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The Best Strategies for Getting Information for Your Academic Research Project

Conducting research allows you to find answers to questions related to the topic of your paper. To be able to do that, you should identify relevant sources that will provide you with credible and valid data. The following are some of the most useful tips that will help you acquire essential information for your school project if you don’t want to use an online custom writing service.

Wikipedia

You might have been cautioned against using Wikipedia as a source of information in academic research. However, it is still a good starting point for identifying suitable sources for your project.

You only need to refrain from quoting a Wikipedia article. Although it is fairly more accurate than any other online encyclopedia, its biggest problem is that it is editable. That said, it will assist you in providing a good overview of the topic of your paper.

Apart from containing the main ideas, an article should have citations at the bottom, which means that you can identify important sources that can help you understand the project requirements better or plan out the paper’s structure.

School Library

Online libraries provide you with a wide variety of databases, books, peer-reviewed journals, and different kinds of media. If you are looking for accurate and reliable information for your research paper, you won’t find a better place than this.

Here, you can search for sources that you identified with the help of Wikipedia articles or through a keyword-based search online. Keep in mind that research is not a linear process and it requires you to switch between different sources as you try to refine your ideas.

Since educational institutions update their databases regularly, you can be sure that, in most cases, they only retain those materials that contain accurate and up-to-date information.

Also, published journals are frequently reviewed by experts in the area who assess them thoroughly before giving their approval. However, you should bear in mind that not all books and journal articles are as accurate and unbiased as they might seem, so do your own digging.

Identify Suitable Secondary Sources

Although your main goal is to identify the most authoritative sources, you should also take into account how many of them you will include in your paper. In this case, you should stick to the most recent and extensively used ones.

It will require a bit of effort on your part, but you will be able to establish a pattern by evaluating the most relevant sources. You can also use Google Scholar to double check and see how many times resources in research documents have been cited before including them in your paper.

Identify Appropriate Primary Sources

After identifying secondary sources to support your arguments, you should look for the ones that can back them up. Keep in mind that if you include multiple primary sources, you will gain an advantage over other students who don’t.

Ideally, the more relevant a source is, the closer it is to the topic under consideration. Your research paper will be highly unique if you can include relevant materials in it, such as newspaper interviews, journal entries, and audio or video interviews with experts.

You could also interview a concerned official who is familiar with the most recent trends in the area of your interest. Be creative when looking for the sources of information, and you’ll be able to make your research project unique and valuable.

Use a Combination of Sources

You can improve the quality of your school assignments significantly if you make use of non-traditional sources, such as television and radio recordings, letters, assessed academic manuscripts, magazines, and interview transcripts.

The general requirement for academic projects is to use at least one source for every page, so you can try combining conventional and alternative sources. Keep in mind that, after identifying the most suitable sources, you should organize them properly. That will make it much easier for you to cite and reference them later on.

Conclusion

Today, you can access all kinds of information, however, identifying the right material for your research project is often a difficult task. The above strategies will help you choose the most suitable sources based on the information you need.