fields, including medicine, education, business, and psychology. They can inform the development of best practices, guidelines, and standards of care that can improve outcomes for individuals and organizations.
• Educating students : Research papers are often used as teaching tools in universities and colleges to educate students about research methods, data analysis, and academic writing. They help students to develop critical thinking skills, research skills, and communication skills that are essential for success in many careers.
• Fostering collaboration: Research papers can foster collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers by providing a platform for sharing knowledge and ideas. They can facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships that can lead to innovative solutions to complex problems.

When to Write Research Paper

Research papers are typically written when a person has completed a research project or when they have conducted a study and have obtained data or findings that they want to share with the academic or professional community. Research papers are usually written in academic settings, such as universities, but they can also be written in professional settings, such as research organizations, government agencies, or private companies.

Here are some common situations where a person might need to write a research paper:

• For academic purposes: Students in universities and colleges are often required to write research papers as part of their coursework, particularly in the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. Writing research papers helps students to develop research skills, critical thinking skills, and academic writing skills.
• For publication: Researchers often write research papers to publish their findings in academic journals or to present their work at academic conferences. Publishing research papers is an important way to disseminate research findings to the academic community and to establish oneself as an expert in a particular field.
• To inform policy or practice : Researchers may write research papers to inform policy decisions or to improve practice in various fields. Research findings can be used to inform the development of policies, guidelines, and best practices that can improve outcomes for individuals and organizations.
• To share new insights or ideas: Researchers may write research papers to share new insights or ideas with the academic or professional community. They may present new theories, propose new research methods, or challenge existing paradigms in their field.

Purpose of Research Paper

The purpose of a research paper is to present the results of a study or investigation in a clear, concise, and structured manner. Research papers are written to communicate new knowledge, ideas, or findings to a specific audience, such as researchers, scholars, practitioners, or policymakers. The primary purposes of a research paper are:

• To contribute to the body of knowledge : Research papers aim to add new knowledge or insights to a particular field or discipline. They do this by reporting the results of empirical studies, reviewing and synthesizing existing literature, proposing new theories, or providing new perspectives on a topic.
• To inform or persuade: Research papers are written to inform or persuade the reader about a particular issue, topic, or phenomenon. They present evidence and arguments to support their claims and seek to persuade the reader of the validity of their findings or recommendations.
• To advance the field: Research papers seek to advance the field or discipline by identifying gaps in knowledge, proposing new research questions or approaches, or challenging existing assumptions or paradigms. They aim to contribute to ongoing debates and discussions within a field and to stimulate further research and inquiry.
• To demonstrate research skills: Research papers demonstrate the author’s research skills, including their ability to design and conduct a study, collect and analyze data, and interpret and communicate findings. They also demonstrate the author’s ability to critically evaluate existing literature, synthesize information from multiple sources, and write in a clear and structured manner.

Characteristics of Research Paper

Research papers have several characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of academic or professional writing. Here are some common characteristics of research papers:

• Evidence-based: Research papers are based on empirical evidence, which is collected through rigorous research methods such as experiments, surveys, observations, or interviews. They rely on objective data and facts to support their claims and conclusions.
• Structured and organized: Research papers have a clear and logical structure, with sections such as introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. They are organized in a way that helps the reader to follow the argument and understand the findings.
• Formal and objective: Research papers are written in a formal and objective tone, with an emphasis on clarity, precision, and accuracy. They avoid subjective language or personal opinions and instead rely on objective data and analysis to support their arguments.
• Citations and references: Research papers include citations and references to acknowledge the sources of information and ideas used in the paper. They use a specific citation style, such as APA, MLA, or Chicago, to ensure consistency and accuracy.
• Peer-reviewed: Research papers are often peer-reviewed, which means they are evaluated by other experts in the field before they are published. Peer-review ensures that the research is of high quality, meets ethical standards, and contributes to the advancement of knowledge in the field.
• Objective and unbiased: Research papers strive to be objective and unbiased in their presentation of the findings. They avoid personal biases or preconceptions and instead rely on the data and analysis to draw conclusions.

Advantages of Research Paper

Research papers have many advantages, both for the individual researcher and for the broader academic and professional community. Here are some advantages of research papers:

• Contribution to knowledge: Research papers contribute to the body of knowledge in a particular field or discipline. They add new information, insights, and perspectives to existing literature and help advance the understanding of a particular phenomenon or issue.
• Opportunity for intellectual growth: Research papers provide an opportunity for intellectual growth for the researcher. They require critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity, which can help develop the researcher’s skills and knowledge.
• Career advancement: Research papers can help advance the researcher’s career by demonstrating their expertise and contributions to the field. They can also lead to new research opportunities, collaborations, and funding.
• Academic recognition: Research papers can lead to academic recognition in the form of awards, grants, or invitations to speak at conferences or events. They can also contribute to the researcher’s reputation and standing in the field.
• Impact on policy and practice: Research papers can have a significant impact on policy and practice. They can inform policy decisions, guide practice, and lead to changes in laws, regulations, or procedures.
• Advancement of society: Research papers can contribute to the advancement of society by addressing important issues, identifying solutions to problems, and promoting social justice and equality.

Limitations of Research Paper

Research papers also have some limitations that should be considered when interpreting their findings or implications. Here are some common limitations of research papers:

• Limited generalizability: Research findings may not be generalizable to other populations, settings, or contexts. Studies often use specific samples or conditions that may not reflect the broader population or real-world situations.
• Potential for bias : Research papers may be biased due to factors such as sample selection, measurement errors, or researcher biases. It is important to evaluate the quality of the research design and methods used to ensure that the findings are valid and reliable.
• Ethical concerns: Research papers may raise ethical concerns, such as the use of vulnerable populations or invasive procedures. Researchers must adhere to ethical guidelines and obtain informed consent from participants to ensure that the research is conducted in a responsible and respectful manner.
• Limitations of methodology: Research papers may be limited by the methodology used to collect and analyze data. For example, certain research methods may not capture the complexity or nuance of a particular phenomenon, or may not be appropriate for certain research questions.
• Publication bias: Research papers may be subject to publication bias, where positive or significant findings are more likely to be published than negative or non-significant findings. This can skew the overall findings of a particular area of research.
• Time and resource constraints: Research papers may be limited by time and resource constraints, which can affect the quality and scope of the research. Researchers may not have access to certain data or resources, or may be unable to conduct long-term studies due to practical limitations.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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Research Paper Structure: A Comprehensive Guide

Table of Contents

Writing a research paper is a daunting task, but understanding its structure can make the process more manageable and lead to a well-organized, coherent paper. This article provides a step-by-step approach to crafting a research paper, ensuring your work is not only informative but also structured for maximum impact.

Introduction

In any form of written communication, content structure plays a vital role in facilitating understanding. A well-structured research paper provides a framework that guides readers through the content, ensuring they grasp the main points efficiently. Without a clear structure, readers may become lost or confused, leading to a loss of interest and a failure to comprehend the intended message.

When it comes to research papers, structure is particularly important due to the complexity of the subject matter. Research papers often involve presenting and analyzing large amounts of data, theories, and arguments. Without a well-defined structure, readers may struggle to navigate through this information overload, resulting in a fragmented understanding of the topic.

How Structure Enhances Clarity and Coherence

A well-structured research paper not only helps readers follow the flow of ideas but also enhances the clarity and coherence of the content. By organizing information into sections, paragraphs, and sentences, researchers can present their thoughts logically and systematically. This logical organization allows readers to easily connect ideas, resulting in a more coherent and engaging reading experience.

One way in which structure enhances clarity is by providing a clear roadmap for readers to follow. By dividing the research paper into sections and subsections, researchers can guide readers through the different aspects of the topic. This allows readers to anticipate the flow of information and mentally prepare themselves for the upcoming content.

In addition, a well-structured research paper ensures that each paragraph serves a specific purpose and contributes to the overall argument or analysis. By clearly defining the main idea of each paragraph and providing supporting evidence or examples, researchers can avoid confusion and ensure that their points are effectively communicated.

Moreover, a structured research paper helps researchers maintain a consistent focus throughout their writing. By organizing their thoughts and ideas, researchers can ensure that they stay on track and avoid going off on tangents. This not only improves the clarity of the paper but also helps maintain the reader's interest and engagement.

