Orientation for Science Graduate Students

Research is a process and you'll want to keep a log of what you are doing so you don't reduplicate your work or miss steps or useful information. The research log below can help you with this.

Using the research log, state your topic as a phrase or question, break it up into the main concepts you need to search, and think of keywords. Also think about what kind of information you need (background, peer-reviewed primary research articles, conference proceedings, foundation or think tank reports, etc).

• What questions do you need to research for your project? 
• What keywords and kinds of information might be useful? 
• What disciplines or people might be interested in these questions? 
• What resources have you searched already and what have you found?
• Looking at the Databases or Research Guides sections of the library website, which other resources look like they might be promising resources? 
• What’s your next step in your research plan?

Keeping up with the volume of research can be challenging. Register for the databases or journals you use and set alerts to have journal tables of contents, articles that match your search criteria, articles that cite key papers, and/or articles by certain authors sent to you automatically. Don't like email? Try RSS feeds or other tools (reading apps, podcasts).