How to Write a Good STEM Lit Review without Losing Your Sanity: A 5-step(ish) Guide for the Modern “Work Smart, Not Hard” Graduate Student

Photo by Karl Solano on Unsplash

by Grace Aquino, Consultant

The age-old aphorism, “publish or perish,” rings particularly loudly for graduate students in STEM. As soon-to-be Ph.D.’s, M.S.’s, and experts in our subject matter, the pressure to publish impactful papers that advance both our field of study and our career as independent researchers can be overwhelming at times, especially since we receive little to no guidance on how to write scientific papers, let alone impactful ones. (To learn more about how to write scientific papers, read “Scientific Writing: How to Write Papers that Get Cited and Proposals that Get Funded” by Joshua Schimel!) One such type of impactful paper and the cornerstone of a good dissertation is the literature review. What is a lit review? Besides being the one paper you repeatedly quote to make yourself sound smart, a lit review is a paper that systematically evaluates dozens if not hundreds of published peer-reviewed papers on a defined topic or question, and then summarizes them in a useful way to synthesize new information, identify new problems and questions/knowledge gaps, and ultimately offer new insights and areas of research for the wider scientific community to learn from and address. In fact, we’ve all stumbled across the one or two lit reviews in our field that not only have enlightened us on a subject but have also revolutionized how we think of a problem and/or springboarded us into research action. While reading a good lit review can be academically catalyzing, writing one, on the other hand, can be academically soul crushing. With the right tools, however, it doesn’t have to be!

This blogpost is a 5-step(ish) guide on how to write a good STEM lit review without losing your sanity, designed specifically for the modern “work smart, not hard” graduate student, like you.

 

Step 1. Define the research topic and identify the central question(s) you’re asking.

Before you even start searching for papers to evaluate in your lit review, you need to define your research topic and identify the central question(s) you’re asking. Specifically, your research topic should be the “big picture” problem or need in your field, and the question(s) you choose should be narrow enough to be answered (at least in part) by evaluating the existing body of literature on said topic. For example, if your research topic is evaluating the psychosocial effects that COVID-19 has on a certain group of people, your central questions might be: how does/did the COVID-19 pandemic affect grad students’ mental health and general outlook on post-graduate life? If your research topic is more methods-flavored, like improving protocols for extracting COVID-19 viral particles from different environmental matrices, your question(s) might be: what methods currently exist to extract viral RNA from waste-water samples and what are their advantages/disadvantages? The types of questions you can ask are infinite. But remember to choose a question that is large enough in scope to move the field forward but small enough in scope that you can answer it given limited resources (like time, available peer-reviewed papers, and coffee).

 

Step 2. Search for relevant literature and make a list.

What is relevant literature? What is irrelevant literature? And where do you even begin to search for it? Deciding these things can be tricky, which is why the first thing you’ll need is a predetermined list of keywords related to the research topic and/or question, and clear selection (i.e. inclusion) criteria. To use the same example as before, if your topic is on the psychosocial effects of COVID-19 on grad student mental health, you might use all of these words as keywords and then include a few more tangentially related or synonymous ones to ensure your search is broad enough (like “college student”, “psychological effects,” “social effect,” “stress,” “quality of life” and “COVID19 pandemic”).  Don’t forget to use the Boolean operators “and,” “or,” and “not” in your search.

The second thing you’ll need is your university’s and/or public scholarly search engines to help you find papers. Baylor University Libraries’ One Search is a good place to start (especially since you have access to most if not all scholarly articles via the university’s academic journal subscriptions and interlibrary loans) but you’re not limited to this search engine. There are other great search engines likes PubMed, PubChem, ScienceDirect, ResearchGate, Springerlink, JSTOR, Web of Science, PLUS ONE, Scopus, Google Scholar, and the list goes on. (For a comprehensive list, see Top 100 Best Websites to Find Academic Journals, Articles & Books – Quertime). One tool I’ve found useful for finding related papers and staying abreast with my academic reading in general is the online visualization tool, Connected Papers. This impressive mapping tool gives you a visual overview of the literatures in the academic field you’re interested in, based on keywords you input, and it shows connections between new relevant papers and prior and/or derivative works.  I highly recommend it!