Components of a Research Paper Structure

Title and abstract: the initial impression.

The title and abstract are the first elements readers encounter when accessing a research paper. The title should be concise, informative, and capture the essence of the study. For example, a title like "Exploring the Impact of Climate Change on Biodiversity in Tropical Rainforests" immediately conveys the subject matter and scope of the research. The abstract, on the other hand, provides a brief overview of the research problem, methodology, and findings, enticing readers to delve further into the paper. In a well-crafted abstract, researchers may highlight key results or implications of the study, giving readers a glimpse into the value of the research.

Introduction: Setting the Stage

The introduction serves as an invitation for readers to engage with the research paper. It should provide background information on the topic, highlight the research problem, and present the research question or thesis statement. By establishing the context and relevance of the study, the introduction piques readers' interest and prepares them for the content to follow. For instance, in a study on the impact of social media on mental health, the introduction may discuss the rise of social media platforms and the growing concerns about its effects on individuals' well-being. This contextual information helps readers understand the significance of the research and why it is worth exploring further.

Furthermore, the introduction may also outline the objectives of the study, stating what the researchers aim to achieve through their research. This helps readers understand the purpose and scope of the study, setting clear expectations for what they can expect to learn from the paper.

Literature Review: Building the Foundation

The literature review is a critical component of a research paper, as it demonstrates the researcher's understanding of existing knowledge and provides a foundation for the study. It involves reviewing and analyzing relevant scholarly articles, books, and other sources to identify gaps in research and establish the need for the current study. In a comprehensive literature review, researchers may summarize key findings from previous studies, identify areas of disagreement or controversy, and highlight the limitations of existing research.

Moreover, the literature review may also discuss theoretical frameworks or conceptual models that have been used in previous studies. By examining these frameworks, researchers can identify the theoretical underpinnings of their study and explain how their research fits within the broader academic discourse. This not only adds depth to the research paper but also helps readers understand the theoretical context in which the study is situated.

Methodology: Detailing the Process

The research design, data collection methods, and analysis techniques used in the study are described in the methodology section. It should be presented clearly and concisely, allowing readers to understand how the research was conducted and evaluated. A well-described methodology ensures the study's reliability and allows other researchers to replicate or build upon the findings.

Within the methodology section, researchers may provide a detailed description of the study population or sample, explaining how participants were selected and why they were chosen. This helps readers understand the generalizability of the findings and the extent to which they can be applied to a broader population.

In addition, researchers may also discuss any ethical considerations that were taken into account during the study. This could include obtaining informed consent from participants, ensuring confidentiality and anonymity, and following ethical guidelines set by relevant professional organizations. By addressing these ethical concerns, researchers demonstrate their commitment to conducting research in an ethical and responsible manner.

Results: Presenting the Findings

The results section represents the study findings. Researchers should organize their results in a logical manner, using tables, graphs, and descriptive statistics to support their conclusions. The results should be presented objectively, without interpretation or analysis. For instance, for a study on the effectiveness of a new drug in treating a specific medical condition, researchers may present the percentage of patients who experienced positive outcomes, along with any statistical significance associated with the results.

In addition to presenting the main findings, researchers may also include supplementary data or sub-analyses that provide further insights into the research question. This could include subgroup analyses, sensitivity analyses, or additional statistical tests that help explore the robustness of the findings.

Discussion: Interpreting the Results

In the discussion section, researchers analyze and interpret the results in light of the research question or thesis statement. This is an opportunity to explore the implications of the findings, compare them with existing literature, and offer insights into the broader significance of the study. The discussion should be supported by evidence and it is advised to avoid speculation.

Researchers may also discuss the limitations of their study, acknowledging any potential biases or confounding factors that may have influenced the results. By openly addressing these limitations, researchers demonstrate their commitment to transparency and scientific rigor.

Conclusion: Wrapping It Up

The conclusion provides a concise summary of the research paper, restating the main findings and their implications. It should also reflect on the significance of the study and suggest potential avenues for future research. A well-written conclusion leaves a lasting impression on readers, highlighting the importance of the research and its potential impact. By summarizing the key takeaways from the study, researchers ensure that readers walk away with a clear understanding of the research's contribution to the field.

Tips for Organizing Your Research Paper

Starting with a strong thesis statement.

A strong and clear thesis statement serves as the backbone of your research paper. It provides focus and direction, guiding the organization of ideas and arguments throughout the paper. Take the time to craft a well-defined thesis statement that encapsulates the core message of your research.

Creating an Outline: The Blueprint of Your Paper

An outline acts as a blueprint for your research paper, ensuring a logical flow of ideas and preventing disorganization. Divide your paper into sections and subsections, noting the main points and supporting arguments for each. This will help you maintain coherence and clarity throughout the writing process.

Balancing Depth and Breadth in Your Paper

When organizing your research paper, strike a balance between delving deeply into specific points and providing a broader overview. While depth is important for thorough analysis, too much detail can overwhelm readers. Consider your target audience and their level of familiarity with the topic to determine the appropriate level of depth and breadth for your paper.

By understanding the importance of research paper structure and implementing effective organizational strategies, researchers can ensure their work is accessible, engaging, and influential. A well-structured research paper not only communicates ideas clearly but also enhances the overall impact of the study. With careful planning and attention to detail, researchers can master the art of structuring their research papers, making them a valuable contribution to their field of study.

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Getting started with your research paper outline

Levels of organization for a research paper outline

First level of organization, second level of organization, third level of organization, fourth level of organization, tips for writing a research paper outline, research paper outline template, my research paper outline is complete: what are the next steps, frequently asked questions about a research paper outline, related articles.

The outline is the skeleton of your research paper. Simply start by writing down your thesis and the main ideas you wish to present. This will likely change as your research progresses; therefore, do not worry about being too specific in the early stages of writing your outline.

A research paper outline typically contains between two and four layers of organization. The first two layers are the most generalized. Each layer thereafter will contain the research you complete and presents more and more detailed information.

The levels are typically represented by a combination of Roman numerals, Arabic numerals, uppercase letters, lowercase letters but may include other symbols. Refer to the guidelines provided by your institution, as formatting is not universal and differs between universities, fields, and subjects. If you are writing the outline for yourself, you may choose any combination you prefer.

This is the most generalized level of information. Begin by numbering the introduction, each idea you will present, and the conclusion. The main ideas contain the bulk of your research paper 's information. Depending on your research, it may be chapters of a book for a literature review , a series of dates for a historical research paper, or the methods and results of a scientific paper.

I. Introduction

II. Main idea

III. Main idea

IV. Main idea

V. Conclusion

The second level consists of topics which support the introduction, main ideas, and the conclusion. Each main idea should have at least two supporting topics listed in the outline.

If your main idea does not have enough support, you should consider presenting another main idea in its place. This is where you should stop outlining if this is your first draft. Continue your research before adding to the next levels of organization.

• A. Background information
• B. Hypothesis or thesis
• A. Supporting topic
• B. Supporting topic

The third level of organization contains supporting information for the topics previously listed. By now, you should have completed enough research to add support for your ideas.

The Introduction and Main Ideas may contain information you discovered about the author, timeframe, or contents of a book for a literature review; the historical events leading up to the research topic for a historical research paper, or an explanation of the problem a scientific research paper intends to address.

• 1. Relevant history
• 2. Relevant history
• 1. The hypothesis or thesis clearly stated
• 1. A brief description of supporting information
• 2. A brief description of supporting information

The fourth level of organization contains the most detailed information such as quotes, references, observations, or specific data needed to support the main idea. It is not typical to have further levels of organization because the information contained here is the most specific.

• a) Quotes or references to another piece of literature
• b) Quotes or references to another piece of literature

Tip: The key to creating a useful outline is to be consistent in your headings, organization, and levels of specificity.

• Be Consistent : ensure every heading has a similar tone. State the topic or write short sentences for each heading but avoid doing both.
• Organize Information : Higher levels of organization are more generally stated and each supporting level becomes more specific. The introduction and conclusion will never be lower than the first level of organization.
• Build Support : Each main idea should have two or more supporting topics. If your research does not have enough information to support the main idea you are presenting, you should, in general, complete additional research or revise the outline.

By now, you should know the basic requirements to create an outline for your paper. With a content framework in place, you can now start writing your paper . To help you start right away, you can use one of our templates and adjust it to suit your needs.

