It is a no-brainer to go online to conduct your research whenever you are writing term papers or conducting some projects. Sometimes you can have all the choices at your fingertips, but you still get overwhelmed. If you know how you can choose and evaluate the online resources, you can avoid a lot of wasted time and headaches. Here are some of the ways that you can make online research easy.
Begin at school
Seek help from your teachers or the librarian about the resources they would recommend starting the project ahead. Therefore, you can be sure that the school approves all the resources, and that’s the information you will get from such resources is accurate and correct. The school or teacher may have some paid subscriptions to some websites or journals, and by asking them to assist you with those, you can find a lot of information that you will not otherwise get when you do the regular search on the Internet.
Utilizing the Internet can be an additional tool for you to get your resources and ensure that you visit the library because it’s always full of a magazine, books, and other resources that can assist you. Several schools tend to block students from accessing websites that may help them in their research, and therefore, you need to spend some of your time researching at home or the local library that has access to online resources.
Separate fiction from facts
Before starting over research, list down websites that can assist you in writing a topic. Ensure that you find out if the website is updated and also reliable. And show the truth, so check if the author has been identified or any citations of the sources used in that particular reading. If you find sites that end with .gov or .edu, those are some of the best safe sites. If you have a newspaper that has mentioned another source, visit that exact source for you to find that information.
Conduct a smart search
Begin with a search engine that is already established like Google. Most search engines tend to guess whatever information that you need, but for you to get the best information, you’ll need to use specific terms or keywords for you to get as much information as you want. You can also utilize alternatives such as having different keywords, or you can also use advanced search for you to narrow down on your results. Therefore, you can ask a librarian or teacher if you want to know more ways to bolster your searches. Several search engines get paid to. Show certain advertisements and results, and you can find such results at the top of the page. Some odd this may have a different look from the results and ensure that you mark these as advertisements.
Stay focused
When you get yourself ready to visit the website or use other search engines like Google, ensure that you stay focused as you do your research by shutting down all email and social media platforms, or you can collectively do that by switching off your phone completely until you finish the task you set to do. In case you need a break, ensure that you know what went you reached before you shut down your computer. Having a 10-minute break after every 30 minutes of reading is a good way to start, and it works best for a lot of people. You can use your break time to stretch around or walk to refresh your mind.
Use the correct citations
Copy-pasting a text is much easier when you are doing research online, and you’ll probably forget to cite your source. You need to recognize the voice you use in your writing because having even the slightest form of plagiarism can lead you to serious problems with your institutions. Identify all the quoted texts before you move on to the next chapter or section of the paper.