When some students hear about a research paper, they might think of a world famous excuse made by Winslow Greenbay, "The dog ate my homework". Most students find preparing a research paper a tedious work which might take months to finish.

Here are some challenges faced by students when they prepare a research paper.

Lack of Knowledge about the Research Topic:

The most important problem faced by student is the lack of knowledge and skill to research on a particular topic. They might know the subject well but feel challenged when they need to prove something by combining different studies, books and early assumptions and theories. Even though developing research skills comes only through practice, a simple approach might be putting the topic into pieces and collect as much information as possible from different books and internet. Then remove the ones that are not required. Now there is a list of resources. Once you have the resources, you need look for the particular supporting points for your research in them.

Using Resources from Internet:

Another issue is the over usage of internet. When a student receives a research paper they tend to go in to the comfort of their home and browse through websites to find information. Though, they get a lot of information online, the credibility of these information is in question. Since there are many sites developed by people purely for their interest in that or to generate income, the information provided in that might not be 100% accurate. The best way to gather information online is to check for the information in different websites and cross verify them with available books collected from the college library or the town library.

Procrastination:

Procrastination is another problem to avoid when developing a research paper. This happens because of the lack of interest the subject provided. Nobody would like to do what they don’t like. Students do the same, if the research paper is not of their interest, they keep postponing it and finally end up in bulk of copied, unrelated information. Few measures that a professor can take are as follows.

• Let a student choose an interesting paper for research from a variety of topics.

• Let students choose their own topics.

• Encourage student teacher interaction to write a good research paper.

• Start as early as possible to get the best books from the library.

Few major other major concerns are

No transition from one paragraph to another. This leads to a research paper which does not support the thesis or the argument which is the most important concern. Some times by loosely tied pieces of information lack the evidence of research. Students do not bother to add enough citation to their research when they use facts, ideas and information that are not theirs.

Plagiarism:

The plagiarism – the copy paste technique from the internet will lead to a research paper that is good for nothing. Most of the times the copying content online must have been written for it’s own purposes and not for your research paper. When copying such information in bulk it never support your primary objective of the research paper.

Proof Reading:

Students sometimes do not take the time to show their research paper to someone to proof read or check the style of writing. It often end up in poorly written research papers with grammar and spelling errors, lack of headers, missing tables and figures etc. You do not necessarily need to find out an expert, but you can have it done by your colleagues, relatives or friends.

Mostly students face these issues only in the first few research papers. Once they know how to research for resources and reach their own conclusions, they will start loving research papers.