1. Schedule!

I tell my students that the first step in writing a research paper is to admit
you have a research paper. Write up a schedule with a series of milestones to accomplish
by a specific date (e.g. find 10 sources by September 20, finish preliminary research by
October 15), and keep to it. You will need time to get an overview of what material is out there,
find out what’s in your library, select relevant material, read it, take notes, and start putting it
together — and to do a second wave of research to clear up points raised in the writing of your
first draft.
2. Start, don’t end, with Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a great place to start your research — spend
some time searching for keywords related to your topic, browsing the links you find on each
page, and following their suggested resources. Take notes, especially of any good sources
they recommend. The goal here is to get a good overview of the subject you’re writing
about, and Wikipedia is far better for that than most print sources, because of its hyperlink ed
nature. By the time you get ready to write, though, you should have much better sources at
your command than Wikipedia, so avoid citing it in your paper.
3. Mine bibliographies. Once you’ve found a good, solid academic book or essay on your topic,
you’re golden — at the end there will be a list of dozens or hundreds of sources for you to look
up. You can usually skim through the bibliography and note down anything whose title
sounds relevant to your research. Academic authors aren’t very creative with their titles, so it
is usually pretty easy to tell what their work is about from just the title or subtitle. Go back
through and see if you recognize any of the authors’ names — these too might be worth
following up. once you start finding the work the first book referenced, do the same thing
with their bibliographies — soon you’ll have a list of far more sources than you need (but you
need them, because your library may not have all the books and journals referred to, and inter-
library loan is so slow as to be useless for students who need to finish by the end of the
semester).
4. Have a research question in mind. Technically, your thesis should emerge from your
research, when you have data in front of you. But you need a kind of “working thesis” while
doing your research — a question you want to answer. As you come across new material, ask
yourself if it looks like it will help you answer your question. Anything that looks relevant but
doesn’t help answer your question you can put back. It’s tempting to gather a lot of background
material, and some is necessary, but too much will waste your time without contributing to your
research. Get one or two good sources for background (your initial Wikipedia searching should
be adequate in most cases) and then keep focused by working towards an answer to your
research question.
5. Deal with one piece at a time. Don’t try to tackle your subject all at once. Get enough of a
sense of the topic that you can create an outline of the things you need to understand, and
then deal with each piece on its own. You’ll find the connections between the pieces when you
write your first draft.
6. Use a system. Start your research with an idea of how you plan to collect and organize your
notes and data. Although I’ve written papers using index cards before, my favorite system is to
use a one-subject notebook. At the top of a fresh page, I write the full bibliographic reference
for a book or paper, then copy quotes and write notes — both tagged with the page numbers
they came from — interspersed with thoughts and ideas that occur to me as I’m reading. I’d
love to use a computer more efficiently when doing research, and have built databases and
tried wikis and outliners and other kinds of software, but I’ve never found a system that worked
well — I spent more time fiddling with the software than getting work done. Whatever system
you decide on, make sure that every quote, fact, and thought is tied in some way to its
source so that you can easily insert references while you’re writing.
 7. Know your resources. Spend some time getting to know what resources, both online and
offline, your library to offer. Most libraries offer tours to students, or talk to a research librarian
— or at the least, walk through the library to get a feel for what is where, paying special
attention to the microfilm repository and periodicals, which you’ll use a lot in the course of most
research projects. Most university libraries also subscribe to a number of academic databases,
and most are now accessible online — get to know the research material you can access
from home. J-Stor, for instance, holds full-text photographic copies of hundreds of journals, all
easily searchable. There’s nothing quite like thinking of something in the middle of the night,
logging on, and printing out two or three relevant journal articles to review in the morning.
8. Ask for help. Use the human resources available to you as well as the material resources.
Most professors spend their office hours waiting in disappointment for a student to drop in and
give them something to justify the time they’re required to keep an open hour — be that
student! Ask for help in finding and evaluating sources, or for help in figuring out what to do
with the material you’ve collected so far. Another often-overlooked resource is your friendly
neighborhood librarian. Librarians are, in my estimation, the best people on Earth — they know
the material in their charge forwards and backwards, they are deeply concerned with seeing it
used, and they have committed their lives to making information more available. Most
librarians will be happy to help you find relevant material for your project, and some will
even locate specific pieces of hard-to-find information for you. Don’t forget to ask your fellow
student for help, too — some of the might have come across work directly relevant to your
topic.
9. Carry an idea book. As you start really getting into your project, your mind will start churning
through what you’re reading, even when you’re not consciously working on it. If you’re like me,
you’ll be struck by sudden revelations at the least convenient times — in the bathroom, in the
shower, at the supermarket. or while getting ready for bed. Keep a small notebook and a pen
with you everywhere (well, maybe not in the shower — although I do keep dry erase markers
by the sink so I can write down quick thoughts on the bathroom mirror when I get out of the
shower); jot down notes whenever an idea crosses your mind, and transfer these notes into
your research log (or software, or whatever) as soon as you can.
10. Bring it up to date. Pay attention to the publication date of your material — while it’s ok to use
older material, ideally you’d like the bulk of your references to come from the last 10 years or
so. If research in your topic seems to dry up a decade or so back, it might be because the field
moved on, but it also might be because funding opportunities disappeared, a major researcher
died, or any number of accidental reasons. One trick is to Google the major researchers
whose work you’ve found and see if you can find their homepages — most will list recent
publications and their current research activities — it could be that someone has a book about
to come out, or reports published in obscure or foreign journals. If so, you might try inter-library
loan, or in some cases, try contacting the researcher herself and ask if they can send you a
draft or reprint. Be courteous, explain what you’re working on and what you’re trying to find out,
where your research has taken you so far, and what light you hope their work can shed on
your topic. Do not ask for a list of references or what your thesis should be — nobody wants to
do a student’s work for them.

These tips will help put a decent bibliography and a body of notes and data at your fingertips when
you sit down to write up your paper. Although evaluating sources is also a necessary part of doing
good research, it will have to wait for its own post, as it’s too big a topic to reduce to a bullet point
here. A librarian or your professor can help, especially if you restrict yourself to books and journals
available in your university library. Internet sources are trickier, as it takes no effort at all these days
to put up a professional-looking website saying whatever you want; until you’re comfortable with the
material in your chosen field, it’s best to stick to known sources like Wikipedia and sites endorsed by
your library or department, if you use the Internet at all. Remember, though, that until a few years
ago, most of us managed to do research with no Internet at all! With typewriters! Walking uphill! In the
snow! Barefoot!

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