Researching and Drafting/Researching

Researching

1. Set aside plenty of time to research your topic in detail, but split your research into manageable chunks. For example, set yourself a goal of finding four or five useful primary sources each time you perform a literature search and then take a break. You are likely to be more successful this way than trying to find all you need in one mammoth session online.

2. Try to only look for (and use) the most recent sources to answer the assignment question. This is a golden tip in all forms of science writing, and even more so in popular writing such as newspaper articles, blog posts and press releases. Scientific thinking changes over time as knowledge builds and opinions shift, so it is important to be sure you are working with the latest material. When performing literature searches, you should start off by searching only in the last few years, before expanding that time if required.

3. It is often fine to use tertiary sources such as Wikipedia to help give you general background information, just as long as you then find the original sources and check your facts before assuming everything you have read is accurate. Lists of sources appear at the end of Wikipedia articles, and these are often of use when researching topics.

4. Use your writing centre tutors and/or librarians * to help you draw up a research plan and then use the services available to find your information. Bear in mind that if your assignment is going to be completed by a large number of classmates, your graders are likely to read similar answers again and again. By using a wider range of search facilities, you are likely to find extra information from sources that others will miss, and this should help your writing stand out.

• Note that writing tutors are a great first port of call to help you get your ideas in order, and to help you decide what it is you want to research. However, librarians are the masters of research, so booking an appointment with one who has expertise in science-related materials is a great idea. This UBC library resource contains other helpful hints for research.

5. Make short, annotated summaries of all the sources you find, as you find them. This will help you hugely when it comes to the next stages of writing, and will save you re-reading the same sources again and again to remember exactly what information each one contained. It is very difficult to recall which sources contain specific information once you have read a few, but it only takes a few minutes to write a little summary for each useful one you find.