Internet Research Skills for Writing a Research Paper
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009Research is a crucial part of academic writing. Availability and reach of the resources required for writing a research a paper or a dissertation, thus is of great concern to students. With increase in technological advancements and the burgeoning sweep of internet, world wide web has become a hub of information and resources which can be accessed with ease and flexibility.
The online resources are larger than can be imagined. A colossal amount of information is continuously added each day. If you jump into this pool of information without any skills, you are at a danger of missing a lot of useful material and losing a great amount of your precious time. This article will open to you the gateways to right ways to begin conducting your dissertation research for a research paper.
Online Research skills.
Using the right Keywords: While searching for a topic on a search engine, type only keywords. Articles are written keeping the Search engine optimization in concern. Your keywords will determine what you get in your search results. Widen or narrow down your research by using multiple keywords. You can also choose for advanced search option.
Search engines particularities: Every search engine has a particularity which should not be ignored. Searching for information on Google will require different skills than looking for the same information on Alta vista. For example: For search engines like AltaVista and Infoseek, you must put + before the keyword which you want it to want none of the results without that particular keyword.
Search techniques: Apart from typing the words you are searching for, there are other techniques that need to be followed to narrow down your search. Consider your keywords as case sensitive, this will help you extract the right word. i.e. use caps when required. Put quotes if you want pages with keywords arranged in a particular order. eg. “how to write a descriptive essay“. Add + or – if you want to add or subtract a keyword from the search keywords. For eg. If you are looking for a reflective essay which is not personal you may type + reflective -personal after the required keywords.
The search Results: Do not randomly click on the links without reading the excerpt. The excerpt from the text will have the typed keyword, but you must find out whether or not it is in the context you want. Also, a link below each search result marked “similar” might prove very helpful.
Synchronize for later viewing: Once you have the right material at hand, it is essential to synchronize the web page with your computer for later viewing. Also, this will help you save the page without loosing the essential information like day and date the information was accessed (this information needs to be recorded in case of online resources as they are required to be mentioned in your bibliographic entry).
Subscribe to RSS Feeds: Bookmarking the webpages is another important step that will help you at the time of research paper writing. This will save you time when you are looking on a similar information any other time. Also, you must subscribe to the websites RSS feeds so that you can yourself updated of any other newer information added later.
