Why?
As the previous articles have discussed basic steps of writing and flowchart of writing a research proposal, in this article, performing literature review becomes the main focus. The reason behind this choosing mainly lies on the difficulties in finding research scope among my colleagues, particularly from inexperienced undergraduate and postgraduate degree in Indonesia. With the current demands of annual mandatory tasks from lecturers and professors, issued by the ministry of education, some of them invite their undergraduate and postgraduate students to design a research proposal. However, these students tend to ask and follow their supervisors' advise, instead of proposing their own ideas.
In this article, I won't compare an idea proposed by the students or by the professors/ projects. The assumption is the students themselves are in the middle of preparing their research idea due to the request by their supervisors, particularly to propose original idea of research. Then, how are we going to do that? Let's follow these steps, and if the readers are interested to find out more about the basic steps of writing and the flowchart, please freely visit my previous articles in category of "writing research proposal".
Defining the Scope
In defining the scope of your research, most of my learners have found difficulties to seek the most suitable theme, which is based on their experiences. Certain people that have been consulting to me regarding their scope often told by saying general themes. For instance, when I ask directly about their favourable fields of working (in term of research), they reply by saying:
- I love to study microbiology
- My research is about psychiatry
- I am a dentist, so that I want to study about oral disease
- I am interested in material engineering or biomaterial, or any other functional materials
- Entrepreneur is my thesis topic when I completed my bachelor/ master degree
Well, these replies are actually correct, however, by the time the literature study is being searched, varied and wide scopes are emerged. So, what are we going to do? Using the help of scholarly articles search engine could make the searching to be easier. Let's use Google Scholar or just go to this link https://scholar.google.co.id/. Then, for instance, the only known keywords from our mind are either entrepreneur/ marketing or biomaterial/ energy. Then, just type these keywords (choose one), but do not push "enter" yet. By the time you do that, the keywords suggestions are provided to you via the search engines.
Based on Google Scholar's suggestions, the word of entrepreneurship has various phrases. As a result, our theme can be more narrowed than before, and then ...:
- entrepreneurship education
- entrepreneurship ecosystem
- entrepreneurship skills
Hence, we have obtained a more narrowed keywords that are required for finding suitable literature. By doing the same step, the scholar google would have suggested several articles related to our keywords, and we can also limit our search by changing the year which is located on the left-side of the Google Scholar website display, as the following pictures
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| Google-Scholar's keyword suggestions |
Read Methodically
Scholarly journals publish content in different formats, not just original research articles. Some forms of these literatures require original research (primary literature) and some are based on other published work (secondary literature). Scientific manuscript, or scholarly article is an academic article written by scholars or professionals in reporting or publishing the results of their studies with reliable, tangible and feasible features of research. Occasionally, they also indicate the limitation of the study, in which this could be used as a potential research idea in the future.
On the other hand, doing literature review means organising the strategy of writing. The strategy must be defined effectively and efficiently as writing the proposal requires lot of time in particular for determining the methodologies and methods that are going to be proposed. Thus, a methodical approach provides you not only brief insight, but also the real mechanisms behind the insight. According to an article published in Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology (JOMP), types of article affects the objectives of reading. For instance, in finding an idea for a research, it is recommended to read the original research articles or experimental article, whereas to find a recent update in certain themes or topics, narrative or systematic reviews are recommended.
As a reminder, every article is considered scientific if it has:
- Objectives
- Facts and on the world as it is
- Methodologies
- Methods
So, what are we going to do in finding a new research idea? well, the answer is reading the original research articles. Throughout these four aspects, a new research idea could have been obtained, but how? "Methodologies and Methods"
Understand The Methodologies
As it has been answered previously that a new research idea is a combination of methodologies that are proposed (in this case, the problems that are being introduced), and the solution that is given (for sure, it could be limited, so rhetorical questions which lead to hypothetical answers occur). The understanding of the problems are essential, and to do it, understanding the problems in every articles that are going to be read by the readers is a must. Take a look an example of an original article from the keywords above, and I found an article entitled "From Offline to Online: Challenges and Opportunities for Entrepreneurship Education Following the COVID-19 Pandemic".
In the first paragraph, the authors introduce a problem in which higher educational institutions face a new problem (based on the word "we have not seen since the emergence of technology supported and online instruction"). A problem which can be interpreted as major concern even though the many universities around the world have been using the internet technology as part of their lecturing process. However, it is an interesting introduction in which the authors suggest the readers about rhetorical statements. Thus, in the third and fourth paragraph, the authors propose a unique scenario about universities being entrepreneur in fields of education.
By taking examples in business students whose basic knowledge comes from the classes, meaning practical skills are not gained effectively, the authors offer hypothetical solutions within the opportunities of COVID-19 in performing everything that has been taught in classes (both offline or online). Because of reading this methodology, the readers could have had a flash of idea regarding the samples, curriculum, and tools, and how to measure these three. Afterwards, the only thing that we could do is to find a more specific word about entrepreneurship.
Tags
The Sciences