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University of Minnesota

Kathryn A. Martin Library

Research Process

Walk through a simplified research process to get started on your research projects.

Mable's Journey

To get started, Mable looks up "climate justice" on Wikipedia. After scanning the entry, she's interested in exploring the human rights concerns within the climate justice movement. She notices in the Wikipedia article that they cite several sources and she starts opening tabs to take a look at some of them.

When you're doing background research, you might find yourself switching back and forth between many sources. This is okay! This will help you become more familiar with and identify ways to focus your topic.

 

As she browses the websites, Mable encounters the concept of "right to water" for the first time and Googles the phrase to learn more. After browsing the search results, she notices information about Indigenous activism and realizes this is a thread she wants to explore further.

As you read more about your topic, the scope (or size and scale) will change. It's important to be flexible at this stage as you determine what is relevant both to your topic and to your assignment's requirements. This is an opportunity for you to follow your curiosities!

 

Mable feels confident following this thread and begins thinking more strategically about how to find sources for her assignment.

Tip:

As you're doing background research, make note of any recurring terms, people, or concepts. These can be useful for the next part of the research process, forming a search strategy.

Mind Mapping Example & Link

While background researching was useful for getting more context about her topic, Mable starts a more deliberate search for sources she could use for her paper. To start, she decides to map out key words and concepts by creating a mind map, which is a way to visually organize the relationships between relevant concepts. 

Identifying the various aspects of your topic will not only help you visualize your topic, it will also aid you in brainstorming the terms you'll use in your search.

 

Image of a mind map separating main and related concepts on a topic. View the text only version for more information.

How you search in Google is going to be different than how you search in databases like Articles & Books. You might be used to typing out your research question into Google and getting relevant results, but in order for the database to understand your search you need to use distinct combinations of keywords. For example, you would enter "treaty rights" and "ecological restoration" into a database instead of "how do treaty rights impact ecological restoration?"

Tip:

As you're brainstorming keywords, there may not be another way to express certain concepts, and that's okay. Keep in mind as you find sources that you might have to generalize or broaden the concept. For example, if your topic is specific to Lake Superior and you're struggling to find enough relevant sources, you could consider using terms like "Great Lakes" or "lakes" instead to find related information that you can pull from.

Identify keywords that will be understood out of context by a database. For example, instead of using "impact" as a search term, use your background knowledge to identify what those impacts might be, and use those impacts as search terms.