Summer is here and school is not the last thing on your mind if you are a student. The fall semester is just two months away so it’s important to think about school sooner than expected.
Now that we have gotten the hard truth out of our heads, let’s discuss what you can do to make this school year more manageable. You will likely have to write at least one research paper. There are many strategies and resources you can use to become a better online researcher. These services also provide essay writing service reviews that will improve your academic writing skills. These 12 online research hacks will help you get ready for the new semester.
Table of Contents
1. Take a look at the resources available to your school
Be sure to check out the resources available at your school before you look elsewhere. Many schools offer essay writing services, which will help you research more effectively. The Purdue Online Writing Lab, for example, is a popular source of essay writing tips and research strategies. Access to academic databases such as the MLA International Bibliography will be available through your school library.
2. Search Unique Keywords
To find the best sources for your topic, you’ll need to use specific keywords. The more broad the keyword that you search, the more results you will get. This can be a problem as most of the results will not be relevant to your search. To narrow down your search results to the most relevant sources, use specific keywords. If you are looking for victorian clothing, then search for specific articles such as “victorian horsehair poitcoat” instead of “victorian clothes.”
3. Use specific phrases
This is a quick and effective way to keyword search: Put quotations around the phrase that you are searching. Google will know that you are searching specifically for the words you are quoting and not for any other words. If you want to search for the average income of millennials compared with Generation X, then you can search “average income millennials” to find results that include that exact phrase.
4. Use Google Scholar
Google Scholar is an index that contains scholarly publications. Google Scholar makes it easy to skip the tedious task of sorting through the unreliable and irrelevant results from Google’s regular search. Although many articles found on Google Scholar can be expensive to read, it is a great way to locate specific articles that you need for your essay. You can then go to your school library to get them.
5. Google Books
This is my favorite Google service. Google Books is an index that lists books. It is a great way for you to find reliable sources on specific topics. Google Books offers only sample chapters of books. However, you can still find useful information. Google Books displays copyright pages in previews so that you can correctly cite the book in an essay. Google Books is a great tool to determine if a book is useful before you go to a library.
6. View Message Boards
It might seem counterintuitive, but chatting is often something people do to procrastinate. However, message boards can provide valuable insights and links to helpful resources. This is especially true if you are writing about a niche topic. There are many message boards for specific interests. There are many message boards that allow history enthusiasts to share documents and photos. These message boards can provide unique material and are a great resource.
7. Use the Advanced Search Function
Click “Settings” on the Google homepage and then choose “Advanced Search.” You can narrow your search using filters such as language, region and file type. You can search for specific words or phrases and also eliminate certain words or phrases.
8. You can set a search time limit
When searching online for something, it’s easy to fall into the rabbit hole. You might end up on a page about your whiskey personality, when you should have been researching ancient Greek festivals. You can keep track of your progress by setting a limit on how long you can search for one keyword at a given time. Set a timer for 15 minutes on your phone to allow you to search a keyword and then to go through various websites. Also, this will give you time to take notes and make research. Bookmark a website that has a lot of information so you have more time to look through it.
9. As you research, annotate your notes
Annotated bibliographies may be part of your assignment. Even if this is not part of your assignment it can still be helpful to make notes about the source before you move on to the next. Researching can take you through many pages. If you don’t know what source it was, it could be a waste of time. A document should be created with links to the sources and the author (if one was cited). This will help you remember which article it is.
10. Find out which sources are reliable
Let’s face facts: The internet is full garbage. Anybody can publish anything on the internet. There will be 100 sources that are not reliable for every credible source you find about a topic. How can you sort through the non-reliable sources? Your school’s library search engine is a good place to begin. The index of peer-reviewed and scientific resources in your school’s library should already be available. Even if you use a regular search engine to find information, there are indicators that you can look out for to verify if the source is trustworthy.
Check out the organization running the website. Is it a public or non-profit organization? Pew Research Center, for example, is a nonpartisan think-tank and popular source of statistical information.
Ask if the site is privately owned. Even though the information may still be valid if it is privately owned, be aware of how companies might present the information in a way that benefits their business. Data can also be biased.
You should also check to see if they have cited their sources. Reputable sources will usually list the sources from which they got their information.
11. Use online libraries and encyclopedias
You may not have full access to the books you need for your essay, depending on how big your school library is. There are many online libraries that you can access for free. Project Gutenberg books, for instance, can be read and used completely free of charge. You can also access free online encyclopedias like Encyclopedia Britannica. These encyclopedias will allow you to access articles on a variety of subjects and they are reliable sources that you can cite as a source in your bibliography.
12. You can use more than one search engine
Remember that search engines index results differently. Because they use different bots to crawl and index pages, this is why search engines index results differently. If you feel like you have exhausted all your Google results, you can try Bing or Yahoo! To see if different results are returned, try Bing or Yahoo!
These online research hacks can be used in any combination to make research and essay writing easier and more efficient. Keep these research hacks in your mind, and you can enjoy your summer!
