You won't go anywhere without a topic. Choosing a good topic makes a huge difference in how well your writing process will go. A good topic meets the requirements of the assignment, intrigues you, and leads to an interesting thesis statement that can be supported by reputable sources. In many ways, the hardest part of research is not the writing, it's not the research itself, it is choosing what you want to write about. Some tips for choosing a topic:
Step 1: Get Ideas
- Your class readings can be a good source of ideas.
- For current topics, look at professional sites in your field and current events. The Geological Society of America (GSA) has news and current events on their site that you may find helpful.
- GSA also has a YouTube sites to share news, ideas, and other topics of interest to professionals.
Step 2: Get Background Information to Focus Your Topic
- Research papers, technical papers, and dissertations can help with background information.
- Once you have one or two solid resources, you can do some citation mining.
Step 3: Identify Search Terms and Strategy
- The library catalog, databases, and search engines don't answer your questions - they return search results. To get the best results, you need to enter good search terms.
- Identify the key concepts (keywords or key phrases) of your topic, then brainstorm other terms that are related to these key concepts.
Step 4: Organize Your Research
- Gather everything in one place. As you search for and find technical papers, patents, and product specifications, you can use the Zotero browser connector to save them directly to your personal library.
- When it's time to write your Literature Review and proposals, Zotero will allow you to quickly and correctly insert in-text citations and build a bibliography in the proper format, saving you a huge amount of time.
