Introduction

This textbook will help guide you through the process of writing a college-level research paper. While there are many approaches and strategies for doing so, this textbook will divide the process into four different writing projects:

• an annotated bibliography
• a research proposal
• a literature review
• a research essay

Each of these projects is a distinct genre that you will likely encounter in different academic disciplines and professions outside of a composition classroom.

Our goal is to give you a broad sense of these genres as separate but closely connected steps in the research process. Taken together, these projects will give you a strong foundation in research writing, with an eye towards how research writing skills fit within other disciplines and professions.

We hope that this textbook and the resources it gathers will help you feel more confident about your writing as you learn the steps of the research process.

I. Guiding Principles

You will notice some specific choices and themes throughout the chapters of the book. They have informed the authors, editors, librarians, and instructors who helped assemble it. In this section, we lay out those key guiding principles.

Research is a Conversation

When we engage in research, we contribute to an existing topic or discussion. According to Joseph Moxley and Grace Veach, for centuries, scholars have imagined research and argumentative writing much like a conversation (2021). A conversation is a cooperative activity between two or more people, and each conversation is unique to the people who take part in it. Conversations can go on for hours, days, or even decades among different participants who may come and go, and those conversations develop a unique tone, history, and shared knowledge and assumptions.

An essential part of the research process involves familiarizing yourself with the conversation surrounding your topic: the key voices, facts, ideas, and conventions. As you learn more about whatever topic you research, you will enter into this conversation, refining your own voice as you determine what you will contribute to that conversation.

This is one of the guiding metaphors in composition studies and a guiding principle in this book. When we write, we engage with the ideas of others by listening to what they have said before us. After getting a clear sense of what has been said, we can add something new to the ongoing conversation by placing our ideas in relation to those who have come before us. Our contribution is not the end of the conversation, but rather part of its ongoing engagement with complex ideas and issues.

Here is a short video from the Oklahoma State University Libraries that highlights the importance of thinking about research as a conversation:

Open Access is Collaborative

This book is an Open Electronic Resource, or OER. OERs are free, open access educational materials. Whether this is a text assigned for your class or an additional resource you have sought out on your own, we are committed to keeping this material free and accessible to all. Here is a link to Creative Commons, where you can learn more about open access materials.

Not only do OERs make educational material easier to access, they also encourage collaboration among students and educators. This textbook is the product of several authors, editors, librarians, and research assistants, along with feedback from countless students and instructors.

Throughout, we have included additional OER materials linked throughout the chapters and appendices, including images, infographics, and videos. Just as the research process is joining a conversation, we see the composition classroom as a collaborative space for sharing ideas, educational materials, and writing strategies. We hope you benefit from learning alongside these resources as much as we did from incorporating them into the book.

Genres are Determined by Rhetorical Expectations

This text focuses on the genres you will be writing in your courses and key components in the process of composing them. From a sociolinguistic perspective, a “genre” is defined as a communication activity with a shared goal established prior to the event. This means that the author and audience already understand the rhetorical purpose of the text before they write or read it, even if they do not know the content. In this book, we will discuss genres that inform and document, plan and persuade, review and synthesize, debate and convince.

Each genre has a set of commonly accepted forms and structures that enact its objectives, although these will vary between communities of practice such as workplaces, academic disciplines, and cultural centers. Literature reviews in an engineering journal will look very different than literature reviews in a psychology journal, although they will share a similar purpose for their audiences and the same underlying form.

It is important to note that genres are only relatively set—as different needs arise, genres evolve to fit the new goals. Scholars have described the recognizable characteristics of genres as the “visible effects of human action” (Hart-Davidson, 2016, p. 39). This text focuses on the role and purposes of a genre, and discussions of form only point out the fundamental structures needed to enact these goals—always observe your context, ask your instructor, and look at examples of the genre within your chosen discipline for needed specifics.

Language Practices are Shaped by Discourse Communities

Like genre, language and language practices also change over time. Language preferences evolve within all communities, including academic and professional ones. We all know that we change the way we speak and write depending on our audience, and academic disciplines are no exception. Different fields of studies and professions have very different expectations about language practices.

For example, a common piece of advice offered to developing writers is to avoid using the passive voice (“a question was asked” or “a mistake was made”). Many teachers explain that the passive voice hides who is performing the action (who asked the question or who made the mistake). In the sciences, the passive voice might be needed for that very reason. In a lab experiment, it doesn’t matter who prepared the samples or tests, because it shouldn’t matter as long as it is done properly. You’ll likely see a lot of passive voice, like “the subjects were given…” and “the results were analyzed…,” in order to make the experiment appear as objective as possible.

