Writing a research paper can be a challenging task for almost every student. The ghost of failure in academics constantly troubles students if anything goes off-topic. Unfortunately, many research papers are rejected because of the same mistakes made year after year.
The mistakes made while writing a research paper are mostly unintentional. Students neglect the research paper guidelines or make common writing mistakes. Avoiding these mistakes would help you write research papers to secure top grades in your academics.
This article has highlighted the seven mistakes you should avoid when writing a research paper. Quite often, students repeatedly commit these mistakes in their writings which Professors and higher educators identify. We will also suggest methods for avoiding these mistakes in the research paper.
7 Tips to Avoid While Writing a Research Paper:
Here are some important points while writing a research paper.
Lack of Research
Students’ lives can get pretty stressful when they have to study, understand, and practice multiple subjects. If you don’t have sufficient knowledge about your thesis topic, it would ultimately become difficult to write about it.
Performing thorough research on a topic from various sources can help to gather sufficient material for featuring in the research paper. While performing analysis, you must check the relevance of researched material to your topic.
Follow the Guidelines
Research is a crucial part of academics. You’ll often find the complete set of research guidelines approved by your educator. Following these guidelines can help you stay relevant to the topic with comprehensive research.
Understand the Hidden Meaning
It’s recommended to understand the meaning behind the topic of your research paper. Instead of directly looking for material about the subject, break it down.
Dividing the portions of the topics once you have understood the meaning can generate more material. To better understand your thesis topic, you can seek guidance from your supervisor.
Suppose your topic is related to climate change. Then you might have to include some statistical information relevant to a Scientific Manuscript. This information can be gained by performing detailed research on records and forecasts. Such material can support the authenticity of your written examination for better understanding.
Avoid Plagiarism
Every educational institute heavily presses on one common factor: plagiarism-free research papers. Featuring plagiarized writing in research papers is the most straightforward way to ruin your research work. It’s pretty challenging to check plagiarism manually, but you can perform a few activities to avoid plagiarism.
To avoid plagiarism, you must check the plagiarism first and a plagiarism checker free can help you with it efficiently. Most people think that checking plagiarism can cost them some money but it is not true in every case.
You can get a plagiarism checker free of cost as there are many available online, and you can take help from them.
Being free doesn’t mean they are not efficient. It is strongly recommended to go for them and check the duplicity of your content.
Learn Paraphrasing
While researching a specific topic, we have to rely on various sources. Reading and applying information from a credible source can land you to unintentional plagiarism.
Students can avoid plagiarism by learning how to rephrase information from an online resource. This technique is taught at a fundamental education level. Paraphrasing could also be done by using free online tools. Paraphrasing tool is the easiest and most time-effective way to perform paraphrasing.
Read Academic Guidelines
Every research paper comes with a defined set of guidelines and regulations that students must follow. A specified percentage is acceptable for plagiarism in the research paper. Anything above that percentage may affect your grade accordingly.
Students often rely on their previously done assignments to save time and effort for a feature in the research paper. This habit can result in self-plagiarism, which is more challenging to resolve than paraphrasing someone else’s work.
Grammatical Errors
If your research paper features grammatical mistakes, it’ll directly impact your grades. It’s the worst way to ruin your research paper’s writing purpose.
A thesis with grammatical mistakes is difficult to understand. Evaluators won’t waste their time resolving and reading these mistakes. Instead, they’ll reject it by assigning a poor grade.
Study Grammatical Rules
When writing a research paper, you have to be extra careful about grammar mistakes. It is essential because we are used to speaking the relatively informal language in casual conversation.
Therefore, before writing the research paper, it’s essential to go through the language and grammar rules for writing an error-free research paper.
Avoid Passive Voice
Excessive use of passive voice can ruin the tone and readability of your writing. Passive voice is acceptable to a limit, but it’s not recommended for a research paper. Therefore, it is best to maintain an active voice with only a few or no sentences with a passive voice.