Finally, don’t let your initial shock at the overwhelming or underwhelming number of papers that your search returns deter you. Instead, use your clearly-defined selection criteria (e.g. papers no older than X amount of years, studies including both male and female participants, clinical and/or nonclinical studies, etc.)  to choose the papers you will evaluate and then store them in your preferred reference manager (EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, etc.). Read the abstracts of the paper and look through their reference section, which oftentimes is a goldmine of references. Add papers to your list that pass your initial criteria check; you can always come back and edit this list after reading through the abstracts. Your list may be long or short, depending on the abundance of papers that match your criteria and/or addressing your research topic. If your research topic is fairly new, you may not find many papers (but hey, that’s less reading for you and more opportunity to make a significant contribution!). Nonetheless, the selection criteria is important for your review to be considered systematic, so make sure you take the time to decide what the selection criteria are before you start your search.

 

Step 3. Read the papers to answer your central question and keep an annotated bibliography!

Shockingly, yes, you’ll have to actually read the papers you chose for your lit review. But you don’t actually have to read them in their entirety (unless you’re OCD like me). Since you’ll have read the abstracts at this point, focus on reading the papers in a given order (chronological, alphabetic, or another reasonable order) and smartly – i.e. to answer your central question. Be sure to keep good notes on the themes, knowledge gaps, debates, problematic findings, new insights, etc. that you discover as you read. Don’t underestimate the power of the annotated bibliography. For each paper you read, keep an annotated bibliography with these notes, which will significantly increase your ability to organize your lit review later and significantly decrease the crippling anxiety that comes from disorganized lit review processes. One tip to expedite the reading process is to briefly skim the introduction, skip the methods (unless your central question is about the methods), and spend a designated amount of time on the results and discussion sections, which are where you’ll likely find the answer your central question. If you find yourself spending an ungodly amount of time reading a single paper, use a productivity tool (like the Pomodoro technique) to help keep yourself on track. You can always come back to a paper if you need to clarify something later, but remember, you want to maximize your productivity from the beginning by finding ways to read and note-take more efficiently so that you can get to the meat of the lit review, the writing, sooner rather than later.

 

Step 4. Write an outline.

Based on your reading and notes, decide what lit review structure works best to write in light of the central question you’re asking. Use the central question explicitly as your thesis statement at the end of your introduction, after you’ve described the background of the “big picture” problem you’re addressing and highlighted the specific knowledge gap(s) in your field of research that further warrant your lit review. For the body of the lit review, the four main lit review structures typically used are:

  • Chronological – This is the simplest approach to map the development of your topic over time. If you choose this approach, avoid simply summarizing papers or listing them in order. Instead, focus on analyzing patters, key events, important debates or opposing views, etc. that have shaped the field and/or address the central question.
  • Thematic – This strategy uses recurring themes to organize your lit review into subsections that address different areas of the topic. For example, if you’re evaluating the psychosocial effects of COVID19 on graduate students, you might have several psychosocial parameters you’re evaluating, so you can use each of these as thematic sub-headers throughout the paper.
  • Methodological – If you’re comparing research methods from different fields or disciplines, you can use this approach to group similar methods together and juxtapose different ones. You can also discuss advantages and disadvantages of the methods in this strategy.
  • Theoretical – Oftentimes, the lit review is the foundation for a theoretical framework. This strategy allows you to discuss existing/new theories, definitions and key concepts, test models, etc. Like the methodological strategy, you can discuss the relevance of one theoretical approach over another, advantages, disadvantages, etc.

End the outline of your lit review with the conclusion/future direction section, where you will highlight the most important insights you’ve learned and offer new questions for the wider scientific community to address.

This outlining step is perhaps one of the hardest aspects of the lit review because putting an effective outline together can feel much like putting together a blank puzzle. However, once you’ve decided which outline structure works best for your topic and you’ve written out the outline, writing the paper will be easier (not easy!) than writing without a strategy in mind.

