Organizing Your Work
Like most other projects, research papers require some planning if you want to work effectively. Here are a couple of tips to help you organize your work so that you use your time more productively.
Establish a Schedule
There are several key tasks involved in the development of a research paper:
- Selecting a topic.
- Developing a proposal.
- Constructing a thesis statement.
- Creating an outline.
- Writing a rough draft.
- Completing the final draft.
Taking into account the due dates set by your instructor, set goals for completing these tasks. This will help you to avoid a last-minute rush.
Maintain a Working Bibliography
It's important to keep track of sources you have used, and the ideas that you have obtained from them. Whether you keep your notes on index cards, or in a separate notebook, or in a directory on your computer, you should try to keep all the material associated with a project together. Make sure that your notes include:
- Accurate citations to all information resources that you use. Wherever possible, save your citations to a disk or to your e-mail, and/or make copies of title pages of books or journals you have used in your research.
- Along with the citation, record the name of the search tool you used to find the item. Be specific. Don't just note that you used a periodical index, write down which one. This way, you can backtrack if necessary.
- Make sure that your notes include information about the ideas that you have gotten from each source. You will need this information in order to make complete and accurate attibutions. Crediting your sources is vitally important. The University takes issues concerning plagiarism seriously.
Leslie Murtha, 14 December 2000