So what makes a research paper effective?
And before we can understand this we first need to make sure that we understand the general structure
of research papers.
So let me tell you right now that there are two main components that every research paper has and that
would have to be included in for example a one sentence summary of your research paper.
And these two parts are your research question and your answer to the question.
For example your research question could be:
Is this theory true? Or does this treatment work?
Or is this algorithm tractable? Or does gravity work on light?
Pretty much every research paper starts with some research question because that's what research is
about.
It's about answering questions.
Of course there's a little bit more in a research paper that is going on.
So for example, before the research question we usually first explain why we actually want to ask this
question.
Then, after we have introduced the research question, we usually explain how we try to answer it. For an
empirical study this will usually be about describing the study that you did. Or if you did computer
simulations then it's about describing those computer simulations. Or maybe you tried to answer a question
through a literature review. Whatever it is you did, after the research question you usually let the reader
know what it is you did.
And then after that you explain what you found.
And that will lead to your answer to your research question. And most research papers are structured
into four sections.
And the first section is the introduction section in which you explain what your research question is
and why you picked it.
Then, there is the method section in which you explain what you did to answer your question.
Then, there's the results section in which you explain your findings. And then finally there's the discussion
section in which you speculate what you can conclude from your findings and what you cannot conclude.
So this is what a research paper generally looks like.
So the next question is: what makes a research paper effective?
And as I just said the main two components of a research paper are the research question and the answer.
And therefore the two things that an effective research paper needs are an interesting question and
a compelling answer.
And you will find that everything that you have learned about research, everything that you need to pay
attention to in a research paper either falls under the first or the second point.
Either it's about whether your research question is interesting and a minimum aspect here is that it
should be a new question that hasn't been answered before... or it is about how compelling your answer
is.
So an effective research paper communicates an interesting research question and then gives a compelling
answer.
And that means that the sections in which we actually sell our research are the introduction section
and the discussion section. In the introduction section we sell our research question and in the Discussion
section we sell our answer. And comparatively the method section and the results section are more descriptive.
You just describe what you did and you describe the findings that you obtained. And most people find
the methods and the results section the easiest to write because in those sections they just describe
what they did and they just talk about the things that they have been trained in... which is research.
While the Introduction section and the Discussion section where you actually need to sell your research
feel a lot more fuzzy and therefore most people find them a lot more difficult. But these are actually
the sections that matter the most because if a researcher is not interested in your question then that
researcher will not read your paper.
And if a researcher is not convinced by your answer then most likely that research won't cite your paper.
So the key lessons of this lecture are that in order to sell your research you need to show that your
research question is interesting and you need to show that your answer or your conclusion is compelling
Now because these aspects are so important let us look at them in more detail in the next lecture.