As you find sources that are relevant to your research question, you'll need to read and analyze those sources.
Academia is about advancing scholarship. That means that when you are researching and writing a paper, you are looking to answer one or more questions about a topic. The way to do this is to work off of what others have already found and use those to prove, disprove, or simply explain.
Using others’ reputable research makes your research stronger. In writing a research paper, you are contributing to the conversation of research, which is a vital part of academia.
Analyzing your sources usually means taking notes of what is important to your answer or backs up your research. For example:
- Noting information on your topic
- Noting information for and against your argument (if it is an argumentative paper)
- Noting information about your topic that you might need to find more research about
*Remember to write down the author, page number or any other information you need to be able to find that passage again as needed
Often you will need to go back and search for sources multiple times in the process of writing a paper. As you learn more about your topic, you may have new questions, or you may realize you need more information. Sometimes you might even change your topic after researching because you find a different and more interesting topic.
After you have collected your information, you may want to create an outline by grouping the information by topic. The Writing Centre can help you with the organization of your paper as well as the use of information you learned from your sources.
As you are writing your paper, you will need to include the information you have noted by using quotations and paraphrasing. See "How do I paraphrase or quote correctly?" for more information.