All right.
You're almost at the end of this course and in this lecture I want to give you a summary of all the key
lessons from this course. Because in most lectures we have been very very zoomed in.
And I also want you to see the bigger picture of what you've learned.
So we started this course with two goals.
And the first goal was to learn how to write a research paper.
And the second goal was to learn how to make it successful.
So how to sell your research well in your writing. And at the beginning, we talked a little bit about
writing strategy and how it makes sense to start with an outline that serves as the blueprint of your
final paper.
And during this course, I've guided the youth of the steps of creating that outline and then turning
it into text.
In addition we also talked - a lot actually - about the content and structure of an effective research paper.
And we started with the insight that an effective research paper has two key components, which are an
interesting question and a compelling answer.
And the first step is usually to phrase your research question in a way that the question is interesting
but you're also able to give a compelling answer.
And then we zoomed into this a little bit more and split up the task of making the question interesting
into three sub goals.
One is to show that the topic is important.
The other is to show that the question is novel. So that it hasn't been answered before.
And the final goal is to show that your question is timely in the sense that it's the logical next step
after the research that has already been conducted.
And we did the same for the compelling answer.
We split it up into showing that the answer is convincing and also that the answer is valuable.
OK.
So that's what we need to achieve.
But how do we do that in the paper?
And we discussed that showing that your question is interesting is what happens mostly in the introduction.
Specifically in the first paragraph you show that your topic is important and then in your literature
review you show that your question is novel and that it is timely.
Conversely, showing that your answer is compelling happens in the Discussion section.
More precisely, you show that your answer is convincing when you interpret the results
and when you discuss limitations of your research. And you show that your answer is valuable in the integration
of your research into existing research where you mainly show that your research is something novel
and that it contributes something new and in the implications where you discuss the broader value of
your findings: what do we understand better? What applications may be possible?
And then finally the last step is to edit and fine tune what you have done.
And those are all the great writers that I know achieve great papers.
They write something that maybe isn't that great.
And then they make it a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better.
And that is in a nutshell how you achieve a great research paper.
All right.
That's it for this lecture.
And I see you in the next one.