After completing your outline, you should:

• Title your research paper . This is an iterative process and may change when you delve deeper into the topic.
• Begin writing your research paper draft . Continue researching to further build your outline and provide more information to support your hypothesis or thesis.
• Format your draft appropriately . MLA 8 and APA 7 formats have differences between their bibliography page, in-text citations, line spacing, and title.
• Finalize your citations and bibliography . Use a reference manager like Paperpile to organize and cite your research.
• Write the abstract, if required . An abstract will briefly state the information contained within the paper, results of the research, and the conclusion.

An outline is used to organize written ideas about a topic into a logical order. Outlines help us organize major topics, subtopics, and supporting details. Researchers benefit greatly from outlines while writing by addressing which topic to cover in what order.

The most basic outline format consists of: an introduction, a minimum of three topic paragraphs, and a conclusion.

You should make an outline before starting to write your research paper. This will help you organize the main ideas and arguments you want to present in your topic.

• Consistency: ensure every heading has a similar tone. State the topic or write short sentences for each heading but avoid doing both.
• Organization : Higher levels of organization are more generally stated and each supporting level becomes more specific. The introduction and conclusion will never be lower than the first level of organization.
• Support : Each main idea should have two or more supporting topics. If your research does not have enough information to support the main idea you are presenting, you should, in general, complete additional research or revise the outline.

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Writing a Research Paper

• Organize Your Information

Library Research Guide

• Choose Your Topic
• Evaluate Sources
• Draft Your Paper
• Revise, Review, Refine

How Will This Help Me?

Organizing will help you:

• Simplify citing sources
• Avoid plagiarism
• Make the works cited page easy

Links for More Help

These links help with organization.

• Quoting, Paraphrasing, & Summarizing From the OWL at Purdue, this link can help you summarize, paraphrase, and quote effectively.
• Honor System - Tips for students The site for K-State's Honor and Integrity System can help you make wise choices about your research.
• Avoiding Plagiarism This resource from the OWL at Purdue can help you understand plagiarism and how to avoid it.
• Taking Notes EasyBib takes a look at four popular note-taking systems and the differences between them.

Create a Working Bibliography

A working bibliography, or list of potential sources, helps you track your information.

• Keep a list and add sources as you find them.
• Include sources from your background reading, Search It, library databases, or the web.
• Include all citation information for sources.
• Record URLs and dates of access for online sources.

Read Sources and Take Notes

Read sources you didn't get to yet and re-read sources if needed.

Taking notes helps you manage your sources and identify information you want to use in the paper. Use the system that works best for you. 

The system you choose for taking notes is critical to help you track your use of sources and avoid plagiarism. Even professional writers have run into problems in this step of the process, so be careful. Remember these tips:

• Note clearly whether you quoted, paraphrased, or summarized the source
• Track the page numbers for the information in the source

Adjust Your Thesis

After studying your sources in detail, your original thesis statement may work fine, and that is super. However, you may find you need to adjust the focus of your paper and, as a result, your thesis statement. This is OK! It means you learned something from your research!

If you adjust your thesis, some of your research material may no longer be relevant. This is OK too. This is a good time to eliminate those sources from your working bibliography (unless your assignment requires you to cite all consulted sources). 

Identify Support for Main Ideas

Now that you've read your sources and, if needed, adjusted the focus of your paper, you're ready to identify how you will support the main ideas of your paper. 

• Synthesize (combine parts to make a whole) the information from your sources.
• Add to the information or draw conclusions from the information to make your own contribution to the conversation about this topic.
• Resist the temptation to use one source exclusively to support each main idea of your paper. 

The amount of support your main ideas need depends on the length of your paper and how new or controversial a stance your paper is taking. In general, each idea should have at least a few pieces of evidence to support it.

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• Last Updated: Sep 4, 2024 2:42 PM
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Organizing Academic Research Papers: Purpose of Guide

Purpose of guide.

• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Executive Summary
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tertiary Sources
• What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Annotated Bibliography
• Dealing with Nervousness
• Using Visual Aids
• Grading Someone Else's Paper
• How to Manage Group Projects
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Essays
• About Informed Consent
• Writing Field Notes
• Writing a Policy Memo
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Acknowledgements

This guide is intended to help you organize and write a quality academic research paper. Also included are recommendations regarding how to manage specific course assignments. Note that, if you have specific questions about how to write a research paper, you should always seek advice from your professor before you begin. Specific requirements stated by your professor will always supersede instructions provided in these general guidelines.

Thanks to Dr. Robert V. Labaree of the Von KleinSmid Center Library for International and Public Affairs, University of Southern California Libraries , for sharing the content of this guide.

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How To Organize A Research Paper? Expert’s Guide 2022

You might have written several research papers up till now and you know well what’s the standard research writing pattern. Apart from researching and writing a paper, there are more things that students tend to avoid unintentionally. There is a lot more than just writing a paper such as editing, proofreading, formatting, and organizing. We know you are thinking about how to organize and  write a research paper .

It is a question that isn’t frequently asked because students do not pay enough attention to it. Organizing a paper contains some specific tasks such as setting the topic, making an outline, and collecting information to assemble it in a sequence. There is so much to know about organizing a paper, so here we go with a complete blog for you on this topic.

Table of Contents

What Does Organizing a Research Paper Mean?

First, you need to have a proper research plan to make sure you’ll be able to accomplish the required goals from the paper. Organizing a paper means writing every detail and information within a proper sequence.

A particular pattern of research is strictly followed and every single heading is arranged as per the standards. The basic purpose of organizing a paper is to present all the arguments, thoughts, and data with a proper flow.

It’s a pre-writing process that is usually done after completing the research and during the creation of the outline. An outline is responsible for keeping the valuable details in an aligned way that’s why it is one of the approaches used in organizing the paper. Students take care of this part previously before writing so they add only the required information in every heading.

It is very important to provide the information stepwise to the readers. It is never good to read the methodology part instead of the introduction at first in the research. That’s why a sequence that is already set must be followed for presenting better research every time to your readers.

What is a Research Paper?

A research paper is an extended form of essay which continues discussing the arguments of the author. It contains one thesis statement which is supported by conducting either qualitative or quantitative research on any of the given topics. The purpose of research paper writing is to justify a stance and bring valuable arguments to make sure it happens.

Benefits of Organizing a Research Paper

There are several benefits of organizing research that you must have been ignoring since long ago. Here we go with some of the advantages of organizing a paper.

• It saves your time and makes your writing process fast
• It provides a direction for your research
• It also saves your energy
• Helps in building your focus on the research
• Doesn’t let you get distracted since you have one guideline to follow
• It sets all the major ideas of each heading into a particular order
• The whole process becomes simpler and enjoyable when you have great organizing skills

How to Organize a Research Paper

Finally, we are going to have a look at what’s the ideal method of organizing research. There are a few steps involved such as suggesting a topic, finishing the research, making an outline, following the outline to create the first draft, and so on.

• Find a Topic
• Start Your Research
• Make an Outline
• Create the First Draft
• Cite the Sources

All of these steps are explained below so you know how things work in this method.

1. Find a Topic

This is the most basic step that you must take before doing literally any other thing in research paper writing. Without a topic, you can’t even begin doing research, although you absolutely can research to find a topic of your choice.

In organizing a research paper it is significant to derive a topic first, and then move on to the further parts. The topic must be thoughtful, interesting, and researchable. It is always better to study research that adds value to the existing pool of knowledge. Hence, as an author, you must keep it in mind and do the same.

2. Start Your Research

One cannot organize a research paper if they do not have anything to write inside. These pre-writing tasks are a must since you need a lot of sources to quote in your research. That’s where your journey of digging in actually starts and you start finding useful information.

In this part, you should look for past research papers, interviews, surveys, and everything which can help you write your research. Writing a paper is something we all are aware of but organizing it might be new for you. That’s why we are going step by step to give you a better insight into the entire activity.

3. Make an Outline

Why do we always suggest creating an outline? We have a healthy obsession with research and paper outlines because they cut short your writing effort and make things much easier for you. Don’t believe us? Let us give you an example.

You have completed research and now you have so much stuff in front of you. You don’t know how to organize it or shift each of the sources into the section they are supposed to be in. Now if you directly start writing you are doing so wrong to yourself. You are kind of allowing yourself to work double when it can be done in the simplest way.

