8.4: Organize the Paper

How Do My Notes Support My Research Focus?

Now that you've completed your note taking, determine what you think about your topic. How will you synthesize, or put together, different pieces of information that help you answer your research questions? How will you organize your evidence to support your argument?

An effective research paper focuses on the writer’s ideas—from the question that sparked the research process to how the writer answers that question based on the research findings, while an ineffective paper just summarizes individual sources one after the other without effective synthesis of ideas. Before beginning a draft, or even an outline, good writers pause and reflect. They ask themselves questions such as the following:

• How has my thinking changed based on my research? What have I learned?
• Was my working thesis on target? Do I need to rework my thesis based on what I have learned?
• How does the information in my sources mesh with my research questions and help me answer those questions?
• Have any additional important questions or subtopics come up that I will need to address in my paper?
• How do my sources complement each other? What ideas or facts recur in multiple sources?
• Where do my sources disagree with each other, and why?

Selecting Useful Details

Think about how you will use your source materials as a writer. When you conduct research, you keep an open mind and seek out many promising sources. By now, you have probably amassed an impressively detailed collection of notes. However, you will not use all of your notes in your paper. Use the following checklist to evaluate your notes:

• Is this detail from a reliable, high-quality source? Is it appropriate for me to cite this source in an academic paper? The bulk of the support for your thesis should come from reliable, reputable sources. You’ve already thought about and made choices in the quality of sources you gathered earlier in the research process. If most of the details that support your thesis are from less-reliable sources, you may need to do additional research or modify your thesis.
• Is the link between this information and my thesis obvious—or will I need to explain it to my readers? Remember, you have spent more time thinking and reading about this topic than your audience. Some connections might be obvious to both you and your readers. More often, however, you will need to provide the analysis or explanation that shows how the information supports your thesis. As you read through your notes, jot down ideas you have for making those connections clear.
• What personal biases or experiences might affect the way I interpret this information? No researcher is 100 percent objective. We all have personal opinions and experiences that influence our reactions to what we read and learn. Good researchers are aware of this human tendency. They keep an open mind when they read opinions or facts that contradict their beliefs.

Finding Connections between Sources

As you find connections between your ideas and information in your sources, also look for commonalities between your sources. Do most sources seem to agree on a particular idea? Are some facts mentioned repeatedly in many different sources? What key terms or major concepts come up in most of your sources regardless of whether the sources agree on the finer points? Identifying these connections will help you identify important ideas to discuss in your paper. Look for subtler ways your sources complement one another, too. Does one author refer to another’s book or article? How do sources that are more recent build upon the ideas developed in earlier sources?

Be aware of any redundancies in your sources. If you have amassed solid support from a reputable source, such as a scholarly journal, there is no need to cite the same facts from an online encyclopedia article that is many steps removed from any primary research. If a given source adds nothing new to your discussion and you can cite a stronger source for the same information, use the stronger source.

Determine how you will address any contradictions found among different sources. For instance, if one source cites a startling fact that you cannot confirm anywhere else, it is safe to dismiss the information as unreliable. However, if you find significant disagreements among reliable sources, you will need to review them and evaluate each source. Which source presents a sounder argument or more solid evidence? It is up to you to determine which source is the most credible and why.