Speaker 1: Welcome to the Academic Research Series, a partnership between University in the High School and Thomas D. Greenlee Library of Farmingdale State College. My name is Danielle Appelbaum, and I'm the Scholarly Communication Librarian at Greenlee Library. Let's get started. In this video, we'll be discussing what academic research is. By the time you complete this video, you'll be able to describe academic research as an iterative process, apply the search framework to guide the research process, and construct and refine basic keyword searches for peer-reviewed literature and academic databases. So why is academic research so intimidating? If you dread writing research papers, I don't blame you. I used to feel the same way. One of the reasons research papers are so intimidating is that the product, the final paper, gets all of the attention. However, research is as much about the process as it is about the product. But it's not a linear process. That is, you don't pick a topic, search for the sources, and then write the paper. Instead, research is iterative. That means that the process requires going back and forth through each of these stages as you write the paper. So you'll be researching in the databases as you decide what to write about. And as you start reading and writing, you may find that you have to revise your initial topic. I know that this can be really hard to envision, so I've created a handy little mnemonic for you. All you need to remember is SEARCH, which stands for Speculate. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, to speculate means, quote, In essence, it means to reflect. When you're developing a research topic for a paper, you want to make sure that you take time to consider all the possibilities. For example, what are you interested in that will also satisfy the requirements of the assignment? At this stage, you don't have to be super specific. You just need to get clear about what most interests you, and you can do that in a number of ways. First, talk to your instructor. They design the research assignment, so they can give you feedback in terms of whether or not a topic might be appropriate for the paper. You can also look at your course materials. What unit or module was most interesting to you? Why? Once we have a broad topic in mind, like electric cars or social media or genetically modified foods, we can move to the next stage, explore, to further refine our topic and start identifying some specific questions we want our paper to answer. Again, many students think that you pick the topic and then start searching for sources, but you should actually be searching as you develop your topic. Why? Well, if you're too specific right away, you might find that there's not a whole lot of information on your topic, although there might be quite a bit of information on a slightly broader version of your topic. Let me show you what I mean. We'll use Gale Academic OneFile from NovelNY, since you should have access to this database from anywhere within New York State. Here's a good example. Let's say I'm interested in researching water quality in the town of Quag. That search doesn't leave me with a whole lot of information, but if I expand my search just a tiny bit and I instead look for water quality in Suffolk County, of which Quag is a part, then I start getting a number of results. The goal of the Explorer phase is to ensure that you select a topic about which resources already exist and that you get a very broad overview of what these sources cover so that you can begin to more clearly articulate the purpose of your paper. Here's another example to show you what the process might look like. Let's say I'm really interested in electric cars, but I'm not sure where I want to go with that. I can start with a basic search for electric cars in the database. Now, don't be alarmed by the fact that we have so many results. You're not going to have to read everything in this list, but we are going to use this list to help us narrow down our area of interest. First, it's important to remember that not every researcher describes the same idea in the same way. Even the database has a way of organizing items in the database by subject, so you want to take a quick look in the subject tab to see if there are any other terms that might describe your topic equally as well. Using these terms ensures that you don't miss out on anything relevant just because you didn't use those terms in your search. For example, when I click the subject tab, I see that the database has tagged certain articles as being about electric cars or electric vehicles. I can just copy and paste these into a revised version of my search using the advanced search feature. Now that I'm thinking about similar terms, I realize that I can also use the term electric automobile as well. It's important to remember that there should be an or between each of these terms as you are telling the database that you want to see any result with electric car or electric vehicle or electric automobile or any combination of these terms. When you hit search, you'll see that you have even more results, but that's still okay. Now that we know we're using a nice variety of terms that cover our topic, we can start to narrow our search further. So next, you want to limit your search by peer-reviewed articles. Unlike newspaper and magazine articles, which go through a basic review process, peer-reviewed journal articles go through a process in which experts in the researcher's field evaluate the article. Many articles are rejected during this process, and those that are accepted usually require several revisions. This rigorous vetting process serves to weed out questionable research while also improving even further the quality of publishable work. If you'd like to know more about this process, see the description box below. I'll share a link to one of my favorite videos that describes peer-review in just three minutes. Next, you want to limit by publication date. The age of materials available in a database can be decades or sometimes even centuries old, so we're going to change the date range from 2017 to 2022 so that we're only looking at the information published in the last five years. Now, we still have a lot of results, but that's okay because now you're going to start browsing and revising your exploratory search strategically. So we already know that we want to focus on electric vehicles, but now we're going to review some of the results and consider specific aspects that we can focus on within the topic of electric vehicles. It really helps if you have a pen and paper handy to start mapping out your options. I'll show you what my map looks like on the right side of the screen. So as I scroll through and I review titles and I open up articles to see abstracts, which are just short summaries about what the