Writing a research paper can be a daunting task, especially when it comes to selecting the right topic. While you are researching something you might be thinking what if this thing goes really wrong! Is not it like climbing a hill? Choosing the right topic can make or break the success of your paper, so it’s important to take the time to choose wisely and then choose smartly which can really make a difference. Choosing topic is a point where people stumble upon usually and that is when they feel they could not go further in research because they are sometimes confused what to pick or maybe getting spoiled with a lot of options around. It is definitely quite important to choose what exactly you need while choosing the topic.
To make sure you pick the right topic for your research paper, there are a few key considerations you should take into consideration. The points you need to go through are quite necessary. There are small points that you need to minutely check before moving ahead to confirm anything. These include understanding your audience, researching potential topics, seeing if those topics have any potential and refining them until you have one that will provide an interesting and meaningful contribution to your amazing field of study. Doing proper research might sometimes look like a time taking process but still it is advisable to have a proper and clear idea. With this in mind, you can create an engaging and informative research paper that will serve as a valuable contribution to your field of study which will help all people of your field get the right idea from which they will be benefited really well.
How to choose a topic while writing research paper?
Choosing the right topic is absolutely an art and none can ignore the importance of choosing the right topic at all. It is very difficult to choose the right topic by understanding the interests, audience, looking at the events and issues, along with checking the right gaps in your field of interest. It is something when you are trying to make big and have an impactful research paper, then you have to be sure about the right topic. It can make your half work complete pretty easily. This is something many researchers miss by miles. If you are one of the researchers who prefer to keep things focused on target audience then this is something you must work out on every single time.
This post is going to clear your doubts regarding how to choose the right topics and how to attract your audience and make you one of the highly preferred researchers when it comes to writing. It is a skill that many ignore but if you can focus on it properly then you obviously have done a great job already. So, let us dive deep and know more through this article.
Narrow down your interest
Having broad interest and topic makes things look quite vague. It decreases the value of your research and does not give you a right image in front of the target audience that easily. Broad topics are never suggested by any experts or the professors at all. These make no sense as far as research is concerned. It will not help you to reach your goal or even make you standout among the fellow researchers that easily.
One need to focus on narrowing down the research and reaching the goal point, rather than keeping things very broad. Narrowing down to proper points and fields can make your target audience know your exact field of interest, or the field where you are having a good command. It makes people realise your depth in the particular research work you are doing. Narrowing down does not only mean that you narrow down randomly, rather you should narrow down by understanding the interest of your target audience and checking the stuffs that are happening currently. It can help you establish the research paper in a good form.
Understand your audience
Understanding the audience and working accordingly about the research topic is quite a task. If you are not sure about your audience and present a research paper, then things become very useless. It needs to be decently clear that your audience are beginners or experts, your presentation style and everything related to it will then revolve around it. If you do not know regarding the audience, then you need to look at the past of those types of presentations to guess the type of audience where you are going to present the research paper.
When your target audience is at Shakespeare or Robert Frost level listener you can go for rhymes and similarly vice versa. You need to understand the type of audience you are catering to. Audience differs from place to place and institutions to institutions. For example, if you are going for psychology subject audience. It is not going to be a broad panel discussion, rather it is just a research paper presentation. So, that is why it is important that you focus on every bit but more than that focus on what exactly your audience is looking for and is able to take from you. So, good luck here!
Look at current events and issues
Do you just go and write a research paper? You need to connect it with the current issues and events to make your research paper look for impactful and have a good authority among the people very easily. It is tough to find out the historical stuffs but you can always follow the current issues and events to start searching for the exact topic that can help you to have one of the best research papers very easily. Let us say there is an issue regarding corona virus prevalent in the current society. If you are working on niche around that then that is a topic that you should always focus on always.
Current events and issues are always the cornerstones of the top research papers because they are relevant. It is quite important that you choose the topic to touch the right points of your audience. If you touch them properly then you do not only make yourself a face among the scientists and researchers but also in the broader society which should be your ultimate ambition for sure. It can make your career path very smooth going forward in your career. So, why not search current events and issues now?
Check for the gaps in existing research
Do you know how important it is to understand the gaps that are there in the existing research? That is where you can take the advantage and create your own research paper in a very strong way that cannot be expected by anyone at all. Just make sure that you did the right research to grow your work in a very exponential way.
- Review the literature: Reviewing the literature and the work of other researchers are very important and you can never discount that at all. If you are someone who has done enough research about the literature work then you are always going to have a good start.
- Identify gaps in knowledge: While reviewing the literature there are high chances that you will find the gaps that are existing in the literature works and the research papers. After identifying that you can actually understand what exactly you can work on to add value to the existing field.
- Look for conflicting findings: Search for the topics where you see many to and fro movements with respect to the research. It will help you to establish your facts in a very informative way to reach your own goal.
- Consider the limitations of previous studies: You need to find the limitations of the previous research works to make your research paper more powerful than before. It is needed so that you go on to understand and do not repeat the same mistakes of the previous works at all.
- Evaluate the relevance of previous research: After doing all the basic things, you need evaluate the relevance of the previous research works with respect to your research work. It can help you to understand that you are not getting diverted to some other topics while trying to work on some other topic at all.
By following these steps, you can identify gaps in existing research and potentially find a unique and original research question that has the potential to make a significant contribution to your field.
Conclusion
Writing a research paper is an important part of academic life, it needs some discipline and process. Choosing the right topic is one of the most difficult stuffs here in this case. You might not have understood the value initially but when you grow on that particular topic, you will know the importance of choosing the right topic. It is very vital that you understand research papers writing is not an easy task and that is you need to throw all your energy while developing it.