When you start on a research project, you need to understand the assignment, choose a direction, and quickly grasp the big picture for the topic you choose. The following tips will help you manage the research project.

Managing time

Before beginning a research project, set a realistic schedule of deadlines for researching and for drafting, reviewing, revising, and documenting the paper in the style recommended by your instructor. One student created a calendar to map out his tasks for a paper assigned on October 3 and due October 31, keeping in mind that some tasks might overlap or need to be repeated.

Keeping a research log

Research is a process. As your topic evolves, you may find yourself asking new questions that require you to create a new search strategy, find additional sources, and revise your initial assumptions.

A research log can help you bring order to this process. In a research log, you keep a record of the sources you read along with notes about them, quotations from them, and your own ideas about them. You might want to use a separate notebook for your log, or you can create research subfolders in your project folder on your computer. The research log can include the beginning of a working bibliography. Having a systematic way to separate your own insights and ideas from those of your sources will help you become a more efficient and effective researcher.