4 Things to look out for while preparing a research paper

1- The Topic: It is a no-brainer that the topic of your paper is the most important. So first you need to decide on the topic for your research paper and that is often seen to have been provided by the academic faculty from a set list of topics. This list of topics is decided beforehand by the faculties or the Head of the Department and students are required to choose from the list. Even though some universities provide for a better option which includes letting the student decide on the topic. But that free will comes with strings attached- the topic and its relevancy might have to be proved to the Head of the Departments in order to pass. So technically there is very little leg room for the student to manoeuvre.

Even after that the imperative lies on the student to decide on a topic that he/she is comfortable with and will also be relevant to the course.

2- The Skeleton piece of the write-up: One good habit that the best writers and research scholars have is that they create a skeleton or an outline of the write-up first. They plan it all out and know exactly what are the topics or ideas they are going to touch. This means that they don't swerve around randomly in any direction as this leads to incoherence on the part of the paper or write up. Follow that method and arrange all the ideas logically and systematically. Inside those boundaries you can always go in any direction.

3- The Objectives and the answer: This part is the veritable heart and soul of the paper. This part deals with your topic, summary and the questions that you are addressing in the paper and what is your idea on how to deal with that. The question(s) that you have asked must also be answered in the paper or the conclusion that you have found after research.

4- The Resources: The amount of resources that could help you out in research paper may be limited only to IJSR or International Journal of Scientific Research and their ilk. Most of the research papers available online or the vast majority of them are kept under registration fees which you have to pay in order to access them. To counter this monopoly there are several open source websites that offer vast libraries of papers, data and e-books to help you in research.