WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS

1. WRITING RESEARCH PAPERS Puvaneswary Murugaiah

2. INTRODUCTION TO WRITING PAPERS • Conducting research is academic activity • Research must be original work • Must emphasize concepts and underlying principles and should represent authentic contribution to knowledge • If not original, present a fresh perspective or synthesis of existing knowledge

3. RESEARCH ARTICLE TYPES • Research paper that is empirical • Concept paper • Review paper • Book review

4. STAGES IN WRITING PAPER • Planning • Writing • Checking

5. PLANNING STAGE • Familiarize with literature • know what has been reported • Emphasis on primary literature, current work • Learn how to evaluate a body of literature and its interpretation instead of just reporting

6. PLANNING STAGE • Set objective and scope • Can be carried out/reported • Clear objectives • Objectives as guide to content of paper

7. PLANNING STAGE • Know the readers • Journal requirements and expectations • Who are the readers?

8. PLANNING STAGE • Construct the outline • Organize your thoughts • Organize information • List major points and fill in sub-topics • Determine relative importance of different sections in paper and emphasize on strongest aspects • Prepare diagrams, tables etc.

9. WRITING STAGE • Focus on specific issue and fairly narrowed topic • Topic too broad – makes writing difficult and less cohesive • Set up good descriptive headings

10. WRITING STAGE • Select appropriate figures that clearly represent your ideas • Never present a figure before you mention it in the text • Figures are not self-explanatory • Tables – when absolute numbers are important • Graphs – when trends are important

11. WRITING STAGE • Organization • Paper title • Name (s) and contact information • Abstract • Introduction (problem statement) • Background (justification for your work) • Literature • Method

12. WRITING STAGE • Method • Results and discussion • Conclusion • Acknowledgements (if any) • References • *NO PLAGIARISM

13. ABSTRACT • Must be short – 1 paragraph • 100-250 words • Mini version of paper • Summarizes purpose, methods, results and conclusions of paper • Must contain key phrases and words

14. INTRODUCTION • Introduce topic – general statement of problem area • Define objectives • Clarify goal and set direction of paper • Background (optional)

15. METHODOLOGY • Approach used: qualitative/ quantitative • Method: case study, historical research, action research etc. • Tools used: questionnaire, interviews etc. • Analysis: statistical, semantic analysis

16. FINDINGS • Present findings that are relevant to objective of paper • Illustrate findings with figures and tables • Describe each finding clearly • Avoid redundancy: don’t show in text what is shown in figures; only key points

17. DISCUSSION • Heart of the paper • Thoughtful interpretation of results • Show significance of results • Show how results and interpretations agree/contradict with literature • If contradict, why?

18. DISCUSSION • Draw conclusions • Support hypotheses or not • Avoid presenting new results in discussion • Do not re-state results; suggest why results came out the way they did • Implications

19. CONCLUSION • Summarize and present significance of results • Give directions for future work • Give paper a strong closing

20. CHECKING • Content • Language • References • Journal requirements