RESEARCH PAPER GUIDANCE

Every research paper is arguing for a conclusion. Research begins with a question, then you gather data to learn the answer. Once you have drawn a conclusion from your data, the purpose of the paper is to present your data and show how it leads to your conclusion. Your result may or may not be the one you intended when you began your research, but should be supported by the data regardless.

The abstract serves to summarize your paper in brief, so that readers can determine if the paper is relevant to their studies. The abstract should detail your thesis, your data collection process, and the conclusions you drew from your data. Generally, the abstract only consists of a few hundred words, often less. Not all papers require an abstract; they are more common in the sciences than in the humanities.

This is similar to many papers you have written already. In this part of your paper, you outline what you intend to study, and what claims you are arguing. Your thesis is a statement you intend to prove through your data and conclusions; it is the main point of the entire paper.

This is not needed in all research papers, but if others have already done significant work in your field of study, you are expected to acknowledge it, especially if it colors your current studies. The point of the literature review section is to cover these and address how they impacted your own research.

The next step is to describe how you collected your data and then present it. How to do this varies greatly based on what you were actually studying, but often involves charts, tables, or other figures. When describing data collection, go into detail. You want people reading the paper to be able to replicate your process exactly should they desire. Discuss what sample size you used, and why you made the decisions you did when collecting data if necessary. This section is far longer for science papers than for humanities.

When presenting your data through graphs, tables, or other images, each should be assigned a figure number and a caption. The figure numbers allow you to reference each within your own text with ease, allowing readers to refer to them when necessary. Captions should be a brief, one-sentence description of what a figure shows. These make it easy for readers to tell at a glance what they are looking at.

After presenting your data, it’s time to draw conclusions from it. You outlined what conclusions you would be drawing in your introduction, but you now need to argue in favor of them. The goal is to present logically how your data supports your points.

Your conclusion sums up what you proved, and lays out possible areas for additional study. It should tie back in with the introduction, and restate your thesis, now that you have proved it. The conclusion is generally quite short, only a paragraph in length.

You need to cite your sources in a research paper; this is done through both footnotes and a bibliography at the end. You may use MLA, APA, or Chicago style citations as you prefer, but you should use a consistent style, for both footnotes and the bibliography. Some journals will mandate the use of one style or another.
Footnotes can also be used to include other tangential information or important notes. Some academics use footnotes to indirectly (or directly) denigrate the theories of their peers. We recommend you not do this, though we do recommend reading footnotes for this reason.

Research papers are formal and should be written formally. Don’t use slang (unless writing a paper on the linguistics of slang). You should also avoid the use of personal pronouns to reference yourself or the reader. The tone should be authoritative and aimed at an expert audience. Do not obfuscate merely for the sake of doing so, but present information at an expert level and expect to be understood.

The ultimate goal of research is to discover something worthwhile and to share that discovery with the broader academic community. The fact that this looks great on a college application should be tangential but is a nice bonus for your hard work. Of course, writing a research paper is challenging, and takes a lot of effort.