5.2 What is academic research?

 Academic research is the process of gathering information about a

topic, evaluating it, and then using that information to say something
new about the topic.
 Academic research consists of these basic steps:
o Create a research question and hypothesis.
o Gather information from reliable outside sources to test this
hypothesis.
o Use this information to form a viewpoint about the topic.
o Use the information from these sources in your own writing to
support your viewpoint.
o Give credit to the outside sources you use in your writing.
 E.g.: A student writing a paper on climate change will need to carry out these
steps
o

5.3 Finding academic information.

 Before beginning an investigation, the student needs to have a clear idea of
what they are trying to find out. This is called the research question.
 A good research question should have the following six qualities.
 o It must be about something that people care about: This means the
audience for the paper needs to be considered, and the topic should be
something that will be of interest to them.
o It must be possible to make an argument about it: If a question has
only one universal agreed upon answer, it cannot be added upon, but a
more open-ended question is better research question.
o It must add something new or solve a problem: The purpose of
academic writing is to show what the student discovered through their
investigation of the topic. This means that the student also needs to
add some original ideas to the investigated topic. Just copying or
summarising what other people have already said, does not show
originality or provide anything new on the topic.
o It must not be too broad or too narrow: It is important to make the
focus of the investigation specific enough, as this gives the
investigation the right direction. If a research question is too broad, it
may be impossible to fully investigate the topic.
o It should be possible to answer in each time frame and location:
Not all information is easy to find, and the sources you have access to
may be limited. For that reason, it is important to choose a research
question that you can answer, given the resources that are available to
you.
o It should be possible to find the types of sources needed: Once a
potential research question has been chosen, it is important to make a
list of the information required to answer it.
 Once the research question is determined, good sources are needed to
help answer it. A good source provides accurate, useful, and unbiased
information on the topic. In the age of the Internet, there is an enormous
amount of information available on nearly any topic. However, a lot of these
sources are misleading or inaccurate.
 To determine whether a source contains reliable information, certain
criteria must be met. The more of these criteria the source meets, the
more accurate the information is likely to be.
o Authors: To find out whether a source is reliable, it is important to
know who created its content. When accessing a source, check for the
following:
 Does the source contain the names of the author or authors?
 Does it contain any information about the credentials of the
author?
 Do these credentials make the author qualified to write about
this topic?
o Publishers: The organisation that distributes the source is also
important, since their reputation or goals can indicate whether the
information, they provide is biased. Determine if the source comes from
a reliable organisation, by using the following criteria:
 Does the source detail who the publisher is?
  Is that publisher an academic, professional, or scholarly
organisation?
 Does the organisation publishing this source have a clear and
well-defined purpose?
o Audience: Determining for whom the source is intended, can also be
helpful. Check for the following:
 Is it possible to tell who wrote the content for this source?
 Is it possible to tell for whom this source’s content is written
(e.g., for people who study the specific topic, or for the public)?
o Content: Another way to determine the accuracy of a source is to look
more closely at the content itself. Ask the following questions:
 Does the content include a reason for providing the information?
 Does the content include evidence to prove its claims?
 Are other sources cited in the content?
 Does the content contain elements like charts, graphs, tables,
and a bibliography?
 Are there conclusions based on the provided evidence?
 How lengthy is the content?
o Publication Date: One final thing to check is the source’s date of
publication. This can reveal how accurate or current the information is.
Look for the following:
 Does the source have a clear date of publication?
 Is the date recent enough to provide current information on the
topic?
5.4 Acknowledging academic information.
 Sources need to be properly acknowledged to clarify which words and
ideas in the paper are your own, and which come from other authors
and outside sources. This kind of acknowledgement is called a citation.
Citing sources properly not only gives other authors the credit they deserve,
but it also protects you.
o Plagiarism: Plagiarism is essentially using the ideas of other
authors without giving them credit for those ideas. Oxford
Dictionaries defines plagiarism as ‘the practice of taking someone
else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own’. It is a kind of
dishonesty, and it is taken very seriously in academic and professional
circles. Plagiarism can include the following:
 Submitting someone else’s writing as your own.
 Using parts of someone else’s writing in your work.
 Using a direct quote from an outside source without a citation.
 Paraphrasing a passage from an outside source without a
citation.
 Using an idea, you got from an outside source, without giving
credit to the person who created it.
o
o

o Note how plagiarism can involve more than just copying someone
else’s work. As a rule, use a citation whenever you use information
from an outside source that is not common knowledge.
o Copyright infringement: There are legal penalties for copyright
infringement. Courts can stop the production and distribution of the
copyrighted material and can award the original author money for
damages. There can also be criminal penalties in some cases.
o Academic referencing styles: There are several popular styles
used to cite information from outside sources. Most of these styles
use similar information (e.g., author, title etc.), but they each have
different requirements and methods to give the reader this information.
The style you use depends on the type of topic you are writing about,
or on the preferences of the professor that gave the assignment.
 Harvard: This style, also called the author-date system, is used
for a wide variety of academic topics. It is the most used style in
the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa.
 APA (American Psychological Association): This style is
often used for papers about education or psychology. This is the
most common referencing style used in the USA.
  MLA (Modern Language Association): This style is commonly
used for papers in the field of humanities (i.e., art and literature).
 Chicago/Turabian: This style is often used for papers about
business, history, or economics.
o Harvard Referencing Style:
 First, there should be an indication in the text where you
use the information from the outside source. This is called
an in-text citation. This in-text citation should contain the
author’s surname, the date the source was published, and the
page number (if available). The format of this citation depends
on whether the outside source is quoted or paraphrased.
 The second part of the citation is a bibliographical entry at
the end of the paper. This citation provides all the rest of
the information the reader needs to find the original source.
Both the in-text citation and the bibliographical entry are needed
to fully cite the source.
o Paraphrasing is when you take ideas from an external source and
reproduce them in your own words. If you paraphrase an idea from
a source, the in-text citation needs to show where these ideas originally
came from.
 There are two basic ways to do this. First, a citation can be
placed in round brackets at the end of the sentence. These
brackets must contain the author’s surname, the publication
date, and the page number.
 Another way to cite paraphrased information is to use the
author’s name as part of the sentence. In this case, the author’s
name is not placed inside brackets, but the publication date and
page number are placed in brackets, directly after the name.
o If the paper quotes the exact words from the source, these words
should be placed in quotation marks to show that they come from
another author. The in-text citation should be placed after the quote.
5.5 Tracking academic information
o When writing a paper that uses multiple sources, it is easy to lose track
of where each piece of information comes from, or what the citation
information for each source is. However, there are several methods
that can be used to make this process easier.
o Traditional methods: Before electronic methods of organising
information were invented, many researchers used a notecard system
to keep track of sources. The basic idea is to write a single idea or
quote that you intend to use on each card, along with information on
where the source comes from
o Cross-platform methods: Many online applications for research are
designed for a single platform, such as iOS or Windows. However,
there are some that are specifically designed to be used on a variety of
platform. Examples include ‘Evernote’, ‘Mendeley’ and ‘Cite This for
Me’.