Research writing project

There are many kinds of research writing projects. It could be as simple as a report you do in high school, a laboratory report with data that you gathered, a science research paper that you report in a scientific journal, a term paper you must complete in college, a thesis that you have to write before receiving your Ph.D., or a book, which is the ultimate form of research writing. In this tutorial, we will write a literature review which is in between a report and a science research paper. We will use it as an example to show you how Biblioscape can be used to help you with research writing.

Choosing a topic

Deciding what to write about is the first step. This is not a concern for a lab report or a scientific research paper. In those cases, you know you have to write about. For research writings in college, your professor often lets you chose from a list of topics or asks you to come up with a topic. Choosing the correct topic could be a challenge. First, you should eliminate  topics that you have no interest in. Then, you need to do some preliminary research on the Web or in the library about the rest and decide on a topic that not only interest you, but also has enough reference material.

Collecting references

Once you have chosen your topic, you need to research a bit more thoroughly. Search your library catalog and the Internet until you have a sense of what is available. Then, you can narrow your findings down from anything you can find to things that look as if they might be useful. One good reference can lead to several more useful references. Biblioscape makes finding related references easy. As you browse your reference collection, Biblioscape searches the Internet to find its full text. As more and more full text references become freely available on the Web, this could be a very useful feature.

Taking Notes

Taking notes is the most intensive and time consuming part of a research writing project. Reading source material and taking notes form the foundation of any academic writing project. Well-taken and organized notes become an integral part of your final draft. Biblioscape provides an integrated environment for reading source material and taking notes. Notes are automatically linked to the source material and can be conveniently organized with categories.

Writing the paper

When it comes to the final stage of writing, you can do it in a word processor or in Biblioscape. Biblioscape works with both Microsoft Word and WordPerfect. You can shoot your notes to Word, and you can also shoot selected references to Word as temporary citations. Once finished, save your manuscript as a RTF file. Biblioscape can format the manuscript by converting the temporary citations to formatted citations and generating a bibliography. For a major writing project like a thesis or a book, the Biblioscape Composition module allows you to build an outline from existing notes, create an index, a suggested reading list, a glossary, and generate formatted citations and a bibliography.