Do some research

Maybe you’ve written what feels like hundreds of research papers. Maybe this is your first. Either way, everyone can benefit from a little bit of research first on how to write a great paper. Questia.com is a great source for books that can guide you through the research paper writing process. One book that can help is Schaum’s Writing Great Research Papers by Laurie Rozakis. It details the qualities of a good research paper and offers a top ten list of criteria every paper should include. Paramount among these points are Nos. 7 through 9:

7. The work is original, not plagiarized. Every outside source is carefully documented.
8. All supporting material used in preparation of the paper can be verified.
9. The paper follows a specific format, including the use of correct documentation and a Works Cited page.

Also, be sure you understand thoroughly the assignment and what your professor is looking for in the research paper. Do you have to write an essay or an argumentative work? Do you have to have a specific number of sources? What citation style are you supposed to use? Not paying attention to the professor’s stipulations is a sure-fire way to get the wrong kind of attention for your efforts.

Give credit where it is due

One thing no professor will ever overlook is plagiarism. Quality research papers need sources and supporting materials, but you must always acknowledge their use properly to avoid any issues of copying. The Complete Guide to Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism by Colin Neville is available through Questia.com and provides the Golden Rule of referencing: “to give the reader enough information to help them easily and quickly find the source you have cited. If they wanted to look at your source and check it for themselves, could they find it easily with the information you have supplied?”

Questia makes it easy to include the books you have cited within your research paper with no more than a click of your mouse. Simply save the book to your active project. You can also highlight specific text you wish to cite in your paper using one of three citation styles: APA, Chicago or MLA. Questia automatically generates your bibliography, from your selected citations, in the style you pick.

The website plagiarism.org, in a post “Preventing plagiarism when writing,” urges students writing research papers to “When in doubt, cite sources.” The article also stresses the importance of knowing how to paraphrase, saying “Changing a few words of the original sentences does NOT make your writing a legitimate paraphrase.” The post adds that even rephrased content will need to be cited because the original idea contained in the sentence came from someone other than yourself.

Stay focused

Hopefully you understand the importance of avoiding citation errors and plagiarism, but there are still other ways you can derail your research papers. Writing Center Underground, the blog for the Metropolitan Community College Writing Center, shares the “Top Ten Tips for Writing Research Papers” by E. Mack. Some common issues discussed include:

• Lack of organization and focus. Keep the points you want to make together; avoid jumping back and forth between reasons.
• Lack of conclusion. Often students concentrate so intensely on the body of a research paper that they overlook the importance of a strong conclusion.
• Lack of careful proofreading. Relying on spell-check is not going to help you find word usage errors, one of the most common errors in academic papers. It’s also difficult to find everything in one read-through.

If you properly understand the assignment, thoroughly plan your paper, clearly reference all your sources and absolutely avoid plagiarism, you are sure to construct research papers both you, and your professors, will be proud of.

Questia research tutorials

The fall semester has barely begun and already you’re feeling the stress of research paper writing and completing homework assignments. How are you going to fit everything into your already jam-packed schedule? Lucky for you, now you can have access to a secret weapon for students. It’s called Questia, the premier online research and paper-writing tool for students. We’ve put together a full arsenal of tools, tips and videos in our Research tutorials section to help you tackle the toughest research assignment while keeping your cool.

Check out Questia

At Questia you’ll have access to over 6 million full-text books and articles. But all those juicy resources won’t do you any good if you can’t find them and use them for creating those “A” research papers. Questia also sports timesaving research tools such as highlights, notes and bookmarks. With these tools, you can return to Questia time after time and pick up right where you left off in gathering and organizing your materials. And the best part is that Questia includes a tool to help you create professor-approved citations and bibliographies (or works cited) for your papers.

Here’s the deal

If you’re not already a member of Questia, you can still test out some of the organizational tools like highlighting in multiple colors for your notes, however, research tutorials are an extra special treat only available to those with a Questia membership. Now, here’s the deal. If you’re not already convinced of the value of Questia, go to the site and sign up for the free Questia trial to test it out for yourself. When you’re all signed up for your free trial, you’ll be able to test out our research tutorial on evaluating sources to see for yourself!

Research tools

Once you’re logged in at the Questia site, be sure to click on the link for Research tutorials at the top of the home page. This link takes you to a growing collection of interactive tutorials that you can view, start and resume at any time. Coming this fall in time for mid-end of semester research papers will be a total of 10 Research tutorials including:

• Planning a paper
• Conducting research
• Using the library
• Evaluating resources
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Integrating sources
• Paraphrasing sources
• Summarizing sources
• Quoting sources
• Working with documentation styles

Let’s take “Evaluating resources,” for example. Have you ever had grief from an instructor because you didn’t find high quality resources for your research project or term paper? Well, suffer no more. After you look through this set of videos, examples and quizzes, you’ll be an expert on finding reliable sources.

And that’s just one of the research tutorials that awaits you at Questia. There’s so much more! Think of all the time and aggravation you can save this semester just by making Questia your resource for all things research. With Questia, you can kiss aimless Internet searching goodbye and say hello to higher grades and instructor praise. The sooner you sign up, the sooner you can take advantage of the many benefits and start earning those higher grades.