If you create a rough outline by mentioning all the important headings of the research, then assembling all the sources one by one into their assigned sections you will automatically get rid of so much struggle. Once you have mentioned all the sources and some of their content in each heading, you can take a breath of relief.

You’re no more tangled in a number of papers and research data. You have the vision to follow, and a complete outline that will work as a guideline for you. So during writing the paper, you will find this step so easy and fun. That’s why we always emphasize making the paper outline so you can enjoy an organized writing approach.

4. Create the First Draft

Now as you have finished outlining, it’s time to move toward the first draft of your research. Just start writing, by extending the given ideas in each heading of the outline. One by one you can finish the writing part of each section.

It will give your mind more satisfaction that you have finally completed 80% of your research. And the best part is that you have written everything within a flow. There is always correct information shared with the readers in a certain section. There will be no irregularity or confusion for someone who reads your draft because every detail is written in the part it’s supposed to be in.

5. Cite the Sources

It is one of the most significant parts of the research that nobody can deny. You can never write a research or a paper without mentioning the sources you have used. Research is always completed when you look into the past work on the same topic and quote them into yours for building a trustworthy relationship with the readers.

As you are using someone’s work to sound authentic you must give those authors their credits. For this purpose, you must complete the  in-text citations  and bibliography of your paper. Once it’s done, you can revise your document, add more information that you might have forgotten earlier, or proofread your draft.

Afterward, you can just edit the first draft and see if everything is fine or if it needs to be rewritten. This entire procedure allows the students to finish their research writing task within a day or so. It never takes too long when you go along with an organized method that saves time and gives a refined product.

How to Organize a Research Paper Outline

All our readers have always heard us speaking a lot about paper or essay outlines. In the previous heading, you must have realized once again how much we like the idea of creating a research outline before moving to the writing part. A lot of reasons provided by us must have given you the answer to why we want you to create an outlook.

There is another thing called organizing a research paper outline. It is not so different from organizing a paper since an organized outline can lead you towards organized research. Let’s learn about how to organize a paper outline. You can also get the help of a world-class  paper writing service  to ace your research paper.

1. Select a Topic

It all starts with selecting a topic since you cannot go around and conduct research without having a vision in front of you. A topic is the same as the vision that you will make first to jump to the next parts. So select a topic and move towards organizing the outline of your research.

2. Form a Thesis Statement

To make your research authentic and more impactful, it is always better to have a thesis statement. It’s a compulsion in writing a paper. A thesis can make or break your entire research so think more and select one which sounds suitable for your research.

It’s going to be mentioned at the top of your research outline that’s why it must be created as soon as possible. After you are done designing one, you can step ahead and see what’s the next thing to do in organizing a research outline.

3. Add Sequenced Headings

It is very important to follow a sequence into an outline because this outline is going to be the first draft of your research. Organizing a paper means adding everything into it in a certain way. It doesn’t mean adding any information without a sequence such as discussing the  abstract of the research paper  in place of the literature review, or focusing on the methodology later but giving the findings first.

That’s not how things work! Therefore your headings must be aligned in a sequence in your outline. You may further add personalized details into those headings to make sure you have achieved the level of an organized pattern in research outlining. 

4. Write Paragraphs

Yes, there are paragraphs in the outlines too. You can write them along with the source you have used to find the information. Writing paragraphs within each heading allows you to track down the content very easily. You already know which source you have quoted in a particular heading of your research.

When writing the paper you can extend them and properly organize them as per the standards. Afterward, your process of organizing research will be completed so you can start writing the research and finish the paper. A paper written by creating an outline turns out to be much more effective and suitable than one which doesn’t have a research outline.

How to Organize Information for a Research Paper

As you have learned enough about organizing a research paper or an outline, you may utilize your time in learning the technique of organizing information for research. You may use these techniques as a  history research paper help , nursing paper help, or any research paper help. We have some steps to share that can teach you how to organize information for a paper. .

1. Finalize a Topic

It is the first thing to be done without any doubt. We have been mentioning it repeatedly due to its major significance in the research. You simply cannot start without a topic so it’s better to finalize a topic first, and then think about the next stuff such as researching and organizing the information.

2. Find Past Research Papers

This is the next step in which you need to find the past research papers. By finding the past research you will have enough information to quote in your work. It is really important to find sources that match your topic and support your thesis statement. You can start by keeping in mind the introduction of your research. Gradually you may move forward to writing the  conclusion of the research paper  and keep searching for the work done in the past.

Don’t forget to do the research sequence-wise. For instance, find data for the background first, then literature review, methodology, and so on. Information collected in order works way better than doing it randomly and staying puzzled throughout the whole process of researching.

3. Write Down Ideas Out of Past Work

Now as you have found all the sources it’s time to quote them. You can start it by reading every paper and writing the core idea of it on a separate sheet. Mentioning the main idea from the past work one by one will help you a lot. Instead of reading every paper during the writing part, you can do it earlier and save your time.

4. Organize the Information

Now it’s time to organize the information properly within the headings. Start with the introduction and add the ideas which are related to this part. Then one by one move to each heading and assemble the required information into it.

Doing so will finally get you an organized set of information for your research. You won’t have to worry about anything in guessing which information must be written in every part of the research. Everything has been finally organized including the paper, outline, and information.

How to Organize Research Paper PDF Files

There is another thing nobody has told you about ever which is called organizing a research paper PDF files. So how exactly is it effective and what purpose does it fulfill? It is the skill of finding the past research and organizing them in a way to add value to your research task.

What you can do is start by finding the PDF files of different research from the past. The internet is full of the work done by the previous authors and researchers who have done quality work in their fields. You need to seek help from their work to make your research more valid. That’s why you use the past work of the researchers.

So what does organizing research paper PDF files mean? It means going through the internet by searching your topic and finding the most approach papers to make your work more authentic. You can do it by selecting the best papers and reading them first. Next, you can write down the main ideas of those papers on a sheet.

What is required next is giving those PDF files a sequence so you can use their details in the right order. There is a new fact given in every other research, so it’s better to organize them properly and set them into a basic order. With this technique, you can use good sources, and quote them in your research by making sure you haven’t used a certain detail in place of another one.

Organizing the paper helps in fastening the process of writing and researching both. Many students who have used this technique experienced better results and an enjoyable writing process. It is a myth that you have to spend days and hours on a paper when you also have a better and alternative method to conduct the same research.

You just have to learn the art of organizing the information, PDF files of past research, outline, and your entire paper. Putting everything in order will help and work out for you like no other thing. Therefore every student is suggested to take organizing skills seriously and implement them into research writing to get the best results.

Hence organizing research can be so useful that it saves half of the time. You can write a better paper within less time just by following this amazing technique. An organized thing is always better, and so do the research papers and their information.

If you want to share your opinions with us or have any questions, feel free to comment below and let your voice  reach us .

What are the 5 parts of a research paper?

The 5 parts of a research paper are

• Introduction
• Literature review
• Methodology

What are the 10 steps to writing a research paper?

The 10 basic steps to writing a research paper are given as

• Find a topic
• Form a thesis statement
• Do the research
• Make an outline
• Organize the information
• Start writing
• Make the first draft
• Rewrite the stuff
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What is organizing in research?

Organizing research means providing all the information in an order that builds the right flow of giving details to the readers in each section of the research.

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Expert Commentary

Organizing your research: A scientist’s tips for journalists

Maya Gosztyla, a Ph.D. candidate in the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program at the University of California San Diego, provides an overview of literature mapping tools, RSS feeds, research management software and databases to help journalists organize their research.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Naseem S. Miller, The Journalist's Resource March 21, 2023

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Journalists collect a lot of stuff while reporting, especially for big stories and projects: interviews, documents, research papers, articles. It can be overwhelming at times.

Academics too must collect a large number of documents. They use a variety of tools to organize their work, some of which journalists can also use to organize materials. 

During a panel at the 2023 Association of Health Care Journalists conference in St. Louis, Missouri, Maya Gosztyla , a Ph.D. candidate in the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program at the University of California San Diego, shared her organizational approach as a scientist, which journalists can easily adopt. She’s the authors of 2022 Nature career columns, “ How to Find, Read and Organize Papers ” and “ How to Manage Your Time as a Researcher .”

