The research paper is the culminating part of the Research Scholar experience. In particular, the opportunity to create a college-level research paper is one of the main attractions for many students to begin this program. In that sense, this is an essential piece of the curriculum.
Thinking about the research project should begin in Week 1, as the student and research mentor begin to discuss the course’s subject matter.
There are many types of research papers that a student could write; however, we offer a few example archetypes.
One of the most common research papers is a literature review of existing work in a particular area. This requires a student to dive into a specific area of interest and synthesize the findings across different fields into a new paper. At this point, we do not provide access to research journal search engines, so the literature review could go through Google Scholar or could be supported by the research mentor directly.
Another common research paper is an analysis of existing data. Often a research mentor will know of publicly available data that they have previously used or that has been newly collected. This data could serve as a bedrock for a possible research paper.
In other instances, students collect and analyze a new set of data. Often in the social sciences, this data collection is generally of modest scale and done within a short period of time. One possible example of this is to use Mechanical Turk to collect data for a pilot project.
Another set of students, particularly those in the humanities, can construct a theoretical analysis or critique paper of existing theories. Similar to the literature review paper, this paper focuses on deconstructing arguments and providing a new perspective on the topic at hand. This type of paper could also be applicable in pure math or physics, where students with sufficient background could work on mathematical theory.
The research paper should be no less than 10 pages, double spaced, or 5 single spaced in the research paper outline shared below. In many cases, this includes an abstract, introduction, main analysis, methods section, and conclusion/discussion.
We encourage students to use one of the following formats to ensure that the final product is professional and clear to read.
Research Paper Template One Column Research Paper Template Two Column