 

Step 5. Write the lit review.

There’s not much explanation needed here. For more help on writing the specific parts of the lit review, visit Scribbr’s “What is a Lit Review: Step-by-Step Guide and Examples”.

Consider joining a writing group to keep yourself accountable and writing routinely (and sane!). The GWC starts new ones every semester. Look out for our email! Remember, writing IS thinking, and writing CREATES knowledge, so make sure you give yourself time everyday to sit down and write something.

 

Step 5.5. Revise and edit, and send it to the GWC!

Once your first draft is done, have someone you trust in your professional circle review it and offer constructive criticism. Additionally, the GWC is always happy to help! You can send you papers direct to gwc@baylor.edu and we will pair you with a consultant to serve as an outside expert reader and offer feedback over a brief meeting.

If you’re writing the lit review for your dissertation or thesis, be sure to incorporate it following the guidelines and requirements given by your advisor/program. If you’re writing the lit review as a stand-alone paper or as part of a manuscript for an academic journal, follow the journal’s stylistic formatting and requirements, and ensure your citations are correct.

 

While writing a lit review can induce high levels of academic anxiety, we hope that this guide helps demystify the process and put some of that anxiety to rest. Remember that you are capable and that there are people here to help you! Email us at gwc@baylor.edu for help with your lit review (or any other paper) at any stage of completion.

Instrument Hunting: How Ed.D Students Can Find a Dissertation Instrument without Losing Their Minds

by Alicia Briançon, Consultant

Photo by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash

Trigger warning: If you spent weeks trying to find the “right instrument” only to find out it doesn’t exist (like me), then this may induce feelings of anxiousness. 😫

Let’s set the stage: You are typing away into the night to develop your purpose and problem statements for your dissertation and decide that the magic answer to your research design question is, “Yes, absolutely! This is going to be a quantitative study.” Awesome! You meet with your advisor and tell them the news and you think you’re going to just create your own because what you want to measure doesn’t quite exist already and you’re sure you can validate an instrument, because, to quote Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, “What, like, it’s hard?” You’re already knee-deep into your rigorous doctoral program and feel confident in your abilities. While meeting with your advisor, they explain that creating an instrument is in and of itself a “completely separate dissertation.”

By this point, you are feeling slightly defeated, but as we know, academia is a series of high and low points, and this too shall pass. So, where does one find an instrument? Good thing we have the Baylor library and expert librarians!

First, you need to determine what exactly you want to measure. This may seem simplistic in nature, but it is necessary. In the Ed.D program, we are encouraged to select an instrument before tackling other portions of our paper because it is central to the data design and data collection. In some respects, the instrument frames your entire dissertation. It can be helpful to see what other researchers used the same test or instrument in determining how you will apply it to your own.

There isn’t a formal process for finding the “perfect instrument.” However, the library commonly recommends two databases as starting points, which are APA Psych and Education Resources Information Center (ERIC). The easiest way to find these databases is by searching by keyword under the databases tab on the Baylor University Library Website.

It is best to start with a broad topic and narrow it as you continue. Interestingly, there are three different versions of ERIC, but EBSCOHOST has advanced features and is education related. After scrolling down the page on the right-hand side there is a box titled ‘publication type’, and as you scroll you will see ‘test/questionnaire.’ Or, under EBSCOHOST you can put the name of the test in quotation marks with no other limitation and the exact name will be searched in all metadata.

Yes, you can use OneSearch to investigate journals, dissertations, books, e-books, etc., but there are less advanced searches with this path. It is your choice, though!

According to Amy James, the Director of Information and Instruction at the Baylor Library, “Many times, students know the name of the test in an article but can’t find the actual instrument, which is vital to your research. It is not enough to find an article that mentions your instrument of choice.” In the Appendices, you will have to include a copy of the real thing. It is rare, occurring only three times in three years, but if the instrument isn’t found internally then Dr. James goes to Google to hunt it down. Sometimes, the author will let you use their instrument for a small fee or ask that you attend accreditation training. There are benefits to this avenue if you plan on conducting additional research in the future. Also, it looks really cool on your CV and LinkedIn profile, right?!