For these reasons, understanding and sharing in the rhetorical practices and objectives of a community of practice can lead to mutual understanding more effectively than grammar lessons. Studies of error perception show that the kinds of errors readers notice vary widely and are highly subjective in the degree to which they affect the reader’s opinion of a writer (Boetteger & Emory-Moore, 2018; Lunsford & Lunsford, 2008). You will not find prescriptive language or grammar instruction in this text. The authors of this guide uphold all students’ rights to their own choice of language practice and growth.

Writing is Knowledge-Construction and Inquiry

Writing is the tangible demonstration of thought. We don’t just write down things we know—we write to think through problems, to organize our ideas, and to make new connections and discoveries. In other words, writing is a way to create new knowledge for ourselves and others, not just a way to show others what we already understand. This is a result of the recursive nature of the research, reading, and writing process. There is a magic to discovering that a research topic even exists, that other people are interested in the same topics as you—reading the research of others helps to give our own understanding of the world balance and depth. But many people—students, teachers, folks making grocery lists, or people leaving instructions for the dog-sitter—often find that they never understand a topic as much as they do after they have written it down.

Do not always think of your writing as a quest to write perfect sentences and paragraphs; striving to make yourself understood is well and good, but don’t forget that writing is something you also do for yourself as a learner. Writing something down can inspire new ideas that lead to new research, new reading and information accumulation—and then more writing and rewriting. A part of writing is the desire to know more, to work through the logic of a problem—to inquire. When we say “Writing is Inquiry,” we invoke a conception of writing as exploration and discovery, and the writer as explorer and detective.

II. The Research Process

If you ask anyone what the research process is like, you’ll get different answers from each person you ask. This is because after a lot of trial and error, everyone finds a process that works especially well for them. Maybe right now you feel that you write your best work the night before it’s due, and after interacting with this book, you’ll learn that your first draft probably shouldn’t be your last. There’s really no perfect way to write other than to practice doing so. As you read through this book, look out for the various strategies and writing tips offered, and try them out to get a sense of what does and doesn’t work for you.

One thing most people will agree on is that research takes time! For this reason, you’ll want to set goals for your writing and keep in mind that you may have to repeat steps multiple times. For example, you may decide to revisit sources throughout your research process. When you reread these sources, keep in mind that your thesis may have altered since you last read it, and your new task is to reread it with an open mind and new goals. Give yourself time to reread sources and to decide whether they’re still relevant to your work. And keep in mind that you will always have something to read—whether that be a source or your own paper when you’re making revisions.

Also, keep in mind that you’re always rereading and revising your own writing. The four writing projects described throughout the book are meant to build off one another, so you may find yourself repeating a lot of information or rephrasing in a new way. Although this can be a bit frustrating at times, think about each project like a conversation with a person who’s just not seeing your point. It’s crucial and even helpful to repeat yourself so that you can help them see your stance clearly.

Citing throughout your project is also helpful to your reader, so that they can know where your thoughts are coming from and who you’re in conversation with. Citing can take some time, so try your best to figure out whether you prefer citing as you work or leaving it as a final step. However, as you’ll see throughout this book, citing is a must across all the disciplines. Not only does it show that you know what you’re talking about, based on your own research, but it also shows that you know how to join a conversation and acknowledge other people at the table. Keep in mind that citing also helps you avoid plagiarizing someone else’s or your own work. At whichever stage of the writing process you decide to cite, leave little reminders for yourself so that you don’t forget!

As you’ll soon see, research is very messy, redundant, and technical. But it can also be very rewarding and fun to follow your thoughts into research, discover what you have to say, and consider who needs to hear it. Remember not to get lost in the recursiveness of the process, but instead to immerse yourself in it. You’ll soon learn that the strategies and moves you make in academic writing can benefit you across all the disciplines.

How to Use Sources

Evaluating the reliability of sources can be a sticky process. In this book, we address and then move beyond the simple “reliable versus unreliable” binary. We encourage you to start by asking yourself how you will use the source and for what purpose.

Are you looking for a source you can use to build a logical argument about the need for the COVID-19 vaccination or boosters, for example? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, which contains information written by scientists and physicians, would be an appropriate source for scientific expertise. Or are you looking for examples of how celebrities influence their followers when it comes to understanding the vaccine? Then you might want to look at Nicki Minaj’s tweet of Sept. 13th, 2021, and analyze that—not as if Minaj were a scientist who had studied infectious diseases and vaccines, but as a celebrity who has the power to quickly share her ideas with a large audience and who, it turns out, circulated inaccurate information.