Proofreading and Editing
It’s a time-consuming activity but worth it. Proofreading helps identify any mistakes in your research paper and allows you to evaluate your work. Proofreading is a vital activity to have the reader’s perspective on your written research paper.
While proofreading, you can identify any spelling, preposition, or grammatical mistakes. You can also learn about the readability time of your research paper.
Bad Structural Arrangement
You might’ve heard the expression: “Presentation is everything.” As much as it is applicable on a food plate, it works equally well while writing a research paper.
If your research paper features large blocks of text, a tiny font style, and a lack of headers, it becomes irritating to read. However, you can maintain the structure of your research writing by ensuring the following factors:
Maintain Paragraph Length
The written paragraphs in your text shouldn’t be longer than two to three lines. An ideal sentence should consist of 20 words maximum. After every 2-3 lines, the paragraph should have a break, and the rest should begin from a new section.
Using heading tags to keep relevancy between the thesis topic and its contents is appropriate. Featuring headings makes it easier for readers to focus on the specified areas of study. Headings also define the credibility of research work.
Maintain the Outline
Before you get into writing more in-depth, it’s essential to understand your research work’s outline. The standard outline includes the introduction, research purpose, methodology, body, and conclusion. Often the structure is defined in the research paper guidelines.
Lack of Relevancy
Each research work has defined word limits which are compulsory for students to achieve. The slight variation is bearable, but sometimes, students feature irrelevant material to deal with the word count.
The headings or subheadings lack relevance to the main topic, which makes it quite absurd in the eye of readers. The supporting facts like figures, theories, and examples should be relevant to the study area.
Supporting Statements
Supporting statements are essential to compare the purpose of writing with the contents of the research paper. The supporting information and purpose of the thesis should not have a conflict and should be avoided by all means.
Conflicting the central thesis statement and supporting thesis may confuse readers with queries. A supporting view is a convincing piece of information that defines the credibility of your thesis.
Provide Precise Information
Readers are looking for precise and factual information that supports the purpose of the research paper. Like other areas of writing, this information is highly reliable in research efforts as well.
Lack of Structured Data
Structured data is necessary to feature in any research paper. It makes it easier for evaluators to relate to and understand the research paper more straightforwardly. Featuring large blocks of text only seems like a novel or a storybook instead of a thesis.
Feature Charts and Figures
Visual representation is the easiest way of understanding any piece of writing. Headings featured in the research paper can support the data displayed on the charts or figures.
The example can be taken from pie charts and bar charts. The fluctuation can be presented visually for better understanding.
Table of Contents
One of the essential features of the research paper structure is the Table of Contents. The necessary element is usually featured at the beginning of your research work.
The table of contents makes it easier to navigate through your research paper. It provides an overview and guidance for users to find the specific area of study from a lengthy thesis.
Lack of Citations and Sources
Research work is the result of collective knowledge gained from various credible resources. Now the research paper writer needs to give supporting credits to the actual owners of the content.
Research paper guidelines insist students feature a source page to state the areas of the original information. Let’s discuss several methods you can follow to feature citations in your research paper:
Follow a Referencing Style
The referencing style is usually defined in the thesis paper writing guidelines. Students have to stick with the referencing style defined by their institute. If not, you can choose from any referencing styles, including MLA, APA, and Harvard.
Each referencing style features the name of the author and date in parentheses. The added section is related to a source featured on the source page attached at the end of the research paper.
Referencing Software
Various platforms offer reference styles with each link that redirects to some piece of information. These applications help to arrange your work neatly with the choice of your favourite referencing styles.
Conclusion
Research paper writing is the biggest challenge of any student’s academic career. It is way more different than article writing or blog writing. With research paper writing, you have to be precise and original. Plus, you have to maintain a thread of relevancy throughout an extensive word count.
Therefore, it becomes difficult for students to learn about their mistakes. The factors discussed above are repeatedly indicated in research works every year. Resolving the errors can eventually earn you a better reputation with the supporting confidence of original work.
