Organizing Academic Research

Papers: 1. Choosing a Topic

 A topic is the main organizing principle guiding the analysis of your research paper. Topics
offer us an occasion for writing and a focus that governs what we want to say. Topics
represent the core subject matter of scholarly communication, and the means by which we
arrive at other topics of conversations and discover new knowledge
 Step 1: Identify concepts and terms that make up the topic
statement. For example, your professor wants the class to focus on
the following research problem: “Is the European Union as a whole
becoming a credible security actor with the ability to contribute to
global security?” The main concepts are: European Union, global
security, credibility [hint: focus on identifying proper nouns, nouns
or noun phrases, and action verbs in the assignment description].
 Step 2: Review related literature to help refine how you will
approach focusing on the topic and finding a way to analyze it.
You can begin by doing any or all of the following: reading through
background information from materials listed in your course
syllabus; searching the SHU library catalog to find a recent
introductory book and, if appropriate, more specialized works about
the topic; conducting a preliminary review of the research literature
using multidisciplinary library databases such as EBSCOhost's
Academic Search Premier or subject-specific databases found here.
Use the main concept terms you developed in Step 1 to retrieve
relevant articles. This will help you refine and frame the research
problem. Don’t be surprised if you need to do this several times
before you finalize how to approach writing about the topic.
 Step 3: Since social science research papers are generally designed
to get you to develop your own ideas and arguments, look for
sources that can help broaden, modify, or strengthen your initial
thoughts and arguments [for example, if you decide to argue that
the European Union is ill prepared to take on responsibilities for
broader global security because of the debt crisis in many EU
countries, then focus on identifying sources that support as well
as refute this position].
There are least four appropriate roles your related
literature plays in helping you formulate how to
begin your analysis
 Sources of criticism -- frequently, you'll find yourself reading
materials that are relevant to your chosen topic, but you disagree
with the author's position. Therefore, one way that you can use a
source is to describe the counter-argument, provide evidence from
your review of the literature as to why it is unsatisfactory, and
discuss how your own view is more appropriate based upon your
interpretation of the evidence.
 Sources of new ideas -- while a general goal in writing college
research papers is to approach a research problem with some basic
idea of what position you'd like to take and what grounds you'd like
to stand upon, it is certainly acceptable [and often encouraged] to
read the literature and extend, modify, and refine your own position
in light of the ideas proposed by others. Just make sure that you cite
the sources!
 Sources for historical context -- another role your related literature
plays in helping you formulate how to begin your analysis is to
place issues and events in proper historical context. This can help to
demonstrate familiarity with developments in relevant scholarship
about your topic, provide a means of comparing historical versus
contemporary issues and events, and identifying key people, places,
and things that had an important role related to the research
problem.
 Sources of interdisciplinary insight -- an advantage of using
databases like EBSCOhost's Academic Search Premier to begin
exploring your topic is that it covers publications from a variety of
different disciplines. Another way to formulate how to study the
topic is to look at it from different disciplinary perspectives. If the
topic concerns immigration reform, ask yourself, for example, how
do studies from sociological journals found by searching Proquest
vary in their analysis from those in law journals. Another role of
related literature is to provide a means of approaching a topic from
multiple perspectives rather than the perspective offered from just
one discipline.
 Step 4: Assuming you've done an effective job of synthesizing and
thinking about the results of our initial search for related literature,
you're ready to prepare a detailed outline for your paper that lays
the foundation for a more in-depth and focused review of relevant
research literature [after consulting with a librarian, if needed!].