This might lead you to ask a larger question about how cults of personality limit critical thinking. In that case, although the tweet itself contains inaccurate information and could be considered unreliable, you might still use it in your paper as a source. You could analyze the tweet (and the flurry of responses by fans, reporters, and government officials) as part of the larger discourse around the circulation of vaccine (dis)information. Throughout the book, we’ll ask you to think about your sources like this: not just is it reliable, but in what ways can a source be put to use?

Revision

In this text, we envision research as a conversation because it encourages you to find sources that speak to you and allow you to develop ideas that will eventually become the basis for your thesis. In other words, your job as a researcher is much more interesting and rigorous than merely gathering and presenting information. Research should not be limited to asserting your opinion and then finding evidence to support it; that’s a monologue rather than a conversation. Engaging in research as a conversation means that the sources you find inform your views. That is, you allow sources–those you consider reliably written by authorities on the subject—to modify your position.

The recursive nature of drafting and revising your writing works much the same way. Thus, you draft an assignment, participate in peer review in class, and/or take your draft to your local writing center to get feedback. Then you revise your draft because your partner’s comments and observations inform your essay. Then, perhaps, your instructor comments on your draft, which once again informs your position, and you revise.

You may repeat any number of these processes from getting peer or instructor feedback, rewriting, and researching. Repeating these steps is more common in advanced academic research and professional writing. Researchers may get feedback from colleagues or at conferences and revise their work before trying to publish it. Writers in all types of professions may need their work reviewed by team members, supervisors, technical editors, or lawyers in order to make sure they are achieving their goal.

III. Overview of the Book

The rest of the book is divided into four chapters, one for each genre. In chapter one, you will learn about the annotated bibliography, where you will start your research and record some of your insights about the first sources you read. Chapters two and three are interchangeable: some instructors may have you switch the order of these writing projects. In chapter two, you will write a proposal, where you outline your plan to research your topic, identifying questions to ask and areas to explore. In chapter three, you will write a literature review, where you provide an overview of the main ideas, controversies, and conversations surrounding your topic.

After you have completed these three writing projects, you will have a good sense of your topic and should feel much more confident to add your own voice to the conversation by writing an argument-driven research essay. The final chapter provides strategies for structuring your argument and organizing your research for your essay. Three appendices are included at the end, with additional resources for writing, reading, and research strategies.

Each chapter has a similar structure. It provides sections that help familiarize you with the genre of each writing project:

• Rhetorical Considerations spotlight aspects of the genre that may need specific attention.
• The Genre Across the Disciplines provides real examples of the genre as you might encounter it later in your academic or professional career.
• Research Strategies highlight parts of the research process essential to your writing project.
• Reading Strategies help you navigate the often-difficult texts you might encounter in your research, as well as help you think about how those texts might be put to use in your project.
• Writing Strategies offer different ways to help facilitate the writing process, giving advice about issues writers of all levels grapple with.
• Librarian Referrals give you practical advice from research librarians to help you find and evaluate sources (you’ve already seen a couple in this chapter).
• More Resources provide additional OER materials within the text to help you throughout the research and writing process. Additional OER materials can also be found in the appendices.

If you’ve never written a long research paper before, don’t worry. We’ll help guide you throughout the entire process. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed in your research topic. Whether you are still trying to find a topic to research or have a good idea of what you want to write about, this book will guide you through the research process and build confidence in your ability as a writer.

References

Boettger, R. & Emory-Moore, L. (2018). Analyzing error perception and recognition among professional communication practitioners and academics. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 81(4), 462–484. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329490618803740

Hart-Davidson, B. (2015). Genres are enacted by writers and readers. In Adler-Kassner, L., & Wardle, E. (Eds.), Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing studies. (Classroom edition, pp. 39-40). Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Lunsford, A. & Lunsford, K. J. (2008). “Mistakes are a fact of life”: A national comparative study. College Composition and Communication, 59(4), 781–806.

Moxley, J. & Veach, G. (2021). “Scholarship as a Conversation.” Writing Commons. https://writingcommons.org/section/information-literacy/information-literacy-perspectives-practices/scholarship-as-a-conversation/

“Inform Your Thinking Episode 1: Research is a conversation.” (2016). Oklahoma State University. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmbO3JX5xvU