HOW TO WRITE A RESEARCH PAPER | Steps to writing a research paper | Research paper sections

hi everyone I am Niha agrawal I'm the founder of eyes of communications and in this video I'm going to share with you the step-by-step process that I followed to writing my research papers I've published three research papers during my post graduate NTU Singapore and I've also been conducting full-fledged workshops on writing research papers at iits and nits in India so in this video I'm going to share all my knowledge with you thank you now some of you who are watching this video might be at the beginning of your research where you're just trying to understand

what it takes to write a research paper in that case I would recommend that you watch this entire video because I'm going to start from scratch while for those of you who have completed your research and you just want to know how to write a research paper I would recommend that you start from this point and now without further delay let's get started to start any research the first thing that you need to do is choose a research topic so for this one method would be to approach a professor and ask them to give you

a research topic on which you can work on second would be to go through the different University websites see what are the different areas on which professors are working on read their research papers and then take that as a base to find your own research topic and the third and the longest route would be that if you have a broad Topic in mind you read a lot of review papers and research papers to constantly narrow down the topic until you arrive at a problem statement at a research Gap that no other researcher has been able

to overcome and that would be a research topic of course if you wish to learn about this in detail as to how to choose a research topic you can check out my previous video where I've explained this thing in detail after this you're supposed to conduct your own research it could be experimental research or theoretical research but the idea is that at the end of it you should arrive at a result which is new that's novel and it contributes to the research field it makes an impact so to know what are some of the thing

things you need to keep in mind while choosing a research advisor all while conducting your own research you can check out these videos that I've mentioned here if you watch them step by step they will give you a lot of clarity as to what are some of the things you need to do to conduct your own research now once you've arrived at a novel result a novel Finding you then start writing a research paper so what is a research paper a research paper is an account of an investigation written by one or more researchers sharing

their findings with the research Community using a conventional report structure now whenever you will read a research paper you'll realize that most of them follow a similar format a similar pattern which is very easy to follow and understand this is because of the conventional and rhetorical structure of a research paper which we will now understand [Music] now what is this rhetorical structure well for every research paper you will see these as the main sections which is the introduction the materials and methods the results and discussion and conclusion and together they are also known as the

imrdc structure now in a research paper the information also flows in this manner like the information flows from the introduction to the materials and methods to the results and discussion and then finally to the conclusion and the beauty of this entire structure is that the introduction and the conclusion section are interconnected with each other and the materials and methods and the results and discussion section they are interconnected with each other how well in the introduction section we first share the motivation of our study the background of our research field and then we narrow it down

to talk about the specific research problem that we are working on on the flip side in the conclusion section we first talk about the findings from that research problem and then we broaden it out and talk about what have we achieved that has contributed to that research field in this way the introduction section and the conclusion section are interconnected to each other similarly for every method there is a result that we have gotten from it and for every result there is a method as to how we arrived at it so in this way the materials

and methods and the results and discussion section are also interconnected with each other so this is the beauty of a research paper and this is the rhetorical structure which makes it so simple and easy to understand now before we talk about the different research paper sections and how are they written let me share about our research paper writing course with you it's an eight hour certification course where we go into detail of how to write each and every section of a research paper how to cite and refer information correctly how to avoid plagiarism and most

importantly how to choose the right journal to get yourselves published over 1500 students have attended our course A lot of them coming from iits nits bits Palani iisers and other top institutions of India the certification that you get at the end of this course really boosts your CV for job opportunities and higher education abroad because research writing capability is really valued both in industry and Academia so to know more about this course and register yourself the link is in the description and in the pinned comment the very first section that you will see in a

research paper is an abstract also it's one of the most important sections of research paper and why is that because based on your abstract the readers decide whether they want to read the rest of your paper or not an abstract is also a summary of your entire research article and it includes the four important sections that we just discussed which is the introduction the materials and methods the results and discussion and conclusion but the catch here is that an abstract has a word limit of 250 to 300 words so you need to include all this

information but in a concise manner now if you wish to learn in detail how to write an abstract I've made two videos the first video talks about the step-by-step process of how to write an abstract and the second video shares an example with you of how an abstract is written and we break it down for you so there's no point repeating that information here again you can check out these two videos now after the abstract the next section is the introduction section and this is also an important section because this is also something that researchers

read and so it's important that you make a good first impression in an abstract basically we try to share what is the rationale behind taking up the study or what is the motivation to write this paper so we first start with the background of our study where we can share either some historical data some key terms or give definitions once we have shared the background of a study we then move on to existing evidence basically the literature survey what have other researchers done in this field so far once we've established that we then come to

the next part which is the research Gap so what is the research Gap the research Gap is basically some of the issues that the existing researchers have not been able to overcome so far once you define the research Gap we come to the objective what is the objective the objective is basically what are we planning to do in our research study to overcome that research Gap to fulfill that research Gap and then finally comes the scope and the scope sets the boundary of our research so what are some of the things we are planning to

investigate not investigate you need to very clearly state it here in the introduction section next is the materials and Method section and here you need to explain to your audience the step-by-step process that you followed in order to arrive at your final result your finding to achieve that objective so here first we start by sharing the list of materials that we've used to conduct our experiments then we share the step-by-step procedure that we followed in order to arrive at that final product the final result and then we also share some of the equipment tools or

instruments that we've used to measure or analyze the data now this is one of the easiest sections to write but one thing that you need to remember here is that your experiments need to be reliable what does that mean it means the way you're writing these experiments and how you've conducted them it should be so transparent that if somebody tries to replicate your experiments repeat your experiments they should arrive at the same results as you this shows the reliability of your research paper and improves your credibility as an author the third section is the results

and discussion section and the purpose of this section is to share the results share the findings that have helped us in overcoming that research Gap so here first we start by sharing the data now the data can be in the form of visuals charts graphs figures illustrations after that we share the result where we explain what that data means or what are we analyzing from that data for example think that we have a graph of x is equal to Y so the graph itself of X is equal to Y is your data but when you

say for every equal value of x there is an equal value of y offer an equal increase in X there is an equal increase in y that is where you are attaching an explanation to what that data means and that is called as result finally comes the discussion and discussion is where you attach your meaning to that result in terms of the current research scenario and what it means for the current research problem that we are working on so in this way we prepare the data results and discussion of this section the next section is

the conclusion section and the purpose of this section is to remind our audiences to why we started this research in the first place and finally what have we achieved out of it so we start this section by reiterating the objective of our study and reviewing the key findings of our work after that we also share the broader applications and broader implications of our study and how we exactly our study has made a contribution to that research field then finally we close this section by sharing some recommendations for future work and how this study can be

taken forward the last section that you will see in a research paper is the references section and here you give due credit to all the sources all the literature that you've referred to either while conducting your own research or while writing this paper so you will neatly list down all the sources using the citation style that is followed by the journal and once you've done that you will be sending your paper for publication so guys I hope this video has given you a good understanding of how to write a research paper but if you wish

to learn research writing in detail and make sure that you're able to get your papers published then you should join me for my research writing course to know more the link is in the description and in the pinned comment and now thank you so much for watching this video and I wish you all the very best for your research paper go get yourselves published foreign [Music]