Below is a list of tips and tools that Gosztyla shared during the panel.

1. Find related research with literature mapping tools.

When journalists report on a new study, it’s important to consider where that study fits into the larger body of research.

Pubmed and Google Scholar are go-to research platforms to find academic research . But they’re not the most efficient tools for finding research related to a specific academic study.

A better approach is using literature mapping tools , which show the connection between research papers.

“Imagine papers like nodes in a network,” Gosztyla said. “Each paper will cite other papers, and what you can do is make a giant map of all the papers in a specific subject area. And then you can see the hubs — what are the papers that everyone cites that you should probably read.”

Some of the popular literature mapping tools, which offer free versions, include ResearchRabbit, Inciteful, Connected Papers and Litmaps .

2. Stay on top of current research with RSS feeds.

Many journalists, especially those who write about academic research, subscribe to journal email lists. But that may not be the best option for organizing research.

“It kind of overwhelms your inbox after a while,” said Gosztyla.

Another common method is setting up keyword email alerts. Both Pubmed and Google Scholar let you set up email alerts for specific keywords. But that too can crowd your email inbox.

Gosztyla’s solution is using an RSS feed reader .

RSS stands for “really simple syndication.” An RSS feed reader — or RSS feed aggregator — gets all the new articles or studies published on a website and brings them together in a timeline that you can quickly scroll through.

Many websites have RSS feeds. Once you have a link for the RSS feed, you can then add it to a free or paid RSS feed reader.

Here’s a good explainer by Lifewire on how to find RSS feeds and add it to a reader.

Gosztyla spends a few minutes every morning scrolling through her RSS feed reader — her favorite is Feedly — to check for new published research in her field.

This August 2022 article from Wired lists some of the more popular RSS feed readers.

3. Use research management software to file your research.

10 things we wish we’d known earlier about research: Tips from The Journalist’s Resource

There are several free online tools that can help you store what you find during your research instead having dozens of open tabs on your browser.

A popular tool developed by and for journalists is DocumentCloud , where you can upload documents, search the text, annotate, extract data , redact and edit.

Another option, popular among academics, is Zotero . It’s a free, open-source reference management tool and can store and organize your research material, including PDF files.

You can use Zotero in a browser, but for a more powerful experience, download it and install the Zotero plugin for your browser. When you come across a study or article that you want to save, click the plugin. It will save the item to your desired Zotero folder. You can create many folders and subfolders, and also share folders. You can also highlight and annotate PDFs.

“If you’re not using a reference manager, I highly, highly recommend them,” said Gosztyla.

You can integrate Zotero to several apps and programs, including, Word, Google Docs and literature mapping tools like ResearchRabbit.

Some of the alternatives to Zotero include, Mendeley , EndNote , RefWorks and Sciwheel .    

4. Routinely read your research pile.

To stay on top of what you’re collecting, Gosztyla offered this advice:

Block out a time each week, like two hours on Fridays, to read. If you have a big pile, maybe devote a couple of days to reading.

And decide how you’re going to spend that reading time: are you going to devote it to do a deep dive, or just scan what you’ve collected, take notes and decide what to keep and what to toss.

“Maybe it’s your routine that every week you buy yourself a nice cup of coffee. You go to a certain cafe and you just read,” Gosztyla said. “So find a routine that you really look forward to and it’s something you want to do.”

5. Don’t forget to take notes while reading documents .

“Don’t ever read without highlighting or taking notes,” Gosztyla said. “Otherwise, you will forget it. I guarantee it.”

Write a small note, a blurb, on the material you read to remind you of its main takeaways and where it fits into your project. Do you need to email or interview the author with follow-up questions? Or read the authors’ previous work? Make a note of those.

In the next step, you’ll learn about organizing those notes.

6. You have collected. You have read. Now organize your work in a database.

Research management software can help you organize your documents, but it’s helpful to create a database of what you’ve collected, your tasks for each item, and maybe a summary and key points. You can use Google Sheets of Microsoft Excel to create your list.

If you want something other than a classic spreadsheet, you can try web applications like Notion.

Notion is a powerful program, which Gosztyla described as a “multi-use database tool.” Notion describes itself as an all-in-one workspace. You can use it to organize your research, manage projects and tasks, note-taking and even your daily journals. You can also integrate Notion with many other apps and tools.

It has a steep learning curve. Give yourself time to learn to use it before integrating it into your workflow. Notion has tutorials on YouTube and a wiki page . Gosztyla recommended Thomas Frank Explains YouTube tutorials. Frank is an author, YouTuber, and Notion expert.

Some alternatives to Notion include Airtable , Trello and Coda .

7. Go one step further with automation tools.

If you want to go a step further in your Notion journey, you can link a Zotero folder to Notion with a tool called Notero . Every time you add an item to your Zotero folder, it populates your Notion database.

Notion has many templates you can choose from. Or you can use Gosztyla’s template .

You can automate and integrate other apps too, to create a better workflow for your work. Some of the popular options are IFTTT — Short for If This Then That — which integrates apps, devices and services to create automated workflows, and Zapier , which connects web applications and allows users to create automated workflows.

Keep in mind, you don’t have to use all the tools listed above.

“Take the pieces that work for you and apply them to your life,” advised Gosztyla.

If you want to share a tool that’s helped you organize your research, you can reach me at [email protected] . You can reach Gosztyla on Twitter @MayaGosztyla .

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Naseem S. Miller

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• Research paper

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

Published on September 24, 2022 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on September 5, 2024.

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.

The five steps in this article will help you put together an effective introduction for either type of research paper.

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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:

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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 …

Scribbr’s paraphrasing tool can help you rephrase sentences to give a clear overview of your arguments.

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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Learn to Research

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• Choose a topic
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Organizing your sources

All right! You've figured out your topic, gone to a database, searched for information, and narrowed down what articles you want to use in your paper. Now what?

Organize your sources to start writing

• Read for complete understanding.  Don't move past a section until you can explain it to someone you respect. Never cite an article you don't understand---find another article if needed.
• Annotate as you read.  This is just note-taking! Write down your thoughts as you read and mark the important pieces of information.
• Organize your sources in the order you'll refer to them in your paper.  For example, maybe start with some primary sources to show your ideas are based on evidence. Then bring in some secondary sources to show there are experts who interpret the evidence the same way you do. Last, you might bring in a secondary source that disagrees with you to show respect for alternative viewpoints and how you'll address them.

Watch the process:

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• Last Updated: Sep 10, 2024 1:22 PM
• URL: https://libguides.wlu.edu/learn

How to organize research notes

[UPDATE: I’ve written a new and expanded post on digital note taking here .]

Your Problem: If you write a lot you most likely read a lot too. To inform your writing projects you gather information from all over the place : a cool blog, a journal article, a newspaper cutting, a PDF, a book chapter, a scrap of paper with an ISBN on it…

If your desk is anything like mine in recent times there are notes-to-self on bits of paper and Post-Its everywhere, and your computer desktop is littered with .txt files with little ideas that you intend to return to later (of course).

How to make sense of it? How do you organize all your research?

Now That’s Organized.

The Importance of Note Taking

We all know it’s good to read widely. Not least because,

Whatever problem you’re struggling with is probably addressed in some book somewhere written by someone a lot smarter than you. – Ryan Holiday

It’s good to have a thought journal to develop your understanding of the facts, ideas, and concepts that you come across and that strike you unexpectedly.

(You might be interested to know that Richard Branson wants you to make more notes .)

Here’s an interesting journal article on the importance of note taking to learning: Note Taking and Learning: A Summary of Research

Note taking, in particular by hand, is an incredibly powerful habit. When you commit your thoughts to paper you process them, distil them, and make more sense of them. Many studies report better recall and better comprehension when handwriting notes is compared to ‘born digital’ notes.

Quite simply, handwriting your notes is better than typing them.

(You can read about the dangers of Going Paperless in another post .)

The key point to consider is that digital note taking encourages shallower processing : it’s too easy.

Copying & Pasting notes, making highlights, and saving-for-later hundreds of PDFs does not count as processing information.

Do not seek shortcuts for your note taking! Do the work to get the rewards.

I’m a techie. I like my iPad. I want my stuff in the cloud. So my solution is a compromise: I work in hand but organize digitally .

