Writing a research paper is a daunting task, and soon this becomes a turmoil as time passes by, but you are blank about the writing process. This blog shares the ways to vanquish challenges faced while writing a well-structured manuscript for publication purpose. 

Schedule your writing hours

Writing is hard even if it is your first research paper. It requires brainstorming and sharp concentration. The most onerous part of writing is the starting process for which you need to have a rigid writing schedule. Writing a research paper is not a process of a few hours, it takes years to finish. Therefore, regularity is a must to complete the work. If you have stopped exercising for years, a regular workout can only help you trim down. In the same way, regular writing sessions are a must to complete your manuscript. 

Tip: Create fixed hours for your writing and keep sticking to them unless you finish your research paper.

Prepare an outline

Considering you have scheduled your writing sessions, you cannot plunge into writing because you are still stuck in a situation where you do not know how to start. You will prepare an outline that will be more or less like a template of your research paper. The framework will include the following questions:

• What is the topic of your research paper?
• What is the importance of your research?
• What are your research objectives?
• What were the research hypotheses?
• What materials did you use?
• What were the research designs?
• What are the findings of your experiments or research?

Tip: Create an outline and discuss it with your peers.

Start writing

The writing process begins when you have created an outline for your research manuscript. Extend the draft by adding details and elaborating on them. To make this job successful, keep writing. Do not halt yourself to decide on a better word or phrase. Do not cease yourself to improve sentence-structure as this is what you will do at the time of editing. You just keep pouring your ideas into a paper. 

• Writing materials and methods

If you are struggling with writing a research paper, first of all you should write materials and methods. This is the easiest section to describe as you have all notes for your experiential designs and procedures. You should provide enough details and references as explicit as possible. However, if your method has been previously published, you need to write down literature reference only. 

Fluency is crucial in this section thus do not switch from active voice to passive and vice versa within the same paragraph. Frequent switching causes bafflement among readers. To improve coherence in your writing you should be consistent with a subject. However, if you choose experimenter as a subject, for example, “we did the experiment and we found that…”, you will find “we” repetitive, and this would be disruptive. So try to write sentences to vary the beginning of sentences and keep “we” to a minimum. 

Tip: Be specific while writing methods and materials and try avoiding shifting a subject within one paragraph. 

• Writing result section

Writing result section can be more intimidating for you because you have to be very particular about the choice of words that will not mislead readers after they have read your findings. In result section, you will mention the purpose of your experiment, experiential methods, texts including visual data such as tables and graphs, and data commentary that will include a meaningful summary of data presented in charts, graphs and tables. In brief, this section requires you to summarise and highlight scientific findings for your readers’ interpretation. 

Tip: Be concise and objective about your results. 

• Writing introduction section

You have written methods, materials and results section. Before moving onto the introduction section, you should reread the methods and results section to corroborate them with your research focus.  This review will help you know the topic, research gap/problem, research importance, and research questions that are intrinsic to define introduction. 

Tip: Insert all sections and state the novelty of your work. Do not write the introduction very long. Try to wrap it up in 250 to 500 words.

Make revision strategies

You have completed your research paper, but it is still not ready for submission. You have to refine your document. Have a glance at the outline and check whether your research paper includes all sections from the introduction to conclusion. Edit it acutely to replace ambiguous terms with appropriate words and improve sentence structure to make a flow. 

Tip: Use different strategies and techniques to polish up your document. 

It is a complex task to complete your research without any guidance from a mentor or professional consultant. While many research students do not find sufficient guidance and support from their supervisors, they opt to avail professional help for dissertation writing and review tasks. However, they are often confused about the right kind of service they should go for. For example, many research students want to get their work reviewed but do not know the way they should select a relevant service level.

For all such students, it is important to know the difference between varied levels of editing. Knowing this can help them in choosing the right editing service they actually require. When we talk about students with English as their second language, it is always better to go for substantial editing services that can help in correcting all types of basic and advanced linguistic or formatting errors in their dissertations. On the other hand, students with effective writing skills can choose regular editing services that take care of their general language, styles and formats.

While any student can opt for editing services, it is not okay for them all to go for proofreading. Proofreading can only help students who can write quite well and understand the writing styles too. Such students only need some help in correcting the basic errors in their documents. They need a detailed eye to catch the minor errors they may have left in the paper. You should only go for proofreading service when you are confident about the structure and organization of your content.

Whenever you feel that you require a thorough check of your documents, prefer to select the editing service. If you are unaware of professional linguistic styles and standards, then avoid taking a chance by opting for proofreading services. You can only make your work flawless by choosing the right editing services for your project.

During the course of the post-graduate or doctoral course students might be required to complete some kind of case study. They will have to go into great detail in trying to answer a particular question and examine all different points of view. There are some kinds of research which look at the overall scenario or a general picture. However, a case study looks at one aspect of the research and often tries to apply certain principles to real world scenarios and see what the results are.

Case studies are quite common in marketing where researchers are constantly trying to examine cause and effect situations and many of the case studies are often applied practically in the real world. A case study can pave the way for a researcher to establish his credentials among those who matter and find a road to success in corporate life.

One of the qualities that are required of a case study is that the researcher needs to be flexible. There are certain kinds of research which require the scholar to frame a theory or a hypothesis in advance and then proceed to investigate its validity. But a case study requires the researcher to be open to all ideas. The investigation might throw up some unexpected answers that the scholar might not have been expecting and he or she should be open enough to accept it.

The researcher should ideally make a list of all the points that are going to be investigated in the study. There are also studies where the researcher simply has to stand back and observe rather than play an active role in any kind of experiment. While there will be many facts to be gleaned in the study, some of it will also be opinions that the researcher will have to form during the final analysis.

Research questions should meet the following criteria for a dissertation:

• Questions should be clear: questions framed should be understandable to the researcher, supervisor and the research fraternity.
• Questions should be researchable: questions should be capable of development into a research design, so that data could be collected in regard to the. This implies that extremely abstract terms are unlikely to be suitable.
• Questions should connect with established research and theory: there has to be a literature on which the researcher can draw to assist in highlighting the framing the research questions. Making connection between research and theory would also let the researcher reveal how the work contributes to understanding and knowledge.
• Questions should be linked to each other: questions that are not related would not be acceptable as an argument develops in the dissertation. The researcher would not readily be able to construct one argument in relation with research questions that are not related.
• Questions should have potential for making a contribution to knowledge:  questions should be holding the prospect of being able to impart contribution in some form to the topic.
• Questions should be neither too narrow nor too broad: the questions should not require huge grant to understand them nr too small as one would not be able to make important contribution to the area of study.