I asked James if the reason why the instrument can’t be found is if the original author wants to make a profit or the instrument is just very new. She said, “it could be because the instrument is new, or it isn’t part of the current library paid package.” Again, while this is atypical, it is still good to know all the possible outcomes.

Know that you can always place a request with OSOFast, the interlibrary loan request system, which will search other institutions. The sky is the limit. OSOFast requests are sometimes addressed internationally too.

The moral is, don’t panic if you don’t know how to find an instrument. Now, you have some basic first steps and an entire library ready and willing to help you with your research goals, including finding the best instrument or test.

Writing the Literature Review: The QuiltWork Method

Photo by Dinh Pham on Unsplash

by Kristin Huggins, Consultant

It is highly unusual to meet someone in academia, be it a student or professor, who genuinely enjoys the prospect of writing a literature review. Thesis, dissertation, journal article, program assessment – the medium matters not. The quintessential literature review has a singular way of unifying individuals across all disciplines and all levels of research. Someone whispers its name into the bleak unknown. All hold their breath in response, hoping it will pass over their doorstep like an academic Angel of Death.

Despite your feelings on the subject, all graduate students must write an exhaustive, cohesive literature review at some point in their academic careers. While daunting, this task need not be completed at the expense of blood, sweat, and tears. Finding an effective writing method can easily reduce your writing workload (and subsequent anxiety) from an Everest into a molehill. Or several molehills, in this case.

 

Enter the QuiltWork Writing Method.

The QuiltWork Method was born as an act of desperation while deep in the throes of writing my first dissertation draft. With deadlines looming and candidacy standing in the shadows of the doctoral guillotine, I knew that a linear approach to writing my literature review wouldn’t get me there fast enough. My topics were too broad, my sources too interdisciplinary – I found myself missing key points in articles that had already been “assigned” to other sections of my review. I was trying to create a blanket with one fell swoop, by synthesizing all of the scholarship of my topic at once. And it wasn’t working. I needed to instead step back and approach the literature review the same way my grandmother approached her sewing projects: one square bit of fabric at a time.

So I stopped. I saved my work. And started from scratch. Here was what I tried instead:

Step One: Write an Outline. It doesn’t matter if you rewrite this ten times over. Get an outline on the page. What are the main sections of your literature review? Are you following a narrative model (broad to narrow topics) or a systematic model (individual topics that together form a cohesive argument for your study)? Start there. Every project, no matter how small or large, needs a vision (or a Pinterest board).

Step Two: Prepare your Word Documents. Open a series of blank Word or Google documents. The number you open should match the number of literature review sections you outlined in Step One. If you are working on a small laptop, you may also consider keeping them minimized until needed to maximize screen efficiency. Do not include your Introduction or Conclusion, since these will be written once you’ve completed your Literature Review.

Step Three: One Source at a Time. Unlike a traditional linear writing process, you are no longer trying to spin paragraphs out of thin air. With QuiltWork writing, you go through each source one by one and read for key points and quotes. As you come across these points in your reading, open up the word doc that represents that literature review section and write. How is this relevant to your study? What does this remind you of? Do you need this quote? Be sure to include the full citation at the top of the blurb before you begin, and place in-text citations throughout. This will alleviate many headaches later when you patch these quilting squares together.

***Note for Step Three: If Source #1 has a point that works for Section A and Section D, place it in both! Isn’t the purpose of a literature review to provide an exhaustive, synthesized perspective of the existing scholarship? This method encourages this idea of scholarly flexibility, acknowledging that one source can be used in many different ways if given the right lens. Many times, I found that one source possessed data that could be applied to nearly every section in my literature review!

Step Four: Rinse, Wash, Repeat. Continue to repeat Step Three with every source you have. That’s right – every single one. Eventually, you’ll begin to make connections. Your documents might take on a note of free flow synthesis without you even realizing it.

