Questions tagged [research-process]

Questions directly focused on PERFORMING academic research. Do not use this for questions about publishing research. Read the tag wiki before applying this tag.

Use this tag for questions about the process of research.

  • If the research has not begun yet (writing grants) or has already been completed (publishing), do not use this tag.

  • Do not use this tag for questions tangentially related to research. This would render this tag useless, as it would have to be applied to almost all questions on this site, because performing research is one of the primary tasks of academics.

For example, if you are asking about how to best cite something, you are probably doing so because you are publishing your research. Such a question would only be related to research, but not about it, and should thus not be tagged . If you are however asking, e.g., how to best organise your research, the question is actually about research and thus should be tagged .

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Is there a single example of an outsider considered a "crank" publishing a ground-breaking result that was found to be correct (in the last 30 years)?

I'm interested mainly in mathematical and related fields, in which several important and famous open questions exist (e.g., Riemann Hypothesis). Almost every day a new "amateur" scholar (meaning, someone with no formal affiliation to a reputable…
Dilworth
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If you get stuck in research, at what point in time should you ask for help?

It's always worthwhile to take some time to try to figure it out by yourself. But eventually there's a point where you're unsure how much more time it would take to figure it out by yourself (which could take far longer than you originally think),…
InquilineKea
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What to do when you reach a conclusion and find out later on that someone else already did?

Say you've thought hard about a specific issue in your research and have elaborated a possible answer, interpretation, etc., to tackle it. (I'm not thinking about huge research subjects, but rather small ideas that articulate a demonstration.) You…
kfoo
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Can someone clarify Hamming's notion of important problems in relation to modern academia?

I was reading the transcripts of a seminar by Dr. Richard W. Hamming. In this, Hamming goes on to say the following statements: Explaining why one guy was successful while the others weren't as much successful. I have never heard the names of any…
Nimish Mishra
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How should I go about reading mathematics papers and textbooks as a PhD student

It shames me to admit it, but I feel like I still haven’t figured out the right way to efficiently read papers and textbooks. I am a second year PhD student in pure mathematics, and I struggle a lot to balance the need to learn a lot new mathematics…
Patrick Elliott
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Fear of someone having the same idea and doing the research before you do

I am a young researcher, and recently, I find that the drive to publish and advance my career has created an unhealthy mindset. In particular, I find that when I have a good idea, I am worried that someone will have the same idea, carry out the…
LCW
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How can a researcher improve his contribution to society?

As an academic researcher in a theoretical field at a public institution, I am sensitive to the social value of my work (my own contribution to society). I do some teaching, whose contribution to society is easy to identify, but not much. Try to…
F'x
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I want to be a researcher but I don't think I'd be any good at teaching. What do I do?

I would like to study for a PhD and hopefully become a researcher. There is nothing I can think of that I would like to do with my life more. However, my social and communication abilities are bad. They are bad beyond the point where it could be…
student21
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Is it appropriate to email an eminent researcher in your field?

Sometimes, I feel to contact some of the eminent researchers in my field for any of the following reasons: Appreciating their research publication (recent times). They publish in top conferences, which are usually not hosted in my country or…
krammer
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How to balance reading the literature and just solving the problem your self?

I work for a company that has several projects involving computer vision. The literature rarely has papers on the exact problems we are solving. Furthermore, the state of the art in much of computer vision is often not reproducible or not ready for…
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What do I do if I feel there are many things which need to be learnt to do my research?

I am a second year PhD student in probability from the UK. I enjoy what I do, but here is a problem: as I dig deep into my study, I realize I have to read a lot of stuff I do not fully understand and they often arise in fields of study which are not…
Lost1
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Research in "Research Engineering"

from Wikipedia: Software engineering (SE) is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches. I was wondering if there is…
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How to be creative in doing research?

Besides hard work, is there anything that one can try to be creative in research? On this site, is there a lot of people who can publish more than 5 or 10 papers per year? I would like ask them, if it is possible to train oneself to do that. I have…
sean
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How can a master student get research opportunities?

I'm an international student in a master program in applied math department in the United States. There are two ways that I have known in which the person like me can find the research opportunities: Independent research: do it on your own. Is it…
user35
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A question in the future research section - is it considered appropriate to write a paper on it?

I recently read a paper, which posed some interesting questions in a section named further research. They concluded the section by writing, "we leave all these questions for our future research". I am really interested in one of the questions, is…
Phd
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