Research Propocol

I just want to share my way to organize the process of research.

1. First thing first — reading

• Extensive reading is crucial to gain a comprehensive understanding of the topic, its issues, and its placement within the broader research field.
• Selecting material to read poses a significant question.
• Identifying relevant papers can be achieved through various methods:
  • Keywords: Use Google Scholar to search the topic and identify highly cited papers.
  • People: Focus on works by leading authors in the field. Reading one or two representative papers from each should suffice.
  • Synonyms: Use synonyms to discover new and related materials; aim to build upon the work of pioneers in the field.
  • Books: Books provide a systematic introduction to a specific topic.
  • Conferences: Look for workshops at conferences that may focus on your area of interest.
• Limit your selection to approximately 10 papers to form a foundational understanding of the topic.

2. Writing the Literature Review or Map

• With your 10 essential papers, it’s advisable to draft a literature review.
  • Highlight the relationships between these papers, focusing on how key concepts interconnect logically and clearly.
  • This process should also help in formulating research questions, even if they initially seem vague or uncertain.
• The goal is to construct a knowledge map that makes sense to you, not necessarily to establish scientific rigor at this stage.

3. Question! Question! Question

• This is the key step. You should always make the questions. Make a list of the questions, don’t worry about the dumbness and formality.
• It should be easy to understand and related to the topic and your research interest.
• Maximum 5 questions should be fine. Endless questions derail you from the essence of the research topic.

4. Answer These Questions Yourself

• Normally, the other “formal” ways to do research would recommend you to search the answers in Google Scholar and read more papers.
• This seems to me a trap because researchers are independent thinkers, not readers and projectors.¹ You should always think these questions throughout your own knowledge faculties.
• Write down your answers or possibly solutions. Or the difficulties that hinder you to providing the answers. In a common way, the later one would last as the regular case.

5. Search for the Answers

• After the independent thinking process, you should have some ideas to answer these questions.
• But you are not sure, these are answered already by others. If not, congrats! Originality germinates. You are the first one thinking like this!
• However, normally, there would have been people exploring these questions in the exact ways or an alternative but similar ways.
• Check these “answers”. These papers and articles may give you more insights about this topic.
• If no one answers, that means this question either extremely difficult or is a novel question. In the latter case, you must be a great independent thinker!

6. Compile and Write a Proposal

• When you have everything above, I think these should be enough to write a research proposal.
• It doesn’t mean that you should write a formal proposal to get a research grant. It means that this document will provide you a way to think a possible research questions related to the topic and the possible solution!

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