article covers, I see that I could write about consumer's intention to purchase electric vehicles, safety in electric vehicles, electric vehicles and efficiency, electric vehicles and the environment, emissions in electric vehicles, repair and maintenance of electric vehicles, and so much more. Articulate. Now, one thing that's very important to remember at this stage as you explore strategically is the type of research paper you are undertaking. Are you analyzing a topic or are you making an argument about a particular issue? This impacts how you articulate the purpose of your paper, the research questions you formulate, and the preliminary outline you create for your paper. All of this in turn impacts how you search for and select information to answer those questions. I'll show you what I mean. For example, as we're browsing through all of our results on electric cars, we might decide that we're interested in the adoption of electric vehicles. If the goal is to write an argumentative or persuasive essay, our thesis statement might look something like this. The government should provide incentives to increase the adoption of electric vehicles because X, Y, and Z. But if we're writing an analytical paper on the same topic, our thesis might look something like this. While a number of factors contribute to the adoption of electric vehicles, X, Y, and Z significantly impact consumer's intention to purchase and use electric vehicles. How we set up our thesis statement subsequently impacts how we set up our outline. Now, if you're thinking, I don't have to do an outline for this project, so why would I want to do even more work? Hear me out. Setting up an outline before you start writing your paper is a small investment in your time that will yield huge results. And by huge results, I mean you're actually going to write a better paper in less time than if you didn't set up an outline. First, the outline is the roadmap to your paper. Think about it this way. If you're trying to get somewhere and you've never been there before, you don't just hop in the car or on a bus or on a train and hope to get there. If you're like me, you probably open up Google Maps where you see that there are options for getting where you need to go. So you pick the route that works for you, given your destination and your resources. The same is true when writing a research paper. Your goal is to get from point A, your thesis statement, to point Z, your conclusion, in the most efficient, logical way possible. In other words, you don't want to set out for the library and end up at the hardware store. Likewise, you don't want to construct your paper in a way that might lead your reader to a destination other than the analysis or argument you set up in your thesis statement. You want the reader of your paper to feel like the path they took to your conclusion made sense, that there weren't any unexpected stops that prolonged the trip, and if there were, that they were justified. If you have an outline, you know exactly the points you need to hit in order to get where you're going, without taking any unnecessary detours while, at the same time, you're able to see alternate routes in the event that your initial route doesn't work out as planned. Here's what I mean. So let's say I go with the analytical paper. My thesis statement might look something like this. While a number of factors contribute to the adoption of electric vehicles, X, Y, and Z significantly impact consumers' intention to purchase and use electric vehicles. I know from my preliminary search that there are articles that discuss why people decide to switch from traditional vehicles to electric cars. So the overarching question I'm trying to answer with my thesis statement is based on the literature. I'm asking, what makes consumers adopt used electric vehicles? And by extension, I'm also asking the question, what makes consumers reject electric vehicles? At this point, I don't even need to know the details to set up my outline. I can just create placeholders as I start to review my exploratory search. So let me show you. Here's our exploratory search that we created earlier for locating items about consumers' intention to purchase vehicles. As I review the abstract for my results, I start to see patterns that I can use to fill in the blanks in my preliminary outline. Now, I gave myself five blanks to fill in, but depending on your topic, you might need a few more. Here, I'm pretty satisfied with the factors I identified from my search list, but I can always leave an extra placeholder there just in case I find something along the way that doesn't fit into the factors I've already identified. With our basic outline in place, we can now revisit and revise our exploratory search to address each of these areas. Revisit and revise your exploratory search and construct and critique your paper. This is where we get to the R and C in search. R stands for revisiting and revising your exploratory search. C stands for constructing and critiquing. Contrary to what most students believe, you don't just find your sources, read them all, and then write the paper. You read and incorporate the sources into your outline as you go, returning to and revising your search for additional sources as needed. Pretty soon, your outline starts to morph into your paper. Here's how this works. When I'm writing a paper, I find it helpful to convert my bullet points to questions. Why a question? If I have just a general area in a paper to address, it's really easy for me to get off topic. But if I convert it into a question, it's a lot easier for me to see whether or not my evidence constitutes a sufficient answer to the question. If it does, I can just move on to the next point. So, for example, if I start out with consumer attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions about electric vehicles influence consumers' adoption and use of electric vehicles, that'll become how do attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions about electric vehicles influence consumers' adoption and use of electric vehicles. We'll do this with each aspect that we're looking at in our paper. Now that you have specific research questions, you can target your search even further. Here's a quick overview of how to convert your research questions into new searches. Let's take the question, how does the availability of infrastructure influence consumers' adoption and use of electric vehicles? In most databases, we can't just type this in as is because it'll confuse the database. So we're going to convert it into a search, which means that we're going to identify all the possible keywords to help us find relevant information. Sometimes it's helpful to start with a mind map so that we can group similar terms together. The idea here is to use keywords that represent the most important