Author: admin

How to identify knowledge gaps in research

It is not uncommon to find novice researchers confronted by gaps in their knowledge. If you are one novice researcher who knows the technique to locate, identify, define and address these gaps in an efficient manner then your research process can be streamlined and your learning process can be accelerated.

I am sure that most you must have experienced when started some new assignment, a feeling of inadequacy. This is nothing but a discovery of knowledge gap. It is a possibility that you lack the understanding of m the concept beyond the basics or you lack the skill to explain the concept more in detail because of your limited knowledge.

The best way to know where your knowledge gap rests, is to try and communicate your ideas in your own words by speaking or even better, by writing. It is an extra effort but surely a useful and helpful effort. Whatever new concept your learn, write the summaries of them and observe and evaluate those aspects that you don’t understand fully. To know how much you understand, try explaining the concept to a friend, when you go in the detail, the fuzzy aspects would come out in the light.

After having identified the nature of the gap, it is required to devise the strategy to address the gap so that you hit the target which is required. We can bring out some options/alternatives here that you could use to fill up the gaps:
1. The text books and reading prescribed
2. Suggested reading additionally offered for your course
3. Searching on Google scholar
4. Library of your university or the catalogues of other universities
5. Getting linked up with an online discussion board so that questions could be posted and answer could be sought for your queries
6. Raising queries in tutorials at an appropriate time and also talking to peer group with your concerns from time to time.

Remember that do not ignore your knowledge gaps, if you actively search for answers and speed up your learning process you researching skills would also be enriched. The primary job ids to phrase your identified knowledge gaps so that you only search for necessary information in a more focussed manner. Become an active participant in your own learning process so that you aren’t doing anything but setting yourself up for success not just in the academic field but also beyond.

Ways to accelerate manuscript publication?

Research by itself is a slow and sluggish process. It requires meticulous planning, optimization and sometimes even replication of experiments. When you have completed your data analysis and other time consuming task, all that you want to do is to publish it as soon as possible. If your publication process goes through a rapid speed, it helps in quick dissemination of findings and allows you to get back to a fresh assignment at the earliest. It would be great to know some tips that can accelerate your publication speed:

Know your figures well: If from the initial stage itself you design your experiment keeping the publication in mind including the controls and layouts you wouldn’t have to waste time later struggling to make the data presentable according to the specifications. Also, when you collect the data, try to draft your figures at that time itself. This becomes more daunting with more time lapse in between.
Have a clear writing style: A well designed study may not be of much use of it is not written clearly. It also becomes a big reason for revision and rejection from the end of editors and reviewers. Hence unclear and vague writing can be a big barrier in the speed of the publication process. This is truer for the non-native English speakers. So always try to ensure that from the very beginning your writing has the desired clarity.
Use software for reference formatting: Reference formatting is a meticulous and time consuming task. Good software can be used for archiving relevant references and also reducing the time wasted in searching for already read papers. Software also assists in automatic formatting of citations as per the guidelines specified in the journal and even update as and when you make changes.
Get peer review prior to publication: publication speed can be increased further by using services that can provide peer review before publication. It helps to improve the quality of your document and guides you to make it in a way that it can get accepted in your target journal. It saves a lot of time in the redundant review process of the journals if they agree to accept your independent peer review as one of the reviews.
Know how to choose the right journal: if you wish to increase the probability of paper acceptance you must find one whose scope fits in well with the focus on your research. Take opinion and advice from your colleagues, friends, and peer and browse journal websites to choose the most appropriate journal for your publication.

How to Write up Research Results?

Are you stuck with writing research results? It does is one of the most daunting task of doing a thesis but you can surely simplify it by following certain guidelines and following a step by step process for more productive output.

Here you go:

Become organised: Before you start writing your dissertation, so that you reach section gives you the required and desired output, you must develop a list of points to be made on the paper. As you progress, you would find it very handy and useful in getting a well linked up document.

The primary research literature: whatever literature that you wish to take as a base for your research, you must have a balanced and in-depth view of the same before you actually go about carrying out your experiments. Always remember that the discussion section of your thesis is not just based on the results but it also draws inferences from the literature section. This balanced analysis of primary research literature should start early on to avoid premature blunders.