Step Five: The Inquiry. Once you have worked through a large portion of your sources, I would recommend going back through each document and asking these questions: Which ones are filled to the brim with pages and pages of content? Which ones are still lagging behind? Do you need to shift your focus and feed the smaller ones with new sources? How many quotes have you found for each section? Do you need more? Less? Have you included citations for all of your work? Go back and check each one before moving on. These questions will guide you as you begin to refine your sections into veritable reservoirs of empirical evidence to support your study.

Step Six: The Great Gathering. You now should have 3-5 documents filled with quality content. At this point, you may see themes emerge in these documents. Identify the themes and work to craft stellar topic sentences out of them. These topic sentences are the seams that will bind the writing you’ve already accomplished.

 

At this point, you will find yourself edging closer and closer to writing a traditional paragraph. After you’ve completed Step Six, take the leap! You now have a clear idea of what you want to say in each section, which sources are key contenders in these debates, and how you plan to synthesize these works across the various sections of your literature review. You may now commence with sewing your quilting squares together to form the Great Blanket.

I do not profess to be a great seamstress, nor do I consider myself a great writer. But this small writing hack, created out of desperation and fear, allowed my brain to finally put words on the page. And as many of you know, getting words on the page is perhaps the biggest challenge of all.

You can do this. You can write this. How do we quilt a blanket? One square at a time.

Happy writing to you all!

Systematic Strategies for Humanities Research-Paper Writing: Part Two

By Sørina Higgins, Consultant

Welcome back! Presumably you’re here because you developed a smashing good Research Question, surveyed the field, downloaded way too many articles, and ordered a bunch of books via ILL. Now you’re ready to really dig into the research. Here again are some strategies that you might find helpful for that whole process.

  1. If you haven’t done so already, you’ll want to figure out a note-taking method that works for you and stick with it throughout the whole process. If you’ve got one that worked all through undergrad, you might need to update it, or it might be just fine and you can stick with it. Whether you add notes in Zotero, hand-write summaries on paper, put stickies all over books, highlight printed documents, or type your thoughts into a file or cloud, just be consistent. Make sure your system allows you to search for what you need and to keep track of what you have and have not read (because you will forget). Always cite using Zotero as you go; researching, writing, and citing are one activity. Do them simultaneously until that becomes an unbreakable habit.
  2. You probably want to read through your primary sources first (maybe in chronological order), taking detailed notes and citing as you go. This way you’ll develop your own impressions and thoughts about the primary sources first, giving you something to work from when you get to dialoguing with other scholars.
  3. At some point soon, either now or after doing your secondary research, sketch a rough outline, then develop it into a Fat Outline as soon as you can. Keeping adding to your outline as you learn more. Use Microsoft Word’s hierarchical headings for easy navigation and later re-organization. I like to type my Research Question in red font the footer as a constant reminder; this helps keep me from going down rabbit trails. Or that’s the theory anyway.
  4. Skim through the relevant secondary sources in reverse chronological order, taking notes only on anything that directly answers the Research Question. Stay focused. Reign in your curiosity, training it just on the one task at hand. Cite as you go! You’ll probably need to rework your question once you find out what other scholars have already done. Don’t be discouraged if you need to shift your focus altogether. Don’t overdo this stage of research. It is quite literally impossible to read all the scholarship on any subject now, even an extremely narrow one. Read abstracts to determine which sources will be relevant, then speed-read those that are both totally relevant and quite recent.
  5. Take notes and cite as you go, using Zotero. Rework your outline as needed, saving under a new file name or number each time you make a major change (that way you can revert to an earlier version if you change your mind). Keep adding “fat” to your outline: quotes, notes, evidence, and so forth that you plan to use, in more or less the right order. Cite as you go.
  6. When your Research Question is answered, you can formulate a draft thesis, then get into the real “writing” stage (it’s all writing, but this is when you can finally turn on the caffeine drip, get into a groove, and type away for hours on end like a Shakespearean monkey). Be sure to get up and move around every 20 minutes, drink enough water, do lots of stretches, and look out the window regularly.
  7. I recommend writing the “close-reading” passages first, where you directly gloss your primary sources. These should be the heart of your paper, and writing them first has many advantages. Doing so will give you an idea of how long they will be, so that you can tighten or loosen your scholarly framework and contextualizing sections as needed. You are also most likely to develop an original argument when you read the scholars before writing but then write your close reading passages first, with the scholarly conversation in the back of your head. You may want to revise your thesis after drafting the close-reading passages.
  8. Write and rewrite and rewrite! Turn all your rough notes into nice U-shaped paragraphs. Pay attention to transforming outline points into really strong topic sentences. Cite as you go. Save each major change as a new file. I like to type directly into the outline, preserving the headings for easy navigation and re-organization later. I also use various font colors to indicate material that’s more or less complete, and I put an *asterisk next to anything I need to go back and fix later; this makes it easy to find with search features. Develop methods like these that work for your brain and save time later. Of course, keep up with your Zotero citations as you go.
  9. See if you can finish at least two days before the deadline so that you can take the paper to the Graduate Writing Center, get a colleague or two to comment on it, maybe even have the professor comment on a draft, and then revise thoroughly.
  10. Always print out the paper and proofread once on hard copy before your final edits.

