Writing a Research Paper as a Student

I know that there are various blogs on how to write research papers out there, but this one is focused on students trying to write the research papers and includes some of my own experiences regarding the same.

As a B. Tech. student me and my group members are writing a research papers for the projects we are working on. Its been a new experience and certainly a much more difficult one than just referring to an article or watching a video. So I felt I should share all the problems faced by us, so its a little easier on you to create a research paper for your projects.

The first and foremost thing you need to do is to decide the topic of your project and find related research papers. The citations are a huge part of creating your own research paper as your project concept is most likely implemented by someone, this has two major benefits

Now that you know what citations are the question arises which citations to use? The answer is quite simple actually, all those papers which you feel are related to your project are citations. Even if you are using a reference from a reference paper that needs to come in your paper.

As a thumb rule it is taken that 10 citations are a good number to start and more the merrier.

After or as you are studying about your topic you can finalize the features of your project and take an approval of the same from your teachers. Here you must consider all the factors like your exams, submissions, timeline, etc. before deciding the final features in the topic. After seeing many papers you may be encouraged to bite more than you can chew. So keep a keen eye on these factors. After you have finalized your topics you can start the actual implementation of the project.

In ideal conditions you should create a document which keeps a detailed log of the progress of the project and then create your paper based on that. But if you are working individually or in a fairly small group (3–6 members) you can directly create the paper as the progress tracking is easy, but if you have a group bigger than that or have a big project to implement I highly suggest to create a log.

Now there are different formats for different journals but I will talk about the IEEE format for the purpose of this post. This is because the format is well known and accepted by most of the journals. Even most of the colleges promote the IEEE format papers.

A well structured research paper must consist of the following sections

I am not going to go in too much detail about the content of these sections, but if you are interested this video series explains them really well.

With that in mind the next step is your paper formatting. Usually the journals or conferences have really strict rules about the paper format and can be really problematic to replicate sometimes, which I learned the hard way. But luckily almost all the journals have a template for their papers. This is the link for getting the IEEE template

The templates are of two types

LaTeX is one of the most popular languages to create all types of PDF documents as it is easy to use and has a large amount of typesetting benefits. I prefer using LaTeX over MS Word as I being a Computer Science Student prefer coding, but at the end of the day it is your choice and comfort that matters.

I will write another post for the basics of LaTeX and the advantages and disadvantages specifically for research or conference papers.

Plagiarism is one of the most hardest thing about a research paper. Basically plagiarism is using someone's work without giving him/her credit, or in research paper terms, without citing him/her. This can be checked using multiple online tools and is also check when your paper is sent for publication.

After all the above hard work once your paper is complete the last step is to finally publish your paper in the journal of your choice. The procedure is fairly straightforward for IEEE journal and even simpler for some other journals. But before jumping to the procedure let’s know which journals to choose for your paper.

There are numerous journals out there which are waiting for someone to approach them and publish their paper, but as a student if you want to make some impact of this paper on your resume you must find a journal which is either

Any journal that is UGC certified is recognized by the Government of India and Scopus indexed journals are internationally recognized. Now the choice is yours, as a general trend the UGC certified journals tend to price less for paper publication as compared to the international journals, but the difference in pricing is minimum and cannot be determined as a deciding factor.

Now for the steps for publishing your paper in IEEE journal are

That’s it. If you do all this and get selected you will have successfully published your research paper as a student and it will remain on your name forever, or 30 years at the very least

Related posts:

Our species evolved as hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers inevitably develop certain instincts and habits, among which are greed (see Dogonomics), short-sightedness (see… well, all government) and…

CBD is a natural substance that comes from the Cannabis plant, and it’s been used to help reduce pain by many people. It’s also been said to have many other benefits, such as anti-inflammatory and…

We are now living on Mars because Nigeria did not find it in Her heart to repair all the cracks in Her roads and to fix NEPA. Somehow, despite how impossible it might have seemed, She and some of her…