How to Write an Effective Research Paper
- Description
- Curriculum
- FAQ
- Reviews
Over the last decade, the expectation for publishing research papers has increased significantly in academia, in professional communities, and in science and technology disciplines worldwide.
In scientific fields (especially in academia), both graduate students and faculty are expected to publish the results of their research work in journals and conference proceedings. Publication of research or journal papers has also become a key measure for tenure and promotion assessments. In fact, U.S. News, National Research council, and other external organizations often consider publications as a critical metric in their analysis and ranking of programs and institutions. An increasing number of highly ranked universities, worldwide, now require publication of papers in SCI indexed journals as a per-requisite to receive a doctoral degree.
Unfortunately, despite the widespread standard of writing and publishing research papers, most Universities don’t offer any formal training or mentorship on how to write effective papers. The lack of guidance and resources has made it difficult, and at times frustrating, for graduate students and young researchers to properly organize and structure their papers for acceptance into publications.
Whether you are a graduate student, conducting research, working towards a tenure, or you would like to advance your professional career in science, technology or academia, you will find this course greatly helpful. You will no longer have to struggle or spend countless hours figuring out how to start your research paper, only to have it turn out not as good as you hoped.
If you are a beginner, you can simply follow along with the easy steps outlining each section of your paper; even if you are more experienced, you may be surprised at how much you can improve your research writing technique from the strategies and examples presented in the course videos.
This “Writing Research Papers: How to Write Research Paper Effectively” course will provide you with the valuable research guidance from a scholar with over 36 years of experience in research and teaching in higher education. Dr. Mohammad Noori has published over 250 technical and professional papers, 6 advanced level text books, has been the guest editor of over 20 special journal volumes and technical books, and has given over 100 keynote, plenary and invited talks, currently serves as the technical editor, associate editor and a member of the editorial board of several prestigious journals and as a series editor for CRC/Taylor& Francis, and has presented numerous workshops worldwide on this topic.
Take this Writing Research Papers course now and learn how to write research paper effectively.
In a near future this course will be thoroughly revised to include topics on the latest web-based tools and scholarly resources that provide invaluable resources for conducting research and publishing high quality papers.
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Chapter 1 OverviewThis video provides an overview of the first chapter, which covers the Context of Writing a Research Journal Paper. In this chapter, you will learn how to efficiently conduct your research, even if you are starting completely from scratch.
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Defining the Research Question / Theme / Topic
This video will help you think about what you have accomplished in your research, as well as other questions that will help define your overall research focus.
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Gathering Background Information - Locate Prior Works
In this video, you will learn the importance of locating prior works, why it can help speed up your research process, and how to easily locate such works.
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Gathering Background Information - Read Key Papers
As part of your research, it is incredibly important to read the prior works you have located. This video will show you time-saving techniques on you can efficiently read through these key papers.
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Gathering Background Information - Organize References
In this video, I recommending helpful tips and resources for organizing your references, such as websites that can automatically generate bibliographies and help find related key papers.
The free resource that I highly recommend in this video is http://www.mendeley.com/
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Forming a Hypothesis and an Outline
Once you have conducted your research, you will need to develop an outline of your research findings. This video will help you effectively create your hypothesis by presenting important questions to consider when working on this aspect of your research paper.
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Summarizing the Analysis / Simulation / Experiment
In this video you will learn how to summarize and analyze your research, which will depend on the type of paper you are planning to write. This preliminary step will correspond with the summary and analysis section of your paper later on.
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Organizing and Interpreting Results
As you may begin to notice, the research process you conduct will match up closely with your actual research paper sections. In this video, you will learn how to interpret and organize the results of your research to help get started with your paper.
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Chapter 2 Overview
The second part of the course is divided into 2 main chapters, the first of which covers the preliminary steps you should take before writing, and what you need to know to get started.
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Preliminary Steps
There are a number of crucial steps you should take before you start writing, such as considering whether your paper topic is consistent with the focus of the journal you would like to get published in. These types of preparations will help ensure your success and prevent you from wasting time writing with the wrong intentions in mind.
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Before You Start
This video will help you get started with the writing process as a whole. Getting started can be a daunting task, but as this video explains, you can get started easier than you think, just by getting your thoughts on paper. Watch to learn more.
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Paper Structure and Function
This video provides an overview of the structure and function of the various sections of a research paper, each of which are each explained more thoroughly in the following videos.
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Title
This video will explain how to properly choose the right title for your research paper, and the criteria to consider when thinking of a title.
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Abstract
Learn why an abstract is so important, and how to effectively write your research paper abstract, along with an example.
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Key Words
Discover the importance of key words in relation to your paper. Also included in this video is another helpful example of a paper with a good title, abstract, and key words.
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Introduction - Overview
The Introduction consists of a few parts, and is one of the most important sections of your paper. This video will provide you with a thorough understanding of why the Introduction is so important and what you should include within it.
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Introduction - Organization
In this video, you will learn about the breakdown of the Introduction section into its critical sub sections, which include a first paragraph, middle paragraphs, and a final paragraph.
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Introduction - First Paragraph
Learn about the most important information that you should include in the first paragraph of your Introduction section, and how to present this information to your readers.
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Introduction - Middle Paragraphs
The middle paragraphs are the largest part of the Introduction section, though the size may depend on the type of journal or paper you are writing. This video will begin discussing the goal for the middle paragraph section of your Introduction.
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Introduction - Middle Paragraphs (continued)
This video will continue explaining what information you should and should not include in the middle paragraph sections of your Introduction.
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Introduction - Final Paragraph
This video will teach you the importance of the final paragraph within the Introduction, which serves as the "road map" paragraph for the rest of the research paper.
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Introduction - Final Paragraph (continued), and Extra Tips
This video provides more insight on the purpose of the final Introduction paragraph. There is also an example in this video, which demonstrates an excellent example of the "road map" final paragraph within the Introduction section.
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The Methods - Overview
In this video, you will learn how to present the methods section of your research paper, and help you to better explain your reasoning for choosing certain research methods.
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The Methods - Examples
Learn more about how to implement the methods section of your research paper by following along with an example.
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The Results
Although the way you organize the results section of your research paper will largely depend on the type of research you have conducted, this video will walkthrough the general guidelines you should follow for this section of your paper.
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The Discussion
This video explains the importance of the discussion section of your paper, and teaches you how to present it depending on the type of research you have conducted.
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Summary and Conclusion
This video provides a very important outline for your summary and conclusion section, in which you should be very careful to not introduce any new information or insights.
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Acknowledgements
This video will help you understand the difference between the Acknowledgements section and the References section for your paper. Acknowledgements should at a minimum include the name of any funding sources that contributed to your research or paper.
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Appendices
Appendices are not required by all research papers. Watch this video to find out if your research paper will require appendices and how to include them if need be.
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References
References are a vital part of your research paper, and you should be very careful to include them with attention to detail to the requirements of the journal in which your paper is to be published. For a free general guide to easily creating references, I recommend using http://www.mendeley.com
For more tools and resources on organizing references, please see Lecture #5 in the first chapter.