TL;DR: Figure out your note-taking style and take notes accordingly. If it’s helpful to you, try creating an outline from your notes. Skim through secondary sources, pulling (and citing) only quotes that apply directly to your research question. Use Zotero! Once you have a “fat outline” going, formulate a draft of a thesis statement – now we’re getting to the good stuff! Give yourself lots of time to write, but also take frequent brain breaks. Keep using Zotero! Start with your close reading section first – it will give you confidence and direction. Write, rewrite, and rewrite again! More Zotero! Keep track of sections you need to return to later. Try to finish your draft with a few days of buffer so you can send it to the Graduate Writing Center. Do one final proofread on a printed copy of your paper before submitting. Celebrate and take a deep breath!

 

I know I haven’t included much advice here about the writing itself—the quality and content of your writing, I mean—but that’s a slightly different topic. Hopefully these suggestions about the logistics and timing of the process have been helpful. What have I left out? What have I included that you can safely skip? What’s different in your specific field? Comment below!

Systematic Strategies for Humanities Research-Paper Writing: Part One

By Sørina Higgins, Consultant

via GIPHY

Hello, fellow grad students in the humanities! It’s just about time to start thinking about those big end-of-term papers you’ll write for most of your grad classes, those 20- to 30-pagers that hover somewhere between an exhausting school assignment and the draft of a professional article. Well, here are some suggestions for you to consider applying to the process of researching and writing those seminar papers. Hopefully these ideas will be useful for you whether you’re about to write your first one or your last one ever. Either way, congrats! This is a big deal; you’re about to produce some original research to add to the scholarly conversation, and it’s a chance to really dig into doing what you love, the thing you came to grad school for. I’ll try to help smooth the way here so that you don’t have to figure out the research process for yourself. And feel free to add additional strategies in the comments below!

First, plan ahead. Set aside a day well before the deadline (at least a month; six weeks or two months is better) in order to start preliminary research and order books. Don’t panic; you needn’t begin writing the paper at this point, but you do need to provide enough lead time for getting materials through interlibrary loan, and you probably want to at least glance over the most relevant and/or recent scholarship to make sure someone else hasn’t done exactly what you want to do. At this point, you can do a few of the steps below. You don’t need to do all of them now, and you can probably get away with never doing some of them, but the more of this background research you complete early on, the smoother the writing process will be and the better the final product.

  1. Choose authors, texts, themes, time periods, events, or issues of interest, as relevant to the project and your field. Make sure to read and reread the assignment prompt carefully and ask your professor for clarification if needed. But here’s something to consider: I don’t think “choosing a topic” really works for serious research. Instead, I recommend picking a field of interest, narrowing it down considerably, and honing your focus until you develop a Research Question.
  2. Crafting your Research Question is an important step that many inexperienced scholars omit or rush past. The better your initial Research Question, the more successful and less stressful the whole process will be. There are lots of reasons for this: Your question guides the type of research you’ll do, what sources you’ll investigate, the kind of research design or method you’ll employ, even the scope and structure of the paper. So don’t “pick a topic”; take the time to develop a truly workable question instead. There is lots of advice available about the characteristics of good and bad Research Questions; here are a few I’ve found particularly helpful. The question must be researchable by you and must fit into the rest of this semester—so there probably isn’t time for extensive field work or archival research. It must be a fact-finding question, not an ethical or interpretive question at this stage. It must be a question to which you do not currently know the answer, but which has high stakes for your field. Take your time on this step, consulting with faculty or advanced students and browsing around in publications in your field.
  3. Okay, once you’ve drafted a solid Research Question, it’s time to start the initial research. See if there is a recent “state of the field” article, bibliography, or some other resource that covers what’s being published right now in your area. If you don’t readily find such a thing, ask the professor to recommend one. The more focused this can be on works that potentially answer your Research Question, the better. Even just reading through the titles of the most recent articles and books in your field can give you a sense of what’s being done now and what the current concerns are.
  4. For studies involving literature and other print-heavy fields (English, Theatre, History, Religion, American Studies, Music, etc.) it’s a good idea to find the best, most recent bibliography of your target authors’ works and to find out which are the official editions of these authors’ works. You can usually discover this by looking in the latest issues of the top journal(s) in this field. If you don’t readily find out, ask the professor which ones are currently the most acceptable. It would be a shame to write your whole Thomas Malory paper, say, using Vinaver only to find out that your target journal—or worse yet, your professor!—favors Field. Horrors.
  5. Now you might want to compile a list of the relevant primary sources in chronological order. Hopefully this already exists, in the form of a handy bibliography. But if not, make one yourself—then narrow it down. There’s no way you’re going to read all that in the next few weeks. No, seriously. You won’t.
  6. Similarly, compile a list of the relevant secondary sources, but in reverse chronological order. While you’re at it, do a quick check to find out what your professor has written (if they haven’t already assigned their Complete Works to you in their seminar. Yup. It happens). Do they have anything relevant on the subject? If so, be sure to read it and cite it if possible. Anyway, back to this reverse chronological order thing. See, the idea is that you’ll want to have a general sense of both what’s hot in your field and also what the classic, game-changing, most-cited academic works are. If you start reading (skimming, really, or maybe even just reading abstracts) with the newest stuff, you’ll accomplish that first goal of seeing what’s hot right away, and pretty soon you’ll start seeing certain Names repeated over and over. Those are the Founding Folks of your field; get their works. Have a glance inside. Cite them a teeny bit. That’s cocktail party cred right there.
  7. Take a breath. What have you learned? Do you get a sense of the most pressing concerns in your field right now? Do you need to revise your Research Question at this point? Take a break. Let it all settle for a while. Then come back and cut your lists in half. For real. You still won’t read all of that, so cut out whatever is not absolutely necessary, and then some of what’s left. Now acquire the rest of it. Check books out of the library, order things via ILL, download or print articles, and that sort of thing. Somewhere in this initial researching phase, make an appointment with your subject-area’s liaison librarian to get assistance with locating anything you’ve missed or with filling in gaps.
  8. As you work on this initial research process, put everything in a Zotero folder. Researching, writing, and citing are one integrated activity, so always keep track of sources and citations as you go.

 

TL;DR: Read, read, read! Come up with a research question, rather than a research topic; the narrower, the better. Know the foundational texts related to your question. Check out the bibliography of related article from a journal that you really like. Compile a list of primary texts you need, then narrow to the essentials. Do the same with secondary texts, but prioritize by the most recent scholarship. Do preliminary searches and skims, then revise your lists again. Keep track of everything in a Zotero folder.

 

Tune in next week when we talk about actually beginning to write!