This born-physical-stored-digital approach is my attempt to get the best of both worlds. It allows for the cognitive advantages of using a pen and paper and the ease of retrieval and tagging features of digital files.

Here’s my system to create and organise my handwritten notes in order to get the benefits of digitisation but avoid the cognitive costs.

[2017 update – I now use an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil to get the best of both the analogue and digital worlds. Blog post here .]

You need a good notebook:

Make sure you have a notebook that feels special to you . You should want to take it around with you and, most importantly, you should want to write in it.

A notebook with a hard back and a wired spine is my favourite. They don’t get battered in your bag and last as long as you need to fill up the pages. The hard back means there’s always a stable surface – so no wonky words.

A wired spine means you can always flip the page around and write on a smooth, flat page without needing to bend back the spine (which I find really annoying for some reason).

My notebook of choice is the Oxford Black n’ Red A4 Wirebound Hardback Notebook .

Its pages are also perforated, so you can cleanly rip out pages if you need to without ruining the rest of the notebook.

I know there’s a real fashion for Moleskine notebooks these days, and it’s certainly a great brand. But I don’t find their notebooks all that practical.

However, what I think doesn’t matter: it’s important that you have a notebook that you like and want to write in, so just make sure you love your notebook.

Get yourself a good pen:

What’s a good pen? The one you can find that’s a joy to write with.

A good pen might be a crazy-expensive Mont Blanc or a cheap Bic , just make sure it’s one that you like writing with. You want to have an incentive to get those thoughts on the page.

I was recommended the Uni-ball Jetstream recently and have been converted away from Bic Biros. The Jetstream offers a great balance between the ease of writing with a rollerball and the satisfaction of a ‘proper’ ink pen.

Make sure that you, your notebook, and your pen are inseparable:

A confession: I ‘temporarily misplace’ a lot of pens. This is not a good trait if you want to make note taking an easy activity. You can’t make notes without having those tools together at the same time, so why not get a fancy holder?!

Here’s a cool tool to make sure that your notebook and pen are best buddies.

I’ve tried a few ways to marry my note book and pen, from elastic band to a minimalist iPad cover for them both, but this is fairly inexpensive and does the job quite nicely.

Now go forth and take glorious notes! ( Some tips here. )

How to digitize your paper notes:

Once you’ve made your notes and you’re ready to organize them and integrate them into your knowledge management system , it’s time to digitize.

You’ll need an Evernote account and the Scannable app from the iTunes Store on your phone / iPad. (If you’re on Android there are alternatives: i.e. GeniusScan )

Scannable is an app from Evernote. It’s great at detecting the edges of documents and then adjusting the lighting to enhance your writing on the page. Here’s an example of a Scannable capture vs. a normal photo using the camera app:

The pdf created by Scannable is on the left, the camera app picture is on the right.

I think the Scannable version is better, don’t you? It’s far easier to read the text, and that’s exactly what we want.

Save the scan and give it an appropriate title, then upload the file to Evernote.

You could stop here: your handwritten notes will now be digitized and available in Evernote. If you’re an Evernote devotee, then you’re good to go!

But I’m a Devonthink person, so there’s one more step to get my handwritten notes into my database software. (You can read more about how I use Devonthink in this post here .)

Importing Evernote notes into Devonthink is straightforward. Make sure you have both Devonthink and Evernote installed on your computer. Then open your database, click [File – Import – Notes from Evernote] and you’re done. Easy.

Now that your written notes are in Devonthink you can tag them, store different notes in different folders within your file structure, or just dump them in an archive folder for reference.

I like this system because the hand-written notes are still available, and the digitised version is in addition to the physical version. Because you can tag and date your digitized notes, the digital copy is easier to retrieve and access, but you’ve also benefited from having made the notes by hand in the first place.

You’ve had your cake and eaten it too .

• Always makes notes in your notebook; buy cool tools that make writing a pleasure
• Once a week, scan and import; use Evernote and Scannable, import via Devonthink (if you use it)
• Be awesome – your notes will have a digital home, and still, you’ll benefit from handwriting them

Final Thoughts on Organizing Research notes:

You should always question whether it’s worth adding another task to your workflow (such as digitising your notes). Avoid workflow complexity like the plague, as it creates a disincentive to do creative work.

If you don’t defend simplicity you’ll end up doing loads of busy-work that has no real purpose other than amassing a collection of impressive technology and clever software integrations.

That said: I scared myself with the research I did for my recent post on Going Paperless .

Born-Digital notes are not a shortcut – pen and paper should be what you reach for when doing thinking-work. But the benefits of going digital are real.

The workflow described in this post is my attempt to get the best of both worlds, and the additional effort to use Scannable and import to my research database is worth it.

Any thoughts on this? There’s a comment section below ↓

Some Interesting Links:

The Benefits of No-Tech Note Taking – http://chronicle.com/article/The-Benefits-of-No-Tech-Note/228089/

4 Benefits of Writing by Hand – http://mentalfloss.com/article/33508/4-benefits-writing-hand

A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop – http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/

The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking – http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/6/1159

Marginalia, the Anti-Library, and Other Ways to Master the Lost Art of Reading – http://99u.com/articles/42851/marginalia-the-anti-library-and-other-ways-to-master-the-lost-art-of-reading

Why Reading On Paper, Scientifically, Makes Us Happier People. – http://2machines.com/188186/

Great article, just what I was looking for! I have lots of handwritten notes, I can´t help it, I tried taking notes on my laptop for a while but doesn´t feel right and now I have a mess. I am like you trying to combine my handwritten thinking process with the practical features of technology for my research, trying to organise my notes digitally as I write them, whoch is a lot of work. I don´t know if Evernote works with tags like Bear (which is only for Mac), I don´t like these type of digital notes, but I would like to try your method, digitalize my handwritten ones and find the way to tag them by topic. Thanks a lot!

Your approach is very helpful, but somewhat inadequate for me. However, I don’t have a good solution yet.

First for books, I actually dictate my reactions relevant page by relevant page into Dragon 15 and transcribe them. This is much faster than typing them.

Second, I look over hundreds of web pages, reference material, and so on in text, photo, and scanned ancient materials form. There right now are saved electronically with a little attention to saved titles to organize them. For example, anything related to Norsemen is started with Viking . . .. Photos of San Francisco in 1849 are started with San Francisco . . ., and so on. I generally do not rate them – a big mistake.

Third, I have browser bookmarks for about five hundred web sites also.

This amounts to perhaps a million and a half words or so and several thousand images. I keep them stored on my hard drive, but have an archive hard drive as back up. I keep a third copy on USB drives, but they tend to run out of space.

Thanks for your article. I have not addressed how to make a bibliography of my stuff since I am writing historical fiction, but need to face that some day.

Hi Nick, normally the first page in a Google search yields the most helpful articles. But this post appeared on the second or third page, and it is just what I needed! I have been reading a lot of books on personal development, psychology, religion, spirituality, sports, nutrition, etc. I read these books on paper, underlining interesting sentences. I then wrote the sentences I underlined in Word. I also take notes from YouTube video’s and seminars. Now I have a lot of word documents and even Excel documents with quotations. I reached the point now that I combine knowledge from different books and even field. So, I plan to write a blog, give workshops and presentations, or maybe even a book. So, the problem is; how to find all the quotations (ideas) on a specific topic from different books in different word documents. They are all over the laptop. Without categorization or tagging. Thank you very much for the tip on Devonthink. I will try this out from now. And also, thanks for the note taking by pen. I am considering buying an iPad and pen. Great idea. You are right; when you write you retain the information better. I still wonder how to organize al the Word documents and categorize them. I suppose Devonthink will help me out?

I’m glad you came across the article and found it helpful!

It does sound like Devonthink might work well for you. I find that it helps make connections between notes/article I hadn’t considered, and that can only strengthen your research and writing.

With certain documents, you might find it easier to ‘index’ the external folder rather than import them to Devonthink. That means you can find them and tag them in DT, but also be able to use the files in external applications (like Word).

Good luck getting all your material organised — it might take some time but it will be worth it!

