BLOG | How long should it take to find and frame a research idea, from thought to peer review

Before investing all your efforts and time in a research, it’s highly advised that you think about the following questions:

1. Does this topic interest me and worth spending more than one month to work on?
2. What’s the usage of my results? Can I turn it into a product? Does it have real business values?
3. Where can I put this idea in my CV? Does it showcase a consistent trend with all my other projects?
4. What’s my goal of publication? How deep should I dig, and who should I work with? With what affiliation?

After figuring out these questions, it takes around 1 month to figure out data, methodology, as well as the analysis framework for an idea. It takes around 1-2 weeks to write the draft.

Outline: 

1. Settle the scope. subject and main problem
2. Starts with a basic structure: intro, background, problem statement, methodology, literature review, improvement, conclusion
3. Collect references:
   1. Read title, abstract carefully in research phase
   2. List all subtitles in tree structure and read them quickly
   3. Refine your research problem and structure
   4. Re-read phase: read conclusions carefully to grasp key findings
   5. Classify paper based on their roles and functions(background, methodology, supportive, new ideas and concepts)
   6. Delete duplicates, iterate until enough references are collected (for me it’s at least 7)

Write a one paper proposal stating your research, problem, methodology, timeline and references

Write paper:

1. Write/refine your problem statement and methodology first
2. Starts Literature review, summarize every references and pick key ideas and evidence
3. Mangle collected ideas with your paper, insert evidence into different parts
4. Furnish the how-to part, summarizes ideas and write your own thoughts
5. If it’s not long enough, put in backgrounds, and iterate 1-5 until satisfied
6. Write up conclusions and abstract, make sure they have:
   1. Abstract: 1-2 sentence background, 1-2 sentence methodology, 1-2 sentence problem statement.
   2. Conclusion: 1-2 sentence problem statement, 1-2 sentence methodology, 3-4 sentence key findings, and future improvement (optional)

Read your paper thoroughly and refine before submission.