Here it is. You're teacher has assigned you to write a research paper and you don't know what to do next. It's normal! What are the parts of a research paper? Is it like an essay? How do I know if I've done it write?

https://youtu.be/CBfP5NKsUIg

I'm here to answer your questions. In the most recent episode of the Read, Write, and Cite Podcast, I help you to understand the parts of a research paper. I explain that there are two major types of papers that you'll run into (original research and literature reviews). I talk about some of the sections you can expect to find in each kind of paper and why they are there. Finally, I explain how these kinds of papers may relate to your own research papers in the future.

Different Kinds of Research Papers

When you start looking at academic research (published by professionals and academics), you can expect to find a few different types of papers. Original research will be papers that present information that the authors collected themselves by conducting some sort of study. Literature Reviews will be papers that present information collected by the authors from multiple sources (probably a ton of research papers).

Original Research

So, what is original research? Well, it's going to be a paper that presents data collected by the authors themselves. More likely than not, they will have conducted their own experimented it and the paper is where they present it to the world.

In this kind of paper, you can expect to see sections like: Introduction, Literature Review, Research Design and Methodology, Findings, Discussion, and Conclusion. Papers may vary, but they'll probably be pretty close to this.

Here is an example.

Literature Reviews

Literature Reviews are similar to original research, but they will focus on what they found in research published by other authors. You can expect to see Introduction, Research Design and Methodology, and Conclusion sections. In the middle, you may find sections labeled after the specific topics of their given study.

Here is an example.

Now What?

So, you have some section names. Now what? Well, check out the video or listen to the podcast (below) for a more in-depth explanation for each of these different sections.

I hope that helped! As always, I'm here to help. If you have questions, drop me a question and I'll get back to you. Good luck writing!