Words for Research Papers

So you have a research paper due in 2 weeks, and you have no idea how you are going to find enough information to write 10 pages on your topic, what are you going to do?

One of the biggest hurdles students encounter when writing a research paper is locating adequate sources for their topics. Part of the difficulty is their "search" technique, actually many students will begin by searching, and then after their first search switch or morph to a browsing technique. The other difficulty is that students may not be familiar with the language that their topic experts use, creating a virtual language barrier right from the start. Here are a few tips to hopefully overcome these two difficulties and make your research efforts more productive.

Tip 1: Once you have chosen a topic brush up on the technical language dealing with the topic. Use a dictionary or thesaurus to locate unique terms that illustrate the essentials of your topic.

Tip 2: Ask your professor or librarian for ideas in refining your search terms.

Tip 3: When conducting your search, stick to it. Instead of switching to browsing mode (that is scrolling through page after page of some 2K results) refine your search terms. Use a thesaurus or dictionary to develop a search query that works. In the end searching with a good query is more effective than browsing.

Tip 4: When conducting a search in a database or federated search engine (i.e. Google Scholar) use the provided limiters (date, publication type, subject terms, thesaurus terms) to broaden, narrow or refine your search.

Lastly, remember, a little preparation goes a long way. Before you even begin searching online or in the library for materials you should create an outline with some good focused questions that you want to answer in your paper. Having these questions will aid you in choosing effective search terms and queries.