Research today is easier, more exciting and more rewarding than ever. With access to electronic encyclopedias, the Internet, and services like ProQuest and LexisNexis, you have an enormous world of information at your command. Not only is finding that information easier, but communicating with others about your research is also easier than ever - whether using email to ask experts questions, sitting in on electronic discussion lists or sending drafts out as attachments for others to review.

But researchers using the Web or other computerized sources can quickly find themselves overwhelmed by too much information, much of it dubious. So with more information come more responsibilities:

to sort carefully

to focus tightly

to evaluate critically

to credit your sources honestly

to create an effective report

We'll discuss these issues and more in this chapter.

The general approach for writing research papers, whether for a course, a magazine, an employer or a client includes three basic steps.


Those three basic steps are :


1. Selecting a topic

Pick a good topic

Define your purpose

Identify your audience

Formulate a research question

2. Researching your topic

Set up a general search strategy

Use primary and secondary sources

Do original research

Make a research outline for using the library and the Web

Find things out for yourself

Be open to serendipity

Take notes

Manage sources and quotations

Manage and evaluate electronic sources

3. Writing your paper

Get started

Choose a plan of organization

Write a draft

Get responses

Finish your paper

A SAMPLE RESEARCH PAPER :


On the following pages is the final version of Artemisia Gentileschi : Artist against the Grain the research paper referred to throughout this page. It was originally written at the University of Texas for a women's studies course on women in Europe from 1400 to 1800. Since this paper was written, Gentileschi has received new critical attention, with a major exhibit opening in 2002 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.