How to Write an Effective Research Paper

This video provides an overview of the first chapter, which covers the Context of Writing a Research Journal Paper.  In this chapter, you will learn how to efficiently conduct your research, even if you are starting completely from scratch.  

This video will help you think about what you have accomplished in your research, as well as other questions that will help define your overall research focus.

In this video, you will learn the importance of locating prior works, why it can help speed up your research process, and how to easily locate such works.

As part of your research, it is incredibly important to read the prior works you have located.  This video will show you time-saving techniques on you can efficiently read through these key papers.

In this video, I recommending helpful tips and resources for organizing your references, such as websites that can automatically generate bibliographies and help find related key papers.

The free resource that I highly recommend in this video is http://www.mendeley.com/

Once you have conducted your research, you will need to develop an outline of your research findings.  This video will help you effectively create your hypothesis by presenting important questions to consider when working on this aspect of your research paper.

In this video you will learn how to summarize and analyze your research, which will depend on the type of paper you are planning to write.  This preliminary step will correspond with the summary and analysis section of your paper later on.

As you may begin to notice, the research process you conduct will match up closely with your actual research paper sections.  In this video, you will learn how to interpret and organize the results of your research to help get started with your paper.

The second part of the course is divided into 2 main chapters, the first of which covers the preliminary steps you should take before writing, and what you need to know to get started.

There are a number of crucial steps you should take before you start writing, such as considering whether your paper topic is consistent with the focus of the journal you would like to get published in.  These types of preparations will help ensure your success and prevent you from wasting time writing with the wrong intentions in mind.

This video will help you get started with the writing process as a whole.  Getting started can be a daunting task, but as this video explains, you can get started easier than you think, just by getting your thoughts on paper.  Watch to learn more.

This video provides an overview of the structure and function of the various sections of a research paper, each of which are each explained more thoroughly in the following videos.

This video will explain how to properly choose the right title for your research paper, and the criteria to consider when thinking of a title.

Learn why an abstract is so important, and how to effectively write your research paper abstract, along with an example.

Discover the importance of key words in relation to your paper.  Also included in this video is another helpful example of a paper with a good title, abstract, and key words.  

The Introduction consists of a few parts, and is one of the most important sections of your paper.  This video will provide you with a thorough understanding of why the Introduction is so important and what you should include within it. 

In this video, you will learn about the breakdown of the Introduction section into its critical sub sections, which include a first paragraph, middle paragraphs, and a final paragraph.  

Learn about the most important information that you should include in the first paragraph of your Introduction section, and how to present this information to your readers.

The middle paragraphs are the largest part of the Introduction section, though the size may depend on the type of journal or paper you are writing.  This video will begin discussing the goal for the middle paragraph section of your Introduction.

This video will continue explaining what information you should and should not include in the middle paragraph sections of your Introduction.

This video will teach you the importance of the final paragraph within the Introduction, which serves as the "road map" paragraph for the rest of the research paper.

This video provides more insight on the purpose of the final Introduction paragraph.  There is also an example in this video, which demonstrates an excellent example of the "road map" final paragraph within the Introduction section.

In this video, you will learn how to present the methods section of your research paper, and help you to better explain your reasoning for choosing certain research methods.

Learn more about how to implement the methods section of your research paper by following along with an example.

Although the way you organize the results section of your research paper will largely depend on the type of research you have conducted, this video will walkthrough the general guidelines you should follow for this section of your paper.

This video explains the importance of the discussion section of your paper, and teaches you how to present it depending on the type of research you have conducted.

This video provides a very important outline for your summary and conclusion section, in which you should be very careful to not introduce any new information or insights.

This video will help you understand the difference between the Acknowledgements section and the References section for your paper.  Acknowledgements should at a minimum include the name of any funding sources that contributed to your research or paper.

Appendices are not required by all research papers.  Watch this video to find out if your research paper will require appendices and how to include them if need be.

References are a vital part of your research paper, and you should be very careful to include them with attention to detail to the requirements of the journal in which your paper is to be published.  For a free general guide to easily creating references, I recommend using http://www.mendeley.com 

For more tools and resources on organizing references, please see Lecture #5 in the first chapter.