Create the Introduction: after you have refined your hypothesis, you can draft your introduction

Conduct the designed experiment: be very specific about the procedures used during the experiments and conduct it with as much precision as possible

Analysis and interpretation of results: After you have collected the data, it has to be analysed and interpreted. All that you have done in the previous stages is going to help you create a good section here. Analysis has to include data summaries and statistical tests that can verify the conclusions. If you lay down the tables and figures carefully, you can write the results section more easily. Do proper and sequencing and numbering of the sections so that the reader is enabled to comprehend the conclusions.

Write the results section: the results section is a blend of text and illustrations. The text component guides the reader through the key results that answer the investigated question. Whatever result is conveyed by each table or illustration must be told to the reader.

Draft the discussion: The discussion section is the interpretation of your results which also includes how your results modify and fit in with what is previously understood about the problem. Your insight about your topic would be far more in-depth after you have completed the experiment. At this stage you would realise the relevance of some literature that you thought was trivial at the formative stages or you over looked. Hence this section is a good coherence between what exists and what you have done and then find the perfect fit.

5 Essential Terms to Know Before Carrying Out Data Analysis

Understanding the results or findings of a research is a vital part of knowing whether a research study provides a compelling case for changing practice. To understand research result, it is important to understand how studies are designed and how data are analysed.

Before carrying out your data analysis it is important to know following essential terms:

1) Population:

A population is the set of all possible cases of interest.
In determining the population of interest, we usually specify the point in time that defines the population and also specify the geographic region over which the population spread, if relevant.

Eg: Am I interested in my currently enrolled science students, or those who also completed the course last year?

2) Sample:

A sample is a set of cases that does not include every member of the population.
Or

A subset of the population is called as a sample.

Eg: It may be too costly or time-consuming to include every student in the study instead choose only those students in a class whose name begins with ‘A’ and thus be only working with a sample.

3) Variable:

A variable is a quality or condition that can differ from one case to another.

The opposite notion to a variable is a constant, which is simply a condition or quality that does not vary among cases. Most research is devoted to understanding variables – whether a variable takes on certain traits for some cases and different traits for other cases.

4) Research Questions:

A research question states the aim of a research project in terms of cases of interest and the variable upon which these are thought to differ.
One needs a clear research question in mind before undertaking statistical analysis to avoid the situation where huge amounts of data are gathered unnecessarily and do not lead to any meaningful results.

Eg: What is the age distribution of the student in my science class?

5) Conceptual Definition:

The conceptual definition of a variable uses literal terms to specify the qualities of a variable.
A conceptual definition is much like a dictionary definition: it provides a working definition of the variable so that we have a general sense of what it ‘means’.

Eg: A researcher might define ‘health’ conceptually as ‘an individual’s state of well- being’.

It is clear, though, that if the researcher now instructs any other researchers to go out and measure people’s ‘state of well-being’, they would leave scratching their heads.

You Need to Prepare Your Mind before Starting Your PhD. Here Is How!

Apart from the technical preparation before you venture into a PhD programme, is the psychological preparation. If you have all the technical requirements in place but lack the right attitude it may not help much and you could be in a soup. Think about it that you can find most of the solutions to your technical problems in books but for lack of inclination, attitude and perseverance, you wouldn’t be able to do much good. We could discuss few important tips here that would put you in the right frame of mind for thesis writing.

Get systematic: It so happens when doing doctoral research that one may get occupied in doing the individual tasks that are part of the journey that you may lose your vision for which you actually got into the journey. Getting organised and having a plan of action ready before starting is very important so that you stick to what you have started to do and not get lost in the way. The first thing for this is to write down your ultimate goal with a given time frame that you have and that write the smaller goals that will take you towards this ultimate goal of yours. Remember to arrange them in chronological order so that each task you accomplish should pave the path for the accomplishment of the next one. If you have done this exercise in a rigorous manner, you would have a very clear blueprint of your goal with you were by having your thesis ready would be broken down into smaller and achievable goals without actually feeling overwhelmed.

Making it a habit: Get disciplined and there is no alternate to it. If you done have a disciplined schedule to follow, you would not be able to see a consistent progress in your task. You got to treat it as a regular full time job and then only would you be able to get some output from it. When you have a schedule in place and you stick to it, you would soon acquire a thesis writing habit which would become an indispensable activity of your through the day. It would also ensure that on day to day basis you don’t wrestle with the confusion or uncertainty in your mind that whether you got to work today or no.

Thus by being systematic and disciplined in your routine, you would feel optimistic and focused towards your work and seeing yourself have gradual but steady progress in your job would keep your spirits and motivation higher.