concepts and leave out articles, prepositions, and verbs. This includes words like the and of, which actually confuses the database. Now if you can't think of similar terms off the top of your head, don't worry. Sometimes there really is only one way to describe something. But here's something I do to help myself out. I use a thesaurus. I'll share a link to my favorite online thesaurus in the description box below. Now let's start with infrastructure. Infrastructure is a great keyword, but we might also include keywords that identify specific types of infrastructure, such as charging stations. Next, we can move on to adoption, use, rejection. These are great terms too, but we could also use purchase intention, intention to use, uptake. Finally, we have electric cars. Again, we could use this term, but we could also use electric vehicles or electric automobiles. Now here's the trick. All of your terms that appear in the same bubble on your map go in the same field, and each gets an or between it. This tells the database that you want results in which any of those terms appear. So let's take care of this part of your search first. So in field one, we're going to put infrastructure or charging stations. In field two, we'll put adoption or use or purchase intention or intention to use or uptake. In field three, we'll put electric cars or electric vehicles or electric automobiles. Great. Now we're going to make sure that the dropdown menus between each of these fields are set to and. This tells the database that you're looking for any result in which any term from the first field appears with any term or combination of terms from the second and third fields. Now you've got a great targeted search to start with just for this section of your paper. So as you read articles from this search, you start writing this section of your paper. You may even find that some articles touch on multiple areas that you're covering because you already have an outline. You can include that information in other sections as you're writing up this section. For each question, you'll do the same thing. Use your research question to create a search and then begin filling out that section of your outline as you read each source. As I mentioned in another video in this series, don't forget to cite your sources as you incorporate them into your outline. Luckily, most databases have a citation generator for your references or works cited list. In Academic OneFile, you can click the cite button and generate a citation for your works cited list or references page. You can then use this information to create an in-text citation that appears in the body of your paper. Not familiar with citing? Check out Greenlee Library's citation videos page. We provide up-to-date guidance on citing your sources in both MLA and APA formats. Finally, hone and hand over. As you cycle back and forth through visiting and revising your exploratory search and constructing your paper, you'll be amazed at how quickly your outline starts to morph into the first draft of your paper. This is the point at which you want to focus on honing or polishing up your existing draft. While there are many ways of doing this, I suggest proofreading your first draft with an eye to polishing up one element at a time. It might be tempting to do a first read and correct spelling, punctuation, and typographical errors, but I suggest starting out with the elements that are likely to require the most significant revision, the organization of your paper. As you read through your paper, ask yourself, does the way in which I've structured my evidence and examples support my thesis? Does the evidence I've selected support the claims or observations I'm making? For example, let's say you decided to go with a persuasive paper in which you argue that the government should invest in infrastructure and financial incentives to increase the use of electric vehicles in order to reduce emissions produced by traditional vehicles. Now let's say you're making the arguments that emissions are harmful and electric vehicles reduce emissions, therefore the government should invest in infrastructure and financial incentives to increase the use of electric vehicles in order to reduce the use of vehicles that produce harmful emissions. But this isn't as strong of an argument as it could be because it's not connecting the evidence with the solution. Someone might look at this argument and say, well, maybe people just don't realize how bad emissions are. Once they realize the problem, they'll choose to purchase electric vehicles on their own. Maybe government intervention isn't the solution. Maybe a public awareness campaign is a better solution. Whether you're arguing for a course of action or trying to unpack the cause and effect of a situation, it's likely that there will be competing solutions and explanations. So to address this gap, we need to cycle back through our construct critique stage and revisit our searches for more information. Now there's more than one way to make a stronger logical connection between the problem and the solution, but I'm going to show you one example of how you might strengthen the logical connection. But first, a little disclaimer. This is just an example related to the organization of an argument or analysis, but the actual points that I'm using as an example are not based on research. If you're researching this topic, you're going to need to do the review and create your own outline. So let's take a look at the revised outline. Instead of just saying emissions are harmful, so the government should incentivize reducing them through supporting the adoption of electric vehicles, we've now connected the evidence to why government support is necessary in solving this particular problem. Consumers know that emissions are harmful, but still choose traditional vehicles because of cost and convenience. Therefore, government intervention, which can reduce cost and improve the convenience of owning an electric car, is a viable solution. When you're proofreading the mechanics of your paper, it's always helpful to have someone act as a reviewer. You could ask your instructor to review a draft of your paper, you could have a friend review a draft of your paper, or if you're enrolled in a college or university, you might even have a writing center available to you in person or online where you can get feedback on your writing. And finally, once you've received your feedback and made your final revisions, you are ready to hand over that paper. As much as I love writing a good research paper, I'll admit this is usually my favorite stage in the process. Thanks for watching this video. I hope search has helped you to better understand the research process. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out using the Ask a Librarian form linked in the description below.