As you start a research paper, learn how decisions about the sources you use can support your scholarly work.

1. The Research
Process
SELECTING AND EVALUATING SOURCES

2. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Research Strategy
 Research Writing is a WRITING process:
 Identify subject of paper
 Gather ideas and information
 Focus and organize your ideas
 Draft to explore your meaning
 Revise and edit
 Shape and polish
 It’s not always a sequential process BUT you can have a plan!

3. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Research Strategy
 A thoughtful plan and systematic procedures can help
you follow through on your research activities
 A research plan can help you understand the time you
need to accomplish the tasks and deliverables
 Keeping a research journal (notebook, index cards, etc)
can help you track information correctly

4. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Research Strategy
A research strategy should include the following activities with deadlines identified for each:
 Finding a researchable topic
 Setting goals for sources
 Finding sources (print and electronic)
 Creating a working bibliography
 Evaluating and synthesizing sources
 Gathering information from sources (summarize, paraphrase or directly quote)
 Developing a thesis statement
 Creating topic outline
 Drafting paper
 Revising and editing
 Citing sources
 Preparing Bibliography
 Preparing final paper
 Preparing presentation of topic
 Submitting final paper and presentation

5. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Performing Research – Assessing
Your Sources
 When you begin ask yourself:
 What information do I need?
 How do I get the information I need?
 Do I have the facts or experience to support one answer
versus another?
 Is my experience enough?
 Has someone else tried to solve the problem?

6. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Performing Research – Assessing
Your Sources
 Your own knowledge
 What do you know about your topic?
 Can you verify it?
 Make a list of questions you can’t answer about the topic
 Kinds of sources
To answer the questions above, seek out a variety of sources:
 Library and Internet sources
 Primary and secondary sources
 Scholarly and popular sources
 Older and newer sources
 Impartial and biased sources
 Sources with helpful features

7. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Finding Sources
 What information to look for:
 Single-fact information: answers specific factual questions
 General information: provides overview of a subject or a particular topic
 In-depth information: covers specific topic in detail
 Where to look for information:
 Library: access to online databases, card catalog
 Encyclopedia articles: bibliographies
 Library of Congress: online catalog for books (see webliography)
 Search engines: popular press, research sites
 General indexes: published magazines, newspapers and journals
 Specialized indexes: industry specific
 Interviews and surveys: access to experts, references to other sources

8. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Finding Sources: Electronic
Sources
 Kinds of electronic sources:
 Library’s catalog of holdings: resources that the library
owns or subscribes to: books, journals, magazines,
newspapers, reference works
 Online databases: indexes, bibliographies, reference works,
abstracts
 Databases on CD-ROM: indexes, bibliographies, reference
works, abstracts
 Full-text resources: entire content of articles, book chapters,
reports and publications
 Search engines: dependent on keywords

9. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Finding Sources: Reference Works
 Types of reference works:
 Encyclopedias
 Dictionaries
 Digests
 Bibliographies
 Indexes
 Atlases
 Almanacs
 Handbooks
 Your research must go BEYOND the reference works

10. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Finding Sources: Other
 Periodicals:
 Newspapers, journals and magazines
 Indexes may contain abstracts, summaries or full-text
 Pamphlets and Government Publications:
 Usually found in a library’s vertical files
 Federal Statistics (see webliography for link)
 Government Printing Office Listings (see webliography for link)
 Interviews and Surveys
 Identify experts or subject types
 Prepare a list of open ended questions
 Give subject time to consider the questions
 Pay attention to subject’s answers
 Be careful in interpreting answers
 Keep thorough notes
 Verify quotations

11. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Evaluating Sources
 Kinds of Evidence
 Primary sources: original writings by the author, documents, artifacts, laboratory
experiments, or other data that provide firsthand information
 Secondary sources: writings, speeches and other documents about a primary source
 Relevance
 Does the source devote enough attention to your subject?
 Is the source appropriately specialized for your needs?
 Is the source up to date enough for your subject?
 Reliability
 Where does the source come from?
 Is the author an expert in the field?
 What is the author’s bias?
 Is the source fair and reasonable?
 Is the source well written?

12. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Evaluating Sources
 Steps to evaluate sources of evidence:
 Choose sources that cover subject in depth
 Recognize the point of view in sources
 Verify one opinion against another
 Note the date of the evidence
 Use common sense
 Check your evaluations against those of professionals
 Beware of statistics
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13. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Synthesizing Research Findings
 Make sure that your review is not just a list of previous research papers or other literature,
devoid of any assessment of their relative importance and their interconnections. Make an
overview of the literature to produce a guide to the rich interplay and major steps in the
development of research in your subject.
 Check that the important issues of your research problem are introduced through the
analysis of the literature. A simple chronological account of previous research will not give
a sufficient thrust to the argument of why your research problem is significant and how it
continues the research effort.
 Make links across discipline boundaries, rather than keeping each separate. Expose
connections between disciplines. Suggest where new links can be investigated.
 Ensure you have included some account of how the previous research was done, so that
you have a precedent for your own approach to methodology.
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14. Course: RM6000- Effective Writing in InfoSec Analysis
Session 3
Synthesizing Research Findings
 Critical reading is a skill that needs to be developed as you progress through a
review of literature related to your project. When reading you must look at the
text from different perspectives:
 Look at the structure of the argument. First detect conclusion “indicators” (e.g.,
therefore, it follows that, as a result, etc.) Does the evidence support the
conclusions? Is the logic sound?
 Evaluate the assumptions upon which the writings and arguments are based.
Understand what is assumed and what is explicitly tested for.
 Consider the wider context of the work. What factors could have influenced the
results? Are they accounted for?
 Compare with other work. Find similarities and differences between studies,
identify them, and determine the implications.
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