华中科技大学创新电机技术研究中心欢迎您!

中心资源库

How do researchers do scientific research?

Date:2020-01-09

         How do researchers do scientific research?



I. Develop interest

Before doing a research, first ask yourself: Are you interested in this field? If you are not interested in a problem, it is difficult for you to do excellent research. No matter what research you do, you can't do it well until you are interested in it. Researchers will certainly be interested in certain issues during the learning process. Sometimes you will have this experience. When you see an article, you will feel excited, sometimes you will not. This is the difference in interest. A dissertation on how to cultivate interest. As a tech worker, his interests are related to accumulation, reading and personal experience. The best way to cultivate interest in a certain field is to enrich your accumulation and read more literature. Marx said: Only when we know something can we grasp it more deeply. When you read to a certain breadth and depth, the feeling of overlooking the knowledge of the whole field is enough to arouse your strong interest!


2. Big love can bring great wisdom

If your research can only interest you, this is not enough. When doing a research, it is important to demonstrate that your research is important. How to demonstrate the importance of research questions? It is this research that can improve human society and bring benefits to humankind. Then ask, where does this question come from? It depends on whether we can surpass individual happiness and gains and pay attention to the future and destiny of the whole society. This is the source of interest. A good economist should have a strong sense of human care and social responsibility. The starting point for good research is good questions, which is more than half of the success. In this sense, being a person is the same as being a scholar. If you don’t pay attention to important issues for the general public, you will not be able to do outstanding studies; if you are thinking about fame and fortune every day, you will not do outstanding research, because the issue you care about is not important to most people. Big love can have great wisdom, big love can have persistence. Don't limit yourself to your narrow vision. Think about making your own contribution to the development of your field, so that you will take a big step towards your own success!


3. Reading the Literature

The first thing to know is how to find literature. Learn to use the Internet reasonably and learn to use keywords. The choice of keywords depends on how you understand the problem and what you want to do. Too many keywords come out of too little literature, too few keywords come out of too many literatures, so be sure to choose three to five suitable keywords. In addition, researchers should look for literature from classic related literature or review papers on the same issue.

Want good, classic literature. Even if only three to five keywords are used, about 1,000 articles can be searched; even if there are no 1000 articles, there are always 100 articles. At this time, researchers need to divide the literature into three categories according to its relevance.

Articles in the first category account for at least 50-60% of the 100 articles. These articles are not very relevant, just look at the abstract. They probably help you know where your research is in the literature; some articles have a table with data that can be cited in your article, or support your argument. You can read these articles quickly.

The second type of article is related to your article, but it is not directly related to your article in terms of its technical line and the issues it concerns. What researchers need to know is what kind of logic these theories are, how they do it, what the model's starting point is, and what conclusions they have reached. Among 100 articles, these articles account for about 20 articles. This type of article must be read, but it is not necessary to see the last word from the first word.

The third type of article is about 5 to 10 of about 100 articles. These articles are the most relevant to researchers, because they study almost the same problem. Compare your research with these articles, and your contribution is marginal. For these articles, the researcher must not only see the last word from the first word, but also read it many times.


4. How to get good ideas

Read a lot of literature carefully, listen to academic reports, discuss with colleagues, and get inspiration from them. Don't rush to achieve it. Summarize the topics that have not been explored in the area of interest but are very meaningful. , Repeatedly comparing research methods and conclusions, finding entry points from it; good at grasping difficult to explain problems encountered in the process of scientific research, which often becomes the flashing point of thinking; carefully formulating plans to demonstrate feasibility.


5. Understand your contribution

When you are doing a research, be sure to learn more about what others have done so that you know what your ultimate contribution may be. However, many researchers don't pay enough attention to this point and think that it is enough to finish the research, but they don't know where their contributions are. To know where the contribution of your research is, then you have to compare the difference between your work and others. This requires you to have sufficient knowledge of the literature in this field. In the end, you can clearly grasp the content and edges of this field and know the meaning of your work. This is the complete process of research.