I was searching this morning for good systems for filing information for research projects. I am surprised that there is so little guidance on how to set up and use filing systems for various purposes. I have been doing this for many years, but I still seem to make it up as I go along. Your system for notetaking has some appeal, but I will have to give it some thought. The Ipad/Iphone/Icloud have been a great boon for my creative writing as I always have drafts with me and can tinker whenever I want. I am not sure they work as well for organizing larger projects. Perhaps that is where the Notebook could come in. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks, Kee. Glad you got some food-for-thought!

Great article, great advice. I’m in way over my head with my ocean of notes dating back to the 2000’s. I’ve got at least six ‘master notebooks’, more purse-sized notebooks than I’ve even bothered to count, and hundreds of scraps of paper with quickly scribbled notes. I’ve got an avalanche of ideas that I keep adding every day. Yikes. I’ve entered a lot of the info into Word files, and the drive folders are just as confusing and frightening. Any more great advice for organizing computerized notes? I don’t seem to be using the folder and file system in the most effective way. Any suggestions would be gratefully received :)

Hi Elizabeth, I think it really comes down to how your brain works and the type of projects you take on. You might want to organise a file system by date and then tag by topic. Or vice versa. Or, if you are willing to digitise all your notebooks, your could just throw everything into a Devonthink database, index the files, and then rest on the search function. There are many systems you *could* adopt but the starting point really has to be what you’re hoping to get out of the database, then work back from there.

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Literature Review

6 Best Research Project Graphic Organizer Templates

Discover 6 top research project graphic organizer templates to streamline project planning and boost productivity.

Sep 9, 2024

Researching a topic can feel overwhelming, especially when you need to make sense of what seems like endless information before you can start your paper. A research project graphic organizer can help you confidently tackle the literature search so you can write an efficient research paper that earns a top grade. In this guide, we'll explore the many benefits of graphic organizers for research projects and show you how to make one for your next project. Otio's AI research and writing partner helps you organize your thoughts, create a graphic organizer, and write a stellar research paper. With this tool, you can make excellent study material that breaks down information for a quick overview of what you need to know.

Table Of Contents

What is a research graphic organizer, purpose of a research project graphic organizer, what are the 7 types of graphic organizers, how to create a research project graphic organizer, supercharge your researching ability with otio — try otio for free today.

A graphic organizer (also referred to as a research matrix) is a valuable tool for compiling detailed notes during the research process. These note-taking systems can take a long time to assemble, so they’re geared toward long-term papers, such as graduate research or capstone projects. That being said, they are well worth the effort as they save time and effort when navigating themes, content, and theories across articles. Furthermore, these organization systems make it easy to quickly compile a bibliography as all the information is stored in one place.  

Also known as research project graphic organizers, graphic organizers help students visually sort and outline information before, during, and after reading. Their visual nature helps students reduce cognitive load by creating a simple framework for organizing information. This allows students to focus on understanding the material instead of becoming overwhelmed with the details. 

Kickstart, Your Research with Graphic Organizers

During the pre-reading stage, graphic organizers can be a brainstorming tool to activate prior knowledge and connect what students know with new information.  For example, if a student is about to read a biography on Rosa Parks, a graphic organizer can help them sort out what they know about the civil rights movement before reading. 

Dig In While You Read 

During the reading stage, graphic organizers can help students arrange pertinent information, facilitating learning by highlighting links among concepts. Continuing with Rosa Parks' biography example, as the students read, they can use a graphic organizer to help them sort details about her life, her role in the civil rights movement, and the broader historical context. 

Reflect and Consolidate What You've Learned 

In the post-reading stage, graphic organizers can assess comprehension, recall pertinent information, summarize main ideas, and maintain the content learned. After finishing the biography, the students could use a graphic organizer to help them reflect on what they learned about Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement. 

Supercharge Your Researching Ability With Otio

Knowledge workers, researchers, and students today suffer from content overload. Too many settle for stitching together complicated bookmarking, read-it-later, and note-taking apps to get through their workflows. Now that anyone can create content with a button, this problem will only worsen. Otio solves this problem by providing researchers with one AI-native workspace. 

Let Otio be your AI research and writing partner — try Otio for free today !

Related Reading

• Systematic Review Vs Meta Analysis • Impact Evaluation • How To Critique A Research Article • How To Synthesize Sources • Annotation Techniques • Skimming And Scanning • Types Of Literature Reviews • Literature Review Table • Literature Review Matrix • How To Increase Reading Speed And Comprehension • How To Read Research Papers • How To Summarize A Research Paper • Literature Gap

1. Venn Diagrams: Understanding Relationships and Differences   

Venn diagrams help readers grasp the relationships between various concepts. Venn diagrams use two or more overlapping circles to show the similarities and differences between each idea. The areas where the circles overlap display the traits that the ideas have in common, while the individual sections of each circle illustrate the unique characteristics of each concept.

2. Series of Events Chains: Sequencing Events  

A series of events graphic organizer helps students visualize the order of events in a story or passage. This type of organizer has a simple format that can be adapted for any length. Events are written chronologically to show how they relate to one another. This helps illustrate the continuous movement of the narrative.

3. Concept Maps: Branching Out from a Central Idea   

A concept map, or spider map, helps students visually display what they know about a topic before, during, and after a reading or research project. This graphic organizer has a central idea in the middle, with other relevant information supporting the topic branching out. The more detailed a concept map gets, the better students understand the relationship between the ideas and how they connect to the main topic.

4. Story Maps: Breaking Down Fiction

A story map helps students visually display crucial information related to components of a story before, during, and after reading. This type of graphic organizer helps students break down the character(s), setting, and problem. This enables readers to comprehend the narrative better and summarize the plot.

5. Network Tree Maps: Organizing Information  

A network treemap has a main idea at the top with subtopics underneath. As students learn about the different concepts, they can fill in the tree map to show their understanding of how the information is organized. This type of graphic organizer works well for helping students prepare for writing assignments and research projects.

6. Fishbone Maps: Analyzing Causes and Effects  

A fishbone graphic organizer helps students visualize the interaction and relationship of a complex event and its effects. The “bones” of the fish represent the different causes of a specific problem, while the “head” of the fish illustrates the main issue. This type of organizer enables students to break down complex information to analyze it and better understand the content.

7. Problem Solution Maps: Summarizing Text  

Problem solution maps help students summarize text, identify the problems within the text, recognize solutions used to solve the problem, and interpret the results. This type of graphic organizer is helpful for expository and narrative texts.

1. Otio: Your AI Research Assistant  

Today’s knowledge workers, researchers, and students are overwhelmed by content overload. There are too many stitch-together complicated bookmarking, read-it-later, and note-taking apps to get through their workflows. With the ability for anyone to create content with the click of a button, this problem will only get worse. Otio solves this problem by providing researchers with one AI-native workspace. It helps them: 

Collect many data sources, from bookmarks, tweets, and extensive books to YouTube videos. 

Extract key takeaways with detailed AI-generated notes and source-grounded Q&A chat. 

Create draft outputs using the sources you’ve collected. Otio helps you to go from the reading list to the first draft faster. 

Along with this, Otio also helps you write research papers/essays faster. Here are our top features that researchers love: AI-generated notes on all bookmarks (Youtube videos, PDFs, articles, etc.), Otio enabling you to chat with individual links or entire knowledge bases, just like you chat with ChatGPT and AI-assisted writing. 

Let Otio be your AI research and writing partner —try Otio for free today!  

2. Teachers Pay Teachers Graphic Organizer Templates  

Their graphic organizer templates have a simple design to guide students' research when discovering a career of their choice. Students will look up the basics of a possible career, including salary, education requirements, employment outlook, skills, tasks, etc.  

3. EdrawMax Research Graphic Organizer  

EdrawMax offers free editable graphic organizers . EdrawMax Online is a cloud-based software that allows users to create various diagrams, charts, drawings, and graphic organizers. By signing up, you can access a canvas to draw any organizer of your choice by dragging and dropping various shapes and symbols from the included library. You can also use EdrawMax Online to create graphic organizers for research papers. You can choose to create one from scratch or just use a template, albeit the latter option relies on the presence of a template in the template gallery. 

4. HMH Free Graphic Organizer Templates  

Help your students classify ideas and communicate more effectively with these free graphic organizer templates available for download. They can be used to structure writing projects and help in problem-solving, decision-making, studying, planning research, and brainstorming.  

5. Twinkl Research Notes Graphic Organizer  

Use this research notes graphic organizer to help students as they research for a project or essay. This resource allows students to track where their information is coming from to help avoid plagiarism.  

6. Teach Starter Graphic Organizers  

Teach Starter has various templates for research graphic organizers. You can download them as a PDF and print them out as well. Some are paid, and some are free.

Graphic organizers help students systematically arrange and visually display information while researching to help them identify, study, and understand the relationships between the parts and the whole. A research project graphic organizer can help students visualize the components of a research project and what they’ll need to do before, during, and after the research process.  

For example, a T-chart can help students break down the differences between two topics before selecting one for a research project. Venn diagrams can also help students identify similarities and differences between two topics.  Research project graphic organizers can also be utilized as a planning tool to help students organize their thoughts before they begin writing their research papers. 

For instance, a research project graphic organizer can help students identify their research questions, organize their findings, and visually display how their research will address the paper's topics and subtopics.   

Using AI Tools to Create Graphic Organizers for Research Projects

Artificial intelligence tools can help students create research project graphic organizers. First, students can select the graphic organizer they want to make, such as a T-chart or Venn diagram. Next, they can use prompts to help the AI generate content for their organizers. The results can be used to help fill in the graphic organizers and provide structure to their research.

Knowledge workers, researchers, and students today suffer from content overload. Otio solves this problem by providing researchers with one AI-native workspace . 

Collecting Research with Otio 

When conducting a research project, you’ll want to gather various sources. Otio helps you to do this quickly and efficiently. You can import bookmarks, tweets, PDFs, articles, YouTube videos, and even entire books. Importing all this data into Otio creates a centralized repository for your research project, a great way to stay organized and improve your workflow. 

Extracting Key Takeaways with Otio 

Once you have collected your research materials, you can analyze them for relevant information. Otio makes this process easier by generating detailed AI notes for all your research materials. You can even chat with these AI notes just like you would with ChatGPT. This improves information retrieval and helps you to understand your research better. 

Creating Outputs with Otio

After you have collected and analyzed your research, you can start creating written outputs. Otio helps you to go from a reading list to a first draft faster. Use the notes generated by Otio to inform your writing, and take advantage of AI-assisted writing features to improve your overall efficiency. 

Let Otio be your AI research and writing partner — try Otio for free today ! 

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Sep 8, 2024

5 Best Who What When Where Why Graphic Organizer Templates

Sep 7, 2024

5 Best Paragraph Graphic Organizer Templates

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Critical Writing Program: Love's Labor the Invention of Dating : Researching the White Paper

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Research the White Paper

Researching the white paper:.

The process of researching and composing a white paper shares some similarities with the kind of research and writing one does for a high school or college research paper. What’s important for writers of white papers to grasp, however, is how much this genre differs from a research paper.  First, the author of a white paper already recognizes that there is a problem to be solved, a decision to be made, and the job of the author is to provide readers with substantive information to help them make some kind of decision--which may include a decision to do more research because major gaps remain. 

Thus, a white paper author would not “brainstorm” a topic. Instead, the white paper author would get busy figuring out how the problem is defined by those who are experiencing it as a problem. Typically that research begins in popular culture--social media, surveys, interviews, newspapers. Once the author has a handle on how the problem is being defined and experienced, its history and its impact, what people in the trenches believe might be the best or worst ways of addressing it, the author then will turn to academic scholarship as well as “grey” literature (more about that later).  Unlike a school research paper, the author does not set out to argue for or against a particular position, and then devote the majority of effort to finding sources to support the selected position.  Instead, the author sets out in good faith to do as much fact-finding as possible, and thus research is likely to present multiple, conflicting, and overlapping perspectives. When people research out of a genuine desire to understand and solve a problem, they listen to every source that may offer helpful information. They will thus have to do much more analysis, synthesis, and sorting of that information, which will often not fall neatly into a “pro” or “con” camp:  Solution A may, for example, solve one part of the problem but exacerbate another part of the problem. Solution C may sound like what everyone wants, but what if it’s built on a set of data that have been criticized by another reliable source?  And so it goes. 

For example, if you are trying to write a white paper on the opioid crisis, you may focus on the value of  providing free, sterilized needles--which do indeed reduce disease, and also provide an opportunity for the health care provider distributing them to offer addiction treatment to the user. However, the free needles are sometimes discarded on the ground, posing a danger to others; or they may be shared; or they may encourage more drug usage. All of those things can be true at once; a reader will want to know about all of these considerations in order to make an informed decision. That is the challenging job of the white paper author.     
 The research you do for your white paper will require that you identify a specific problem, seek popular culture sources to help define the problem, its history, its significance and impact for people affected by it.  You will then delve into academic and grey literature to learn about the way scholars and others with professional expertise answer these same questions. In this way, you will create creating a layered, complex portrait that provides readers with a substantive exploration useful for deliberating and decision-making. You will also likely need to find or create images, including tables, figures, illustrations or photographs, and you will document all of your sources. 

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Green Energy Research: Collaboration and Tools for a Sustainable Future

Science Article | Green Energy | 6 Sep 2024

The Urgency of Green Energy Innovation

The recent Climate Change 2023 synthesis report emphasizes the consequences of delayed emission reductions: fewer effective adaptation options for a warming planet 2 . Geopolitical factors like the Russia-Ukraine conflict further underscore the need for a green energy transition, with Europe’s energy security concerns highlighting the reliance on imported fossil fuels.

The Green Energy Research Landscape

Against this backdrop, green energy development has become a critical area of research, reflected in a more than 10-fold increase in related publications from 2010 (1,105) to 2023 (11,346), according to Digital Science’s Dimensions database. Researchers around the world are striving to improve green energy technology and society’s ability to harness renewable energy sources more efficiently.

According to data analysed by Nature Navigator , which uses artificial intelligence to generate comprehensive summaries of research topics, ‘renewable energy systems and technologies’ is the field’s most frequently mentioned subtopic (Fig.1). At a research concept level, wind power generation, grid optimization and resource management all feature as common underlying themes.

Figure 1: Topic anatomy of green energy research First-level nodes denote the research subtopic (highest prevalence themes emerging from green energy research). Second-level nodes denote the research concepts associated with these research subtopics. Note: only the research concepts mentioned in the highest count of outputs within each subtopic are presented here. Credit: Nature Research Intelligence

Of the primary green energy research subtopics presented by Nature Navigator , it is telling that ‘materials for energy storage and conversion’ is the fastest-growing, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.2% over the last five years. This may reflect a growing consensus among researchers and industry that a lack of options to efficiently store electricity generated by intermittent renewable sources for later use is a key bottleneck preventing the greater penetration of these sources into the grid.

Real-World Example: Accelerating Heat Pump Innovation

Changmo Sung, a prominent green energy researcher at Korea University, leveraged Nature Navigator to identify trends, key areas, and potential breakthroughs in heat pump technology. This facilitated a collaborative project with LG Electronics, accelerating their research efforts.

“It also enabled the rapid discovery of researchers and institutions outside Korea working on similar or complementary projects related to heat pumps” Sung says.

• International Energy Agency, Global Energy Review 2021 (2021).
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2023 (2023).

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Research: How to Delegate Decision-Making Strategically

• Hayley Blunden
• Mary Steffel

A recent study examined the negative consequences of handing off responsibilities — and how to avoid them.

Delegating work can help free up managers’ time and energy while empowering their employees to take on meaningful tasks. Yet, previous research has shown that delegating decision-making can cause employees to feel overly burdened. In a new paper, researchers examine the negative impact that handing over choice responsibility can have on delegator-delegate relationships. They offer research-backed solutions for delegating decisions more fairly in order to offset some of delegation’s negative interpersonal consequences.

Effective delegation is critical to managerial success : delegating properly can help empower employees , and those who delegate can increase their earnings . Delegation can also be a way for managers to give employees experience and control, especially when they delegate decision-making responsibilities, which allow employees to exhibit agency over important stakes. Yet, some of our recent research has shown that employees can view delegated decision-making as a burden that they would prefer to avoid.

• Hayley Blunden is an assistant professor of management at the Kogod School of Business at American University. Her research focuses on how leaders can make workplace interaction more productive.
• MS Mary Steffel is an associate professor of marketing at D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University. Her research focuses on examining when we call upon others to help us make decisions, how we navigate making decisions for others, and how we can support others in making better decisions. See her faculty page here .

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