Tips for Academic Research – Starting

The hardest part of academic research is to start with it. Many people often take a whole semester just to decide to start. It is important that you start now. Start today, even if you read one page, or write one page. The important thing is to start. Use whatever research time you have every day to do something, even if that something is very small. Good research is usually a lot of small parts done independently, rather than one large part done in one step.

Start by creating a folder for every group of documents. A folder for articles, one for conference papers, one for thesis, one for blog posts, one for books, and etc. is a good way to start. Place any interesting documents you come across into the corresponding folder. This way, you will start to generate a good collection of documents relevant and useful to your research.

Print out an article a day and read it. This is a good way to start slowly and read a good amount of information on a particular topic. You never know where a good idea is waiting to be read. Once you have started with reading, you will make it a habit and will be used to it as a daily process. Once this happens after a month or so, you can start to dedicate more